Lessons in Governing Well

In a new variant on the carbon trade unit Ecuador's leftist President Correa is offering the world a chance to make a trade for its rain forest. While the value of its oil deposits are invaluable to the world, the South American country is hoping that the value of preserving the wealth of climate and its treasure of indigenous people can be more highly valued. It's an approach that we can encourage for Ecuador, and for other potential suppliers of oil in exchange for exploitation. Like the U.S., for instance. Think ANWR.

Last year's presidential campaign posters for candidate Rafael Correa were lime green with the slogan "Citizen Revolution" blazed across them. Five months after taking office, the leftist leader is proposing another revolution, and again a green one – this time to save one of the world's most biologically rich regions.

Yasuni National Park – 2.5 million acres in the Ecuadorian Amazon – is home to some of the world's most diverse communities of birds, amphibians, insects, and trees. There are nearly as many species of trees in a single hectare (2.5 acres) of the Yasuni as in the entire United States and Canada combined. But it's also home to some of Ecuador's largest untapped oil fields. And with nearly 40 percent of Ecuador's people living in poverty, revenue from the estimated 930 million barrels under the ground in the oil block known as the ITT (Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha) would give a significant boost to the country's economy.

In a radical shift from the traditional politics of oil timed with the United Nations' World Environment Day on Tuesday, Mr. Correa is asking the international community to come up with a viable plan to compensate Ecuador for not exploiting the ITT. If foreign governments, businesses, and environmental organizations match half of the projected revenue for 10 years worth of oil extraction, Ecuador will not allow drilling in the region.

While trying to give this exciting twist to his country's need to save its own environment, the newly elected government is fighting the debt that previous administrations had built up, and is accusing former officials of saddling Ecuador with debt while building personal fortunes.

Ecuador's economy minister reiterated on Tuesday that the government would not pay "illegal" foreign debt and plans to seek the identity of debtholders to better craft a debt management strategy.
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"There is illegal debt that we have to determine ... and we will not recognize it," Patino told lawmakers, answering questions over his handling of the sovereign debt.

Patino and President Rafael Correa have worried Wall Street with pledges to halt payments of "illegal" debt or bonds acquired by past "corrupt" governments they say were against the best interests of the oil-producing nation.

Hopefully some of the Democratic candidates for the presidency here are taking notes. We may need to search out a few bondholders of U.S. debt to get some of the wasted billions back from current administration horders.

We could also use a new approach to the oil industry's continued despoilation of our resources, and of our natural world. I would like very much to exchange virgin territory for the gains the oil industry is taking out of our pockets while gouging us for the pittance of oil they're producing.