"For human beings...to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins."
– Pope Francis,
Laudato Si, On the Care of Our Common Home
TAKE ACTION
Dear Friends,
On July 5th, Pope Francis, who has called deforestation a "sin," will visit Ecuador, the country with the highest deforestation rate in South America. A major driver of Ecuador's deforestation is state oil company Petroamazonas, which is leading a massive expansion of the Amazonian oil frontier.
Most disturbingly, Petroamazonas is attempting to drill in Block 31 and ITT – the most fragile part of Yasuni National Park and home to Ecuador's last indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. The Ecuadorian constitution qualifies any operations there as "ethnocide" because such activity would threaten the very existence of those isolated communities. This behavior echoes Pope Francis' warning in his encyclical that "environmental exploitation and degradation" can lead to "the disappearance of a culture," which "can be just as serious, or even more serious than the disappearance of a species of plant or animal."
As His Holiness prepares to meet with Ecuador's devout Catholic president Rafael Correa, let's ask him to urge President Correa and Petroamazonas not to drill Yasuní National Park. We also ask him to meet with the Kichwa of Sarayaku, the Amazonian community who wrote to him in May which has successfully protected its territory from the incursion of oil companies for decades.
For the Amazon,
Leila Salazar-López
Executive Director
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