Joan Martinez Alier, Guest Blogger

In May 2013, the international press has become alive to the fact that

there is a lot of unburnable fossil fuels. “Unburnable” carbon has

become a buzz word in The Economist and in The New York Times. If the

oil, gas and coal reserves are burnt at present speed, there is no

chance whatever of limiting carbon dioxide concentration below 500 ppm.

A large part of such reserves must remain in the ground. The Grantham

Institute of the London School of Economics has produced a report that

proves that the policies advanced since 1997 by Oilwatch to leave oil in

the soil were right, and announces that the money value of fossil fuels

reserves will necessarily come down if something is effectively done

against climate change. The Economist (4 May 2013, “Unburnable Fuels”)

dismisses “technological fixes” such as carbon sequestration and

geo-engineering.

When Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate, published

the first articles on climate change in 1896, the carbon dioxide

concentration in the atmosphere was 300 parts per million (ppm). It is

now reaching 400 ppm and rising 2 ppm per year. Arrhenius announced that

by burning coal found underground, industrialised countries were

releasing more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that this

would increase temperatures. He could not know that in the twentieth

century coal burning worldwide would increase seven-fold or that in

addition to coal burning would be added much more oil and natural gas;

in addition to the effects of deforestation.

What happens is that the new vegetation and the oceans do not absorb all

the carbon dioxide produced by the human economy. Fossil fuels can be

likened to bottled photosynthesis from millions of years ago. We extract

them, “uncork” them, and burn them far too quickly. The enhanced

greenhouse effect (so-called by Arrhenius) will be faster and faster.

In this sense the proposal to leave some of the oil, coal and gas

underground is clearly reasonable. We must halve the rate of fossil fuel

extraction. This proposal comes from places where the extraction of oil,

coal or gas is doing great harm; for example, the Amazon of Ecuador and

Peru, or the Niger Delta. In Mexico, oil has caused much environmental

damage in Tabasco and Campeche, and in 2010 BP caused a major spill in

the Gulf of Mexico. But there are also disasters caused by coal mining

in Colombia, China and India and from the extraction of tar sands in Canada.

In Ecuador, in the middle of the world, the organisation Acción

Ecológica proposed in 2006 to leave in the ground 850 million barrels of

oil from the ITT (Ishpingo, Tiputini Tambococha) wells located in the

Yasuní National Park, on the border with Peru. The proposal was accepted

by the then Minister of Energy and Mines, Alberto Acosta, and also

reluctantly endorsed by President Rafael Correa. However, a clause was

added. Ecuador would make a financial sacrifice for its own good and

that of humanity, and would forego the extraction of oil, which if burnt

would produce 410 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, thereby conserving

the unique local biodiversity, and respecting indigenous rights.

The country requested foreign contribution equivalent to about half of

the money that would have been earned, some US$ 3.6 billion in total,

paid over a period of ten or twelve years. These contributions would be

deposited in a trust fund jointly administered with the UNDP, and formed

on 3rd August 2010. The offer is in place, the money is arriving slowly,

but President Correa threatens a Plan B for oil extraction in some of

the protected wells. Correa is not an environmentalist but has defended

the Yasuní proposal in international forums. But now he threatens to

push the limits of Yasuní National Park in June 2013.

The idea of leaving the oil underground was born in the Niger Delta.

Some speak of “ogonizar” rather than “yasunizar” because after 1995 and

the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni managed to expel Shell for many

years. There they say, “leave oil in the soil”. From elsewhere: “leave

coal in the hole”, “leave gas under the grass”, launching proposals

similar to that of Ecuador. So much so that Acción Ecológica wrote to

the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in order to put the word

“yasunizar” in the dictionary.

In Guatemala, the proposal has been made not to extract oil from the

Laguna del Tigre, a Ramsar site in the Petén (an internationally listed

wetland). On the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia (near

to the coast of Nicaragua), the decision has been officially made to

leave the oil underground in accordance with local protests. In the

distant New Zealand, those who oppose the brutal open-pit mining of

lignite know the word “yasunizar.” The same is true in Quebec, France,

Bulgaria, and in the Basque Country, where, for the time being, shale

gas extraction which can harm the water table, has been stopped, with

the argument that if the Yasuní ITT oil stays in the ground, why can

other places not follow this same doctrine? Even in the Lofoten Islands

in Norway, it is being proposed to leave the oil and gas under the seabed.

There are local and global reasons for yasunizing the world.

Joan Martinez Alier is a convenor of the Environmental Justice

Organisations, Liabilities and Trade project based at the Autonomous

University of Barcelona