Lourdes Tiban,Secretary of State for Indigenous People (CODENPE, Council for Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador )

"The people and Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, and of the world, have always been the ‘pachakamas of biodiversity’ (day by day those who responsibly look after their biodiversity). Even more so recently, as we have begun to listen to everything that persuades us to focus on looking after biodiversity with greater responsibility, not just to face up to the greatly increasing change in climate, but also because it is our obligation to work towards ensuring a safe life for both the present and future generations.

For the CODENPE, looking after, defending and strengthening the ‘Yasuní Green Gold’ proposal by way of an international promotion campaign of the Yasuní National Park is one of the greatest ways to spread awareness locally, nationally and internationally. This is of importance especially regarding institutions, NGOs, civil society organizations and those dedicated to the extraction of natural resources, who don’t realise that the Yasuní Park is not just green, but also has a great number of rare plants and is a shared and common forest. The fact that this forest is utterly unique in the world must be made aware and spread, not just because it harbours the greatest number of tree species per hectare in the world, and moreover that within this green territory there live indigenous nationalities such as the Huaoranis, the Shur, the Kichwas and other self-defined groups.

We hope that the campaign to spread the name of the ‘Yasuní Green Gold’ may permit a reduction in the impacts of damaging activities such as deforestation, contamination, extinction of species, destruction of our social fabric, but that principally it might avoid the destruction and extinction of ancestral cultures and forms of human life which are the basis for this struggle, and that it might ask for recognition under the political thesis of Plurinationality from the Political Constitution of the State".

Lourdes Tiban

Secretary of State for Indigenous People (CODENPE, Council for Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador )