Essay On The Amazon Rainforest

Living within the South American Amazon are countless plants, insects, and animals, as well as hundreds of thousands of indigenous people. For centuries, the Oriente region of the Ecuadorian Amazon was considered a paradise to its inhabitants- they took much pride in their ancestral land. However, within the past several decades, their lifestyle has been extremely altered, and the beautiful jungle they heavily rely on for their physical, spiritual, and cultural life, has been terribly exploited. This paper examines the historical, current, and future emerging abuses of the Amazon rainforest, often called the lungs of the world, in Ecuador by oil corporations, and subsequent effects such as loss of biodiversity and health consequences.

In 1964, Texaco discovered that below the surface of the jungle floor in the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the Oriente, lay reserves of crude oil and natural gas. Since this was the first time anyone had successfully drilled oil in the Amazonian rainforest, Ecuador’s government, as well as the indigenous people, did not know what to expect from this discovery, nor did they foresee the appalling externalities that would stem from it. Therefore, according to ChevronToxico, the Ecuadorian government and population “entrusted Texaco, a well- known U.S. company with more than half- century’s worth of experience, with employing modern oil practices and technology in the country’s emerging oil patch.” Regardless of existing environmental laws, Texaco took advantage of the ignorance and lax attitude of the Ecuadorian government and knowingly used careless tactics that had been outlawed in the United States decades earlier. They deliberately utilized the cheapest technologies to ...

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...mber, to preserve Yasuni, was a 3.6 billion dollars, according to Amazon Watch. President Correa stated, “It was not charity that we sought [from the international community]. It was shared responsibility in the fight against climate change,” as stated in a National Geographic Article. Unfortunately, the chance to “hail a historic approach to weaning industrial society from its dependence on fossil fuels” has failed, funds were not nearly enough to stop the Ecuadorian government from scrapping the plan. Action needs to be taken immediately because there is no end to this greed. What occurred in the Oriente, has in many other regions, and will happen to Yasuni. These oil corporations are, bit by bit, suffocating the lungs of the world, and if this continues, there will be even worse consequences to come in the future. Eventually, the Earth will stop breathing.