Report and meeting notes from Peoples' Climate Summit at the Coalition Climate 21
5-6 December 2015, Paris
Zuky Serper

Keep Oil in the Ground – a meeting called by the Activists and Academia Network – CWEH, brought together international scholar-activists and tapped into a freshwater spring of the Yasunidos movement and Rights of Nature International Tribunal.

Prof. Carlos Larrea was behind the original initiative of the Ecuadorian government not to extract oil in the Yasuni Park in Amazonian Ecuador between 2007-2013. He stated in the meeting that today we know much more about global warming than in 2007, when the Yasuni Initiative started, and that continuing the path of burning fossil fuels and increasing CO2 emissions, which humanity is following in the Anthropocene, will lead to temperature rise of between 4c-7c degrees, with dire consequences for all life on earth as we know it. He went on saying that we also know much more about the Yasuni biosphere: The Yasuni site – 1 million hectares, or: 2.5 million acres – scientists proposed, owes its unique outstanding bio-diversity to the hypothesis that it was a sanctuary for living flora and fauna in the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. The Yasuni is home to four indigenous groups of people: Joined our speakers indigenous activist Gloria Ushino and Rights of Nature Natalie Greene, who explained the legal framework of the Rights of Nature and protection it offers to forests and people, and a young Yasunidos activist, part of an international movement in support of the 800,000 Yasunidos who signed a referendum in support of reinstating the Yasuni in Ecuador.