Does drilling for oil in the Amazon lift a country out of poverty? A young Ecuadorian in a short campaign video from Amazon Watch answers bluntly that it does not. Her argument is that Ecuador would trade its last great rainforest, along with the cultures, plants and animals that depend on it, for a short-term income that has not delivered the promised prosperity. Ecuador's own history with oil, and a national vote in 2023, show why that argument resonates.
The video embedded above was published by Amazon Watch on its YouTube channel in September 2014 under the title "Keep the Oil in the Ground", as part of a campaign called #EndAmazonCrude. Its credits name Barry Pousman as director and Jason Silva as narrator. It makes the case that limiting fossil fuel extraction is needed to avoid serious climate harm, and that the Amazon, because of its biodiversity and influence on weather, is the place to start.
The message: oil will not end poverty
In the clip first shared with this post, the young speaker sums up her view in a single line:
"Ecuador is not going to get out of poverty just because they come and drill for oil in the Amazon."
She goes on to say that the country would lose its remaining rainforest, destroy cultures and kill plants and animals, and that none of this counts as escaping poverty. It is a moral argument, but it also rests on economic experience. Oil has dominated Ecuador's economy since production began in the Amazon in the early 1970s, yet people living beside the oil fields have long complained that they see the pollution far more than the profits.
Why the Amazon matters, and what the "lungs" image gets wrong
The Amazon rainforest covers about 5.5 million square kilometres across nine countries, with Brazil holding roughly 60 percent and Ecuador a small but extremely rich western corner. Around one in ten known species on Earth lives there, including about 16,000 tree species. More than 30 million people live in the wider Amazon, from around 350 ethnic groups, and dozens of Indigenous groups still live largely isolated.
The forest is often called "the lungs of the world". It is a memorable phrase but a misleading one. The Amazon's plants do release huge amounts of oxygen, but the forest's animals, microbes and decaying matter consume almost all of it again, so the ecosystem's net contribution to the oxygen we breathe is close to zero.
The real reasons the forest matters are stronger. Amazonian forests hold about 10 percent of the carbon stored in the world's land ecosystems, so clearing or burning them releases greenhouse gases. Their trees generate around half of the region's own rainfall and send moisture to farms in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. By 2022 about a fifth of the Amazon had been deforested, and scientists warn that losses of 20 to 25 percent could push parts of it toward a drier, savanna-like state.
Ecuador’s experience with Amazon oil
Texaco began exploring in Ecuador's northeastern Amazon in 1964, struck oil in 1967 and started full-scale production in 1972. Over the next two decades the consortium it ran used hundreds of open waste pits, and billions of gallons of contaminated production water ended up in the environment, according to figures cited in the long legal fight that followed. Texaco left Ecuador in 1992, and management passed to the state company Petroecuador.
Local residents sued in 1993. In 2011 an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron, which had acquired Texaco, to pay billions of dollars, and Ecuador's highest court upheld a $9.5 billion judgment in 2013. Chevron refused to pay, and in 2018 an international arbitration tribunal ruled that the judgment had been obtained through fraud and bribery. Both sides of that case are still argued over, but the pollution in the former oil fields around Lago Agrio is not seriously disputed. A 1990s cleanup costing about $40 million was declared complete by the government, while critics say it left much of the damage untouched.
Oil turned Ecuador from a mainly agricultural economy into one that relies on crude for roughly a third of the state budget. That dependence is exactly why the debate is so hard: the money is real, but so are the long-term costs to land, water and health.
Yasuní: an experiment in leaving oil underground
Ecuador tried an unusual idea in 2007. President Rafael Correa proposed leaving the oil in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) field beneath Yasuní National Park untouched if the rest of the world paid Ecuador about $3.6 billion, roughly half the value of the reserve. Yasuní is a UNESCO biosphere reserve where scientists have counted 655 tree species in a single hectare, and it is home to the Waorani people and to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, who live in voluntary isolation.
The money never arrived in anything like the amount needed. By Correa's own account only $13.3 million had actually been delivered, and he cancelled the plan in August 2013. Drilling in the ITT block began in 2016. Then, on 20 August 2023, Ecuadorian voters approved a referendum to halt oil extraction in Yasuní and phase out existing operations, a rare case of a country voting to leave proven reserves in the ground. Putting that decision into practice has been slow.
What you can do
- Learn where the arguments come from. Amazon Watch is an advocacy group founded in 1996 and based in Oakland, California, that works with Indigenous organisations in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. Its videos make a case rather than present both sides, so pair them with neutral reporting.
- Support Indigenous land rights. Many conservation groups point to secure Indigenous territories as some of the best-protected forest in the basin.
- Watch the supply chain. Much of the oil from the western Amazon is refined and burned abroad, so demand in importing countries shapes what happens in the forest.
- Follow the Yasuní decision. Whether Ecuador carries out the 2023 vote will be a test of whether democracies can choose to keep fossil fuels underground.
The young speaker's point is simple but hard to dismiss: once a rainforest is gone, no amount of oil revenue can buy it back.
Sources: Amazon Watch: Keep the Oil in the Ground (YouTube, 2014); Wikipedia: Amazon Watch; Wikipedia: Yasuní-ITT Initiative; Wikipedia: Amazon rainforest; Wikipedia: Lago Agrio oil field.
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