The bird and the golden egg: Yasuní ITT Initiative

I am a small, but incredibly beautiful hen, sitting in the middle of the world. In fact, I am a one-off. My feathers are all the shades of all the colours in the world. I sing like no other bird. If I leave, you will never get me back. I am the ancient past; I am the beautiful present and; still sitting here, I am the prosperous future. 

And I'm sitting on a golden egg. This golden egg can heat your food and move things around your world. It can get you from A to B and back again. It can keep you warm.

The trouble is, my golden egg isn't actually very good for your world. It makes it cough and splutter. It makes it less green. But people clamour for it and pay more and more for it. Someone's recently counted and there are less and less golden eggs in the world. Other, different birds, sit on those golden eggs: stubbornly they do so, but only because they, too, are unique. If we all left, your world would look very different. We are protecting it - protecting ourselves.

Yet people still want my golden egg. It's worth a awful lot to a huge amount of people. But others prefer me: they prefer beauty, nature, history and peace. These people are doing all they can to keep me in place, sitting on my golden egg. Let the golden egg be, they say. The bird, our bird, is so much more important. Without it, our world is less.

Less pure. Less pure for everyone, not just those who get to live, work and marvel at me all day. Those that live and work around me: some have been here for a very long time. Others are newcomers. They see me and coo at how different, full of wonder I am. Then they stay. They want to protect me and keep me shiny and my birdsong loud and clear. 

But there are other noises and others who dirty me to get to my golden egg. They push under my belly and into my feathers. I sit tight, I squeeze down. The helpers tie ropes to me to keep me in place. Without them, already I might not still exist.

But they too need help. Having a golden egg is a Catch-22. They don't want to use it, but... it's a golden egg. It's worth a lot. And around me there are people with nothing. The golden egg could provide more, so much more.

What's more important? Everyone must decide for themselves. As the bird, I say keep me. You will never get me back. Your children and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren will never know me as I am today - mostly in tact. But if I stay, if all us birds can stay put on top of our golden eggs, we will give you a future: a green future full of birdsong, whale cries and the sounds of all animals, from polar bears to tapirs.

And yourselves included.


For more information on Yasuní National Park and the Yasuní ITT Initiative or to donate visit:

http://yasuni-itt.gob.ec/inicio.aspx
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/26/science-in-yasuni-sheds-light-on-impacts-of-oil-development-in-amazon/
http://mptf.undp.org/yasuni