EFE Agency
Quito, October 17, 2007

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, at the international “Latin Climate” meeting today, called for the assumption of a “universal survival pact” to fight climate change and environmental damage in general. 

The Head of State felt that a change was needed in the concept of development, because he considered that the present one is not sustainable and has seriously harmed the environment. 

"We must not only fight climate change, but also find another concept, another notion of development.  What we know today as development is simply impossible to universalize; it is not sustainable,” Correa emphasized on opening the International Meeting on Climate Change in Latin America.   

The 44-year-old economist criticized the world’s consumerism and, paraphrasing the words of Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, maintained that we must try to live well, rather than merely seeking to live better. 

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the meeting, held in the Jesuit Church in Quito’s historic city center, President Correa lamented that the global climate has been “seriously altered.” 

After listing several environmental damages, which he summarized in a “catalogue of the earth’s apocalypses,” he asked for “universal awareness” in order to defend the environment.

Among the steps needed to cope with environmental damages, according to Correa, it is necessary to curb the “unusual and arbitrary levels of consumption of the so-called most developed countries.” 

"We cannot continue to operate within an economy driven by competition and rapid gains in the shortest possible time because it is behind this mask that the most serious damage is inflicted on the environment,” he stressed. 

For that reason, he called for unity through a “universal survival pact” and after criticizing the position taken by certain countries at the recent United Nations General Assembly, expressed his hope that the UN would act more strongly in defending the environment. 

In this connection, the Ecuadorian President stated that he would like the UN to present a list of “the countries that are putting an end to our planet, of those environmental terrorists that, because of their ambition and exaggerated consumerism, are going to extinguish life on the planet earth.” 

Correa noted that his government is advancing a project to refrain from working the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oilfield in the Yasuní ecological reserve in the Amazon in exchange for international compensation, which he will wait for until June 2008. 

The Head of State lamented the “globalization of injustice brought on by global warming, for it is the poor countries, which are not responsible for the tragedy, that are those most strongly affected by it because do not have the capacity to deal with such overwhelming challenges.” 

Andean Community (CAN) Secretary General, Ecuadorian citizen Freddy Ehlers, revealed that tomorrow Correa will be given 21 proposals prepared by Latin American civil society at the international meeting, so that he can share them among his colleagues in the region for use as a standard at international meetings.   

After his address, Correa was presented with a white muffler by a Buddhist “so that he can lead Latin America to peace.” 

Oswaldo Canziani, who, together with U.S. citizen Al Gore, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental denunciations, urged those attending “to start off by giving their own resources their proper value.” 

"The division between science and politics has had tragic results for Latin America and what we must do now is to unite the various groups,” he pointed out in an interview with EFE, stressing that it is “necessary for people to react” and for existing laws to be enforced. 

People "must recognize that the resources belong to us, --as Bolivia, for example, has done with its oil--  not to those who come and take it away.  This is a critical issue and one that is difficult because our culture has been altered by international interests,” he noted, insisting that “we must return to our heritage.”