The vote comes after a decade of campaigning by organizers who want to protect the park's biodiversity and the tribes who live there.
Ecuadorian voters on Sunday headed to the polls to cast their votes in both a snap presidential election and to take what environmental justice campaigners said was a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to help protect one of the world's most vital ecosystems.
The Indigenous Waorani, Kichwa, and Shuar people coexist in the region, as well as the uncontacted Tagaeri and Taromenan tribes. As Indigenous rights group Survival International said in a video posted to social media on Saturday, oil drilling in the tribes' territory "poses a huge threat to their survival" as well as perpetuating an energy system that scientists have warned is heating the planet and causing dangerous sea level rise and extreme weather events.
The grassroots movement Yasunidos has spent a decade gathering 750,000 signatures to support the placing of the referendum on ballots and Ecuador's top electoral courtIf the referendum is successful, said human rights group Global Justice Now, Ecuador could "become the first country to limit fossil fuel extraction through direct democracy.
After 10 years of oil extraction in the fragile rainforest, the referendum offers Indigenous tribes and the entire country the possibility of "a different future," Hueiya Cayuiya, founder of the Waorani Women's Association of the Ecuadorian Amazon,"If we win, it will be a triumph for Ecuador," said Cahuiya. "We don't want any more contamination in our rivers, any more extraction on our land.
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