Quito, Ecuador
Drill, baby, drill: Ecuador has given up its effort to protect the Amazon from oil drilling. In 2007, President Rafael Correa offered to ban drilling if environmentalists could raise $3.6 billion for a trust fund to protect 4,000 square miles of rain forest. Six years later, with only $13 million donated, Correa is withdrawing the offer. “The world has failed us,” he said. “With deep sadness but also with absolute responsibility to our people and history, I have had to take one of the hardest decisions of my government.”
Madre de Dios, Peru
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Isolated tribe emerges: One of the last remaining remote tribes in the Amazon has tried to make contact with outsiders for just the second time in decades. Some 100 members of the Mashco-Piro—men and women, boys and girls—appeared on a riverbank near a town in the jungle and asked the local Yine people, who speak a similar language, for bananas, machetes, and rope. Some tried to cross the river to the town but were waved back by rangers. Peruvian law bans contact with 15 remote jungle tribes because they have no immunity to common diseases.
Brasília, Brazil
Oil for schools: Brazil has announced that it will commit all of its oil royalties to education and health care from now on. Under a law passed last week, 75 percent of oil royalties will go toward improving Brazil’s dismal public schools, and 25 percent will go toward health programs. As offshore drilling begins, the sums could reach $300 billion over 35 years, President Dilma Rousseff said. “For me and my government, education is the principal pillar to transform Brazil into a great nation, assuring that our people are freed from poverty,” she said. The law is the first of many reforms promised after June’s massive street protests demanding more spending on the poor.
