Gina-Marie Cheeseman

The main goal of the Yasuni ITT Initiative is to stop the exploitation of the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador, 722 square miles of Amazonian rainforest. The initiative met its first goal to raise $100 million by December 30, 2011. In 2007, Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, agreed to stop extracting oil from Yasuni if half of the $7.6 billion in revenue the oil would have generated could be raised. There are 846 million barrels of oil beneath Yasuni.