Oil drilling underway beneath Ecuador's Yasuní national park

Government claims oil extraction is causing minimal disturbance to the Unesco biosphere reserve in the Amazon

Critics of the oil drilling have said that it is too early to say that the exploitation will not cause harm to Yasuní national park. Photograph: Alamy

Ecuador has confirmed that oil drilling has begun under the country’s Yasuní national park, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

But the government claims that there has been only minimal disturbance to the Unesco biosphere reserve in the Amazon rainforest since extraction of 23,000 barrels of oil a day began last month.

Ecologists, environmentalists and political groups in Ecuador and elsewhere condemned president Rafael Correa when in August 2013 he scrapped a pioneering conservation plan to leave oil under the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) area of the park, in return for $3.6bn (3bn) compensation.

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