Environmental Bazaar

Ecuador wants the world to pay it not to develop oil fields in rain forset. They say they want half the revenue they are forgoing, which the President said might be $350,000,000 per year.

I don't think the model is necessarily bad, but the rest of the world had best be careful. The oil would stay in the ground, available to be mined when the price of oil goes even higher, in the future. The economic value that Ecuador is forgoing, as opposed to the revenue, has to be figured after discounting the saved immediate expenses in drilling and the retained value in the ground.

Presumably, the oil is cheap enough to get at that Ecuador really is giving something up by not taking the cash in hand. And maybe in the future, there will be less intrusive economically feasible methods of extraction than there are now. So it probably does make some sense for the world to pay something to keep the area intact. But Ecuador's offer to take half is much more favorable to them than it seems.