Ecuador’s Environmental Revolutions by Tammy Lewis
Key Players and Conflicting Goals in the Development Trajectory
As an environmentalist and sociologist, Tammy L. Lewis can examine Ecuador and its “environmental revolutions” through a clear lens; offering interesting and valuable information on the statistics of an economically poor, but biologically diverse and petroleum rich country. Why would someone want to look through the lens at only one country, like Ecuador, when so many countries in South America and the Caribbean are also economically poor countries with much more to offer the world than what is given back to them? That is because Ecuador is just as geographically diverse as it is biologically. The country of Ecuador is broken up into four main regions: The Amazon, Andes mountains, Costa (the Coast), and Galapagos. Each area of the country featuring its own unique biological diversity, richness in a variety of exports for profit, and many people who are struggling between the ideas of sustainable development and extractive development. Considering Ecuador is such an economically poor country, with about a third of its population living below the poverty level (Lewis, 2016. Pg. 1), it is not hard to imagine that many residents may seek economic stability over a greener future in the short term. However, once President Rafael Correa was inaugurated into office in 2007, Ecuador began to see many changes towards sustainable development that they had struggled to make in the past.
The idea of “sustainable development” covers both environmental protection as well as economic growth—and attempts to prove that they are not as incompatible as people think. Sustainable development has three pillars that explain how to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people; these pillars are environmental protection, economic development, and social justice (Pg. 5). This relates to the very popular idea of buen vivir (Spanish) or sumac kawsay (Quechua, an indigenous language spoken in the Andes) that is sought throughout the country. These sayings translate roughly to “good living” and reject modern ideas of Western “development”, and deeply consider quality of life over the traditional perspective of ‘economic growth above all else’ (Pg.7).
Sustainable development and buen vivir/sumac kawsay are reiterated in President Correa’s Yasuni-ITT Initiative, a plan in which was presented as being capable of slowing climate change, preserving biodiversity, and even protecting indigenous groups in the Amazon (Pg.1). The idea was that other leading countries, more economically stable than Ecuador, could contribute 50 percent of what Ecuador would have made from extraction of their petroleum, into a trust fund for the country which could be used to protect the lands rather than destroy them in an attempt to make twenty years’ worth of profit from extraction. Yasuni National Park, “a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve, denoted by scientists as one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,” (Martin, Pamela L., & Scholz, 2014), and the oil reserves that lay within it must be protected at all costs, and I do believe that the World has failed Ecuador and Nature by allowing this plan to fail. President Correa had a Plan B all along, however, because without the trust fund money from the United Nations, Ecuador would be forced to drill, and that is what they did while in an attempt to collect the money. Because Ecuador’s economy has been built on its natural resources, resource extraction typically wins over the environmental agenda.
However, Ecuador is also a high biodiversity country, of particular interest to transnational environmentalists, funders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and social movement actors (SMAs), and this makes Ecuador “the most likely to succeed in sustainability” (Lewis, 2016. Pg.4). With all these environmental actors on their side, why does Ecuador keep losing to extractive development? The Treadmill of Production (TOP) theory works to provide a clear understanding for how powerful social actors, or corporations, benefit when there is increased production and economic growth, and will always choose this route. Corporations are the top actors along with the state, and citizen-workers like NGOs and SMAs. The state is responsible for balancing needs between the people and the corporations. To slow the treadmill of production, citizen-workers must put pressure on the state to make changes in the form of regulations and laws that prohibit corporations from causing environmental degradation. Schnaiberg’s (1980) original formulation of the TOP theory describes the relationship between the expansion of extraction and production and its relationship to ecological limitations as the “socioeconomic dialectic,” and explains three different ways the tension between these two factors can be resolved in a place like Ecuador. The economic synthesis, where corporations typically win. Managed scarcity in which the state creates and enforces regulations, and ecological synthesis, the best possible route for nature, where the state completely limits producers’/ corporations’ access to the environment (Pg.11). In short, capitalism, or the control by major private corporations in a country, must destroy the ecosystem to expand and grow, or at least this is the assumption; and so “there is a contradiction between capital accumulation and ecological destruction under capitalism” (Lynch, 2014).
From the perspective of an environmentalist, like Tammy L. Lewis or myself, it is easy to see the Yasuni-ITT Initiative in a bright light and wonder how it could have ever failed. Of course, if I were Ecuadorian, I would have put plenty of support into the Initiative, as well as President Correa, as he was the new ‘green’ president of Ecuador and stood for buen vivir/sumak kawsay before economic profits. Ecuador and its vast biodiversity need to be protected at all costs and I appreciate the President’s efforts towards this goal. It is only a shame that it relied so much on other actors who also had to choose between profits or the environment. Did they want tangible amounts of money from Ecuador in the form of their debts or extracted goods? Or would they let it all go away in exchange for protected lands and indigenous peoples. It is a struggle that many countries and large corporations go through, because the idea of sustainable development is not tangible enough for many corporations that are looking to see economic gains in the short term, rather than economic, environmental, and social gains in the long term through sustainable development.
I do believe that it is possible for Ecuador to reach a level of sustainability that would benefit their biodiversity, national parks, and indigenous peoples; although, without a president like Correa in office it may be difficult to stay on the right path. Even the United States of America can be seen to move forwards and then backwards on this path, with a slowing and quickening of the treadmill of production depending on current leadership and the current power and resources of citizen-workers. Hopefully, the World can come together to make the proper changes, particularly in the form of regulations and higher levels of limitation on large corporations who are playing the biggest role in the destruction of our precious ecosystems. The current President of Ecuador, President Moreno, has been badmouthed by former President Correa, being called a “corrupt man” and “The Greatest Traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history” (Ott, 2019). I am not sure what this means for Ecuador right now, but I will say that based off of what I’ve learned so far, I believe that Rafael Correa truly did have buen vivir/sumak kawsay in heart and in mind while running his country. I do not know that I can say the same about current President Moreno.
References
Lewis, T. L. (2016). Ecuador's Environmental Revolutions: Ecoimperialists, Ecodependents, and Ecoresisters. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Lynch, M. J. (2014, September 6). Treadmill of Production Theory. Retrieved from https://greencriminology.org/glossary/treadmill-of-production-theory/
Martin, Pamela L., & Scholz. (2014, December 11). Policy Debate: Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT Initiative : What Can We Learn... Retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/poldev/1705
Ott, H. (2019, April 12). How Ecuador's shifting politics led to Julian Assange's arrest, and a snarky tweet from the ex-president. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ecuador-rafael-correa-lenin-moreno-strips-wikileaks- julian-assange-asylum-status/
Key Players and Conflicting Goals in the Development Trajectory
As an environmentalist and sociologist, Tammy L. Lewis can examine Ecuador and its “environmental revolutions” through a clear lens; offering interesting and valuable information on the statistics of an economically poor, but biologically diverse and petroleum rich country. Why would someone want to look through the lens at only one country, like Ecuador, when so many countries in South America and the Caribbean are also economically poor countries with much more to offer the world than what is given back to them? That is because Ecuador is just as geographically diverse as it is biologically. The country of Ecuador is broken up into four main regions: The Amazon, Andes mountains, Costa (the Coast), and Galapagos. Each area of the country featuring its own unique biological diversity, richness in a variety of exports for profit, and many people who are struggling between the ideas of sustainable development and extractive development. Considering Ecuador is such an economically poor country, with about a third of its population living below the poverty level (Lewis, 2016. Pg. 1), it is not hard to imagine that many residents may seek economic stability over a greener future in the short term. However, once President Rafael Correa was inaugurated into office in 2007, Ecuador began to see many changes towards sustainable development that they had struggled to make in the past.
The idea of “sustainable development” covers both environmental protection as well as economic growth—and attempts to prove that they are not as incompatible as people think. Sustainable development has three pillars that explain how to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people; these pillars are environmental protection, economic development, and social justice (Pg. 5). This relates to the very popular idea of buen vivir (Spanish) or sumac kawsay (Quechua, an indigenous language spoken in the Andes) that is sought throughout the country. These sayings translate roughly to “good living” and reject modern ideas of Western “development”, and deeply consider quality of life over the traditional perspective of ‘economic growth above all else’ (Pg.7).
Sustainable development and buen vivir/sumac kawsay are reiterated in President Correa’s Yasuni-ITT Initiative, a plan in which was presented as being capable of slowing climate change, preserving biodiversity, and even protecting indigenous groups in the Amazon (Pg.1). The idea was that other leading countries, more economically stable than Ecuador, could contribute 50 percent of what Ecuador would have made from extraction of their petroleum, into a trust fund for the country which could be used to protect the lands rather than destroy them in an attempt to make twenty years’ worth of profit from extraction. Yasuni National Park, “a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve, denoted by scientists as one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,” (Martin, Pamela L., & Scholz, 2014), and the oil reserves that lay within it must be protected at all costs, and I do believe that the World has failed Ecuador and Nature by allowing this plan to fail. President Correa had a Plan B all along, however, because without the trust fund money from the United Nations, Ecuador would be forced to drill, and that is what they did while in an attempt to collect the money. Because Ecuador’s economy has been built on its natural resources, resource extraction typically wins over the environmental agenda.
However, Ecuador is also a high biodiversity country, of particular interest to transnational environmentalists, funders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and social movement actors (SMAs), and this makes Ecuador “the most likely to succeed in sustainability” (Lewis, 2016. Pg.4). With all these environmental actors on their side, why does Ecuador keep losing to extractive development? The Treadmill of Production (TOP) theory works to provide a clear understanding for how powerful social actors, or corporations, benefit when there is increased production and economic growth, and will always choose this route. Corporations are the top actors along with the state, and citizen-workers like NGOs and SMAs. The state is responsible for balancing needs between the people and the corporations. To slow the treadmill of production, citizen-workers must put pressure on the state to make changes in the form of regulations and laws that prohibit corporations from causing environmental degradation. Schnaiberg’s (1980) original formulation of the TOP theory describes the relationship between the expansion of extraction and production and its relationship to ecological limitations as the “socioeconomic dialectic,” and explains three different ways the tension between these two factors can be resolved in a place like Ecuador. The economic synthesis, where corporations typically win. Managed scarcity in which the state creates and enforces regulations, and ecological synthesis, the best possible route for nature, where the state completely limits producers’/ corporations’ access to the environment (Pg.11). In short, capitalism, or the control by major private corporations in a country, must destroy the ecosystem to expand and grow, or at least this is the assumption; and so “there is a contradiction between capital accumulation and ecological destruction under capitalism” (Lynch, 2014).
From the perspective of an environmentalist, like Tammy L. Lewis or myself, it is easy to see the Yasuni-ITT Initiative in a bright light and wonder how it could have ever failed. Of course, if I were Ecuadorian, I would have put plenty of support into the Initiative, as well as President Correa, as he was the new ‘green’ president of Ecuador and stood for buen vivir/sumak kawsay before economic profits. Ecuador and its vast biodiversity need to be protected at all costs and I appreciate the President’s efforts towards this goal. It is only a shame that it relied so much on other actors who also had to choose between profits or the environment. Did they want tangible amounts of money from Ecuador in the form of their debts or extracted goods? Or would they let it all go away in exchange for protected lands and indigenous peoples. It is a struggle that many countries and large corporations go through, because the idea of sustainable development is not tangible enough for many corporations that are looking to see economic gains in the short term, rather than economic, environmental, and social gains in the long term through sustainable development.
I do believe that it is possible for Ecuador to reach a level of sustainability that would benefit their biodiversity, national parks, and indigenous peoples; although, without a president like Correa in office it may be difficult to stay on the right path. Even the United States of America can be seen to move forwards and then backwards on this path, with a slowing and quickening of the treadmill of production depending on current leadership and the current power and resources of citizen-workers. Hopefully, the World can come together to make the proper changes, particularly in the form of regulations and higher levels of limitation on large corporations who are playing the biggest role in the destruction of our precious ecosystems. The current President of Ecuador, President Moreno, has been badmouthed by former President Correa, being called a “corrupt man” and “The Greatest Traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history” (Ott, 2019). I am not sure what this means for Ecuador right now, but I will say that based off of what I’ve learned so far, I believe that Rafael Correa truly did have buen vivir/sumak kawsay in heart and in mind while running his country. I do not know that I can say the same about current President Moreno.
References
Lewis, T. L. (2016). Ecuador's Environmental Revolutions: Ecoimperialists, Ecodependents, and Ecoresisters. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Lynch, M. J. (2014, September 6). Treadmill of Production Theory. Retrieved from https://greencriminology.org/glossary/treadmill-of-production-theory/
Martin, Pamela L., & Scholz. (2014, December 11). Policy Debate: Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT Initiative : What Can We Learn... Retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/poldev/1705
Ott, H. (2019, April 12). How Ecuador's shifting politics led to Julian Assange's arrest, and a snarky tweet from the ex-president. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ecuador-rafael-correa-lenin-moreno-strips-wikileaks- julian-assange-asylum-status/