In Search of Sustainability: Indigenous Political Movements and Alternatives to Extractive Development in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract

Since the Spanish conquest, Ecuador's lowland indigenous groups have experienced two major periods of development: faith-based initiatives and petroleum exploitation. The early 1990s marked the beginning of a third, considerably more heterogeneous phase. In this current stage, which has followed missionary health and education services since the seventeenth century and petroleum exploration and exploitation since the 1930s, indigenous peoples have become increasingly organized politically. Though markedly distinct from and meant to be more sustainable than past efforts, how viable are the alternatives presented in this "post-petroleum" era of conservation-based development? This paper contextualizes sustainable development within the history of Ecuadonan Amazonian development in order to highlight the relatively sudden involvement of indigenous organizations and confederations, both regionally and internationally, in the political arena of economic, sociocultural and environmental development.