Related Papers
Ecuador's Yasuní Biosphere Reserve: a brief modern history and conservation challenges
Fernando Ponce, Matt Finer
Ecuador's Yasuní Man and the Biosphere Reserve-located at the intersection of the Amazon, the Andes mountains, and the equator-is home to extraordinary biodiversity and a recently contacted Amazonian indigenous group known as the Waorani (or Huaorani). Relatives of the Waorani, the Tagaeri and Taromenane, still live in voluntary isolation deep in the reserve, with no peaceful contact with the outside world. The Yasuní Biosphere Reserve also sits atop large reserves of crude oil, Ecuador's chief export, and contains an abundance of valuable timber species. This volatile combination has led to intense conflicts, and subsequently, increased international interest and concern. To make the issues confronting Yasuní more accessible to a growing audience of interested parties, we synthesized information on the biological, social, and political issues of the region, providing a concise overview of its modern history and conservation challenges. We constructed a chronology of key events in the Yasuní region over the past century and a series of maps designed to guide readers to a better understanding of the area's complicated array of overlapping designations. Main topics of analysis and discussion include: the Waorani and their ancestors living in voluntary isolation, Yasuní National Park, illegal logging, missionary impacts, oil-development-related impacts and conflicts, and the Ecuadorian government's innovative Yasuní-ITT Initiative (ITT: Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha).
The riddle of leaving the oil in the soil—Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT project from a discourse perspective
Cristina Espinosa
PLoS ONE
Uncontacted Waorani in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve: Geographical Validation of the Zona Intangible Tagaeri Taromenane (ZITT)
2013 •
Francesco Ferrarese
Journal of Agrarian Change
Territorialization in a closing commodity frontier: the Yasuní Rainforests of West Amazonia
2018 •
David Gilbert
In Ecuador's Yasuní rainforests and the lived history of the Waorani that live there, the commodification of first rubber and then oil shaped territorialization into particularly violent form. The formative role of rubber production in the 19th century involved local despots' imposition of a regime of violence. Reacting to this violent capitalist system, individual Waorani forged new socio‐spatial territories through violence with rubber slavers and cooperation with the Taromenane, a people who continue to live in isolation. Today, an oil complex exerts control to bring the end of Yasuní's commodity frontier, even while the Waorani Nation and Taromenane hold legal rights to parts of the forests. In this article, I analyse how rubber and oil exploitation has unfolded as capitalist territorial violence, spurring Waorani and Taromenane social expressions and political mobilizations that are at times violent, but primarily not.
Deforestation and Waorani Lands in Ecuador: mapping and demarcation amidst shaky politics
Gosia (Malgorzata) Bryja
Oil Exploitation in Yasuni Biosphere Reserve. Impact on Ecuador's Commitment with Sustainability
2017 •
Víctor Mauricio, Alicia Anahí Cisneros-Vidales
The purpose of this research is to identify how oil exploitation inside the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, affects the Ecuadorian government’s commitment to its sustainable development. The research is based on the bibliographic review of the reserve’s management plans, legislation regarding environmental protection and land management; as well as previous works on documenting key factors and their impacts in the reserve, focusing on oil exploitation. For this analysis, Yasuni has been considered as a complex system, in which key factors determine changes in four dimensions and their interactions, defined to represent sustainable development: social, environmental, political and economical. In the proposed analysis, components and actors are identified for each dimension, and their relationship is described at the different scale of their impact. By understanding these roles and their significance, it is determined which dimension is the most influential, therefore establishing if it supports sustainable development or not. In Yasuni, it is clearly established that the economical and political dimensions determine the future of the reserve, which is considered highly unsustainable and depicts an important dependence of the country and Yasuni on oil extraction in order to get financial resources. The identification of key factors and actors however, brings the possibility of promoting a more egalitarian distribution of power among these, in decision making, enabling a path towards sustainability and engaging the Ecuadorian government with it.
Deforestation Around the World
Deforestation and Waodani Lands in Ecuador: Mapping and Demarcation Amidst Shaky Politics
2012 •
Anthony Stocks
Forest Policy and Economics
Analysis of land management and legal arrangements in the Ecuadorian Northeastern Amazon as preconditions for REDD+ implementation
2017 •
Udo Nehren
Oil or 'life': the dilemma inherent in the yasuní-ITT initiative
Lucía Gallardo Fierro
Ecuador was the first oil dependent country to propose leaving oil reserves in the ground in exchange for partial compensation. The ITT oil fields are located in one extremely biodiverse area but one also highly compromised by extractive activities. Two mutually exclusive narratives: oil or 'life' emerged around the so-called ITT initiative. How did these narratives help overcome the extractivism dilemma in Ecuador? In order to understand the political effects of this dilemma, I examine the narratives used in its promotion. This paper shows, firstly, that with the environmental narrative, using 'either/or' positions such as oil or 'life', rather than 'both/and' arguments, the Initiative remained trapped in a polarized discursive field. Meanwhile, the governmental narrative sought to create an image of green development, wherein both oil and 'life' were possible and even 'desirable' for the redistribution of oil wealth. My paper argues that the debate about the Initiative, rather than providing an arena for emancipatory discussion about how to overcome extractivism has in practice caused its de-politicization. In conclusion, while the anti extractivism narrative proved incapable of moving beyond a conservation approach, the government's development strategy proposed to overcome extractivism by using more extractivism rather than less.
Revista de Antropologia
Fronteras irreales, abuelos y territorios comunes: interdependencia e interrelación de waorani y grupos familiares en aislamiento en el Yasuní
2021 •
Roberto Narvaez
Las políticas públicas de los estados inciden en las dinámicas propias de los pueblos indígenas y sus territorios en la Amazonía, muchas de las cuales dan lugar a conflictos por la reducida visión y consideraciones en torno a la diversidad cultural, que se remiten a discursos y políticas uniculturales. En la Amazonía ecuatoriana, el pueblo de reciente contacto waorani, y grupos familiares en aislamiento, mantienen y reproducen formas culturales propias de orden social y territorialidad, lo cual choca con las delimitaciones impuestas por el Estado, al no estar apegadas a esas formas propias de control y manejo territorial. La Región del Yasuní, en la Amazonía ecuatoriana, es un espacio donde confluyen formas de vida tradicional de uso y movilidad, bajo referentes de antepasados que habitaron ese territorio, y que heredaron ese lugar a sus generaciones posteriores; y donde las actividades petroleras marcan el día a día, pero sobre todo inciden en el desarrollo de conflictos que llegan...
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