The small South American country of Ecuador represents a very unique opportunity for the world to study the intersection of economic, social, and environmental concerns. Given the diverse landscape and climates of the country, it is one of the largest biodiversity hot spots in the world. These pristine environmental conditions and large amount of unique biological life presents the world with new research opportunities and Ecuador with fantastic eco-tourism options. At the same time, Ecuador has recently experienced an economic collapse and a projected 45% of its total gross domestic product is spent on debt repayment instead of helping its citizens (Ecuador Government Debt to GDP, n.d). These economic problems could be lessened through the exploitation of the vast mineral resources and oil reserves that can be found in its mountains and jungles but would come at an incredibly high environmental and social cost. In response to the growing economic crisis and the hard decision between preserving the environment or improving economic conditions, the citizens of Ecuador elected the left-leaning Rafael Correa as president in 2007. Upon being elected, Correa made it clear that environmental sustainability would a major facet of his administration through the addition of the concept of Buen Vivir, or “good living”, to the nation’s constitution. This policy focuses on inspiring a sense of harmony between Ecuador’s citizens and nature, as well as the promotion of community-welfare. As such, Buen Vivir works towards separating the need for economic growth from societal welfare and the promotion of a sharing-based economy. Buen Vivir draws heavily from indeginious cultures and the economic concept of the triple bottom line, or TBL, form of accounting. Within this type of accounting, corporations and states measure their revenues based on the combined total of all the positive and negative impacts they have had on society and nature, in addition to traditional economic profits (Slaper & Hall, 2011). It is only through this approach to economic development that Ecuador can hope to reach the sustainable future it desires. Following the philosophy of Buen Vivir, Correa proposed the Yasuni-ITT Incentive to the United Nations in 2007. Under this new incentive, Ecuador would receive financial compensation from the international community in return for keeping all of the oil found in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oil fields in the ground, preserving the surrounding Yasuni National Park. The funds obtained from this preservation, totaling around $3.6 billion USD, would be invested into environmental protection and the creation of new sustainable infrastructure projects in the country. This incentive would be instrumental in allowing Ecuador to achieve its goals of sustainable development without further infringing on nature and the environmental rights of its citizens. However, the incentive failed to gain traction for a variety of reasons, ranging from the undermining of public trust through the existence of a Plan B involving resource exploitation in the parks to partnering with companies that had previous human rights abuses. This resulted in only $13 million USD being donated, forcing the Ecuadorian government to move forward with resource extraction in the park in order to pay its debts and bring itself out of financial ruin (Warnars, 2010 + Yanez, December 17, 2013 + O’Connell, 2016). Despite the failure of the Incentive on the international level, it experienced wise-scale domestic support and rightfully so. Yusani-ITT had the potential to vastly improve the lives of the majority of Ecuador’s citizens while simultaneously respecting their natural environment and preserving biodiversity. The sustainable development projects derived from the Incentive funds would have generated a large number of jobs in the renewable energy sector, as well as improved access to higher levels of education for all members of society. In addition to these obvious benefits, the improvement of the rights of indigenous peoples in Ecuador would have been spectacular under the Yusani-ITT Incentive, with each group being given rights to their ancestral lands and the projects that are allowed to occur on them. Overall, the death of the Yusani-ITT Incentive was an astonishing step backwards from true sustainable development both from the international community and the Ecuadorian government (Education System in Ecuador, n.d). While the failure of Yusani-ITT was a tremendous loss, it does provide the perfect example of Schnaiberg’s Treadmill of Development, or TOP, in motion. The TOP model focuses on the interactions between three different groups of actors, the state, the citizens, and the corporations, and their impacts on the environment and social welfare. Corporations attempt to increase their profit margins by substituting people with energy consuming automation, harming both the environment and the members of society who have lost their livelihoods as a result. The state also seeks to increase its own revenues through taxes and economic growth, but also needs to balance this with maintaining or improving the quality of life of its citizens. Finally, citizens are reliant on corporations for employment, but usually value a healthy living environment more. This results in them utilizing their power to influence the state in order to curb the environmental destruction that accompanies the profit-seeking goals of the corporations. The average individual does not possess enough power to push for reforms themselves, so non-governmental organizations and social movement activists, NGOs and SMAs respectively, are utilized to channel political will within society. NGOs tend to be international organization that set up branches within the desired country and receive a significant portion of their funding from abroad. In contrast, SMAs are largely driven by the citizens themselves without much funding from the international community, instead relying on volunteerism and domestic support. According to Schnaiberg, the Treadmill of Production and the interaction of its three components drive society between three types of developmental trajectories, referred to as syntheses. The most traditional form of development that Schnaiberg presents is economic synthesis, which focuses heavily on unrestrained free markets and large amounts of resources extraction. Following economic synthesis is concept of managed scarcity, where development is still achieved through resource extraction but has limits imposed by the state to limit environmental damage. The most environmentally conscious form of development that is put forth is that of ecological synthesis. Ecological synthesis involves the state imposing strict regulation on resources extraction, focusing on a policy of continued societal development without the need for economic growth, and large-scale environmental protection. Through out its history, Ecuador has been involved in all three forms of synthesis, starting with the neoliberal government of the 1980s and 1990s, moving to the limited exploitation of the current Correa government, and finally nearly reaching ecological synthesis under the guidelines of the proposed Yusani-ITT incentive and the philosophy of Buen Vivir.
Ecuador Government Debt to GDP. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/ecuador/government-debt-to-gdp
Education System in Ecuador. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.scholaro.com/pro/Countries/Ecuador/Education-System
O'Connell, C. (2016). Yasuni-ITT and Post-Oil Development: Lessons for Development Educators. New Models of Development: Lessons from Latin America, (22). Retrieved from https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-22/yasuni-itt-and-post-oil-development-lessons-development-educators
Slaper, T. F., & Hall, T. J. (2011). The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work? Indiana Business Review, 86(1). Retrieved from http://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/ibr/2011/spring/article2.html
Warnars, L. (2010). The Yasuni-ITT Initiative: A New Model to Implement Human Rights and Biological Diversity Conventions and Frameworks? International Union for Conservation of Nature, 55–77. Retrieved from https://www.iucn.org/downloads/policy_matters_17___pg_55_77.pdf
Yanez, I. (2013, December 17). Why did the Yasuní-ITT initiative fail? Retrieved from http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/Blogs/Power-dynamics-and-natural-resources/Why-did-the-Yasuni-ITT-initiative-fail