In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development coined the term “sustainable development”. They defined this concept as being able to, “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their own needs”. This concept would become the central focus of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. During this conference, which was attended by 172 countries, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Climate Convention were signed by 150 of the attending countries. These agreements were designed to promote conservation of biodiversity and environmental habitats, and Ecuador was the very first South American country to adopt them. This growing commitment to environmentalism by the Ecuadorian government was the beginning of the country’s Neoliberal Boom. Under the influence of the United Nations and Global North, Ecuador formed the President’s Environmental Advisory Commission, also known as CAAM, in 1995. CAAM was heavily supported by USAID and would eventually lead to creation of a formal government environmental ministry in 1996. These organizations would create new protected parks, environmental laws and policy, and sustainable development plans. One of the most prominent of these plans was the Ecuadorian Environmental Plan, which pushed for sustainable infrastructure development and “sustainable” resource extraction. However, the Ecuadorian state was still weak due its past instability. As a result, Eco-Imperialist organizations moved into the country in order to pick up the governmental slack. The two most prominent international organizations that operated within Ecuador were USAID and the German GTZ, but other private organizations provided significant funding as well. The majority of this international funding was being dedicated to growing conservation efforts and providing start-up funds for state-sponsored environmental organizations and various NGOs. USAID would eventually rise to the forefront and become the face of the Eco-Imperialists in Ecuador with the funding of Sustainable Uses of Biological Resources project. This project focused on identifying paths to sustainable resource development, new land use policies, increasing minority political participation, and a variety of other lofty goals. Given the large amount of international funding pouring into the country and the expansive goals of the Eco-Imperialist groups, more and more organizations classified as Eco-Dependents began to arise in Ecuador. Natura was the oldest and largest Eco-Dependent organization operating within Ecuador and its continued growth allowed it to create several new branch organizations, in addition to other newly formed groups. Many of these new groups diverged from the broad goals of Natura and instead chose to specialize in different aspects of environmentalism or areas of the country. As demands for results from Eco-Imperialists increased, the organizations dependent on them for funding were forced to become more professionalized in order to meet very strict funding requirements. Additionally, these Eco-Dependents now had to cave to every desire that was made of them by their funders, such as increasing internal bureaucracy in the name of accountability. At the same time, Eco-Imperialists often required that groups benefiting from their funding needed to have certain skills and even financial backing before being considered for funding. This would often price-out many new potential organizations and prevented small communities from being able to involve themselves officially with Ecuador’s environmental movement. While not as historically visible as the Eco-Dependents during this era of Ecuador’s history, Eco-Resistors still existed within the country and continued performing the work that had been doing for the previous two decades. These smaller community-lead groups very rarely received any foreign funding, resulting in them retaining their small size. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it allowed them more operational freedom to oppose resource exploitation with many of Ecuador’s ecologically important areas. It also rallied more support for their causes, as the increasing monopolistic practices and foreign influence of the Eco-Dependents pushed people away from them and towards the Eco-Resisters. The two largest success that Eco-Resisters experienced at the time was filing a 1.5-billion-dollar suit against the Texaco oil company for illegally dumping waste products in the Amazon and the creation of the world’s first ecological reserve run by an indigenous people. While the increase in international funding and interest in Ecuador’s environmentalism created many success stories, it also deeply harmed the movement. Foreign governmental organizations like USAID pushed many neoliberal policies on to the Ecuadorian government in exchange for its financial assistance. The two most prominent policy shifts that occurred were the increasing decentralization of the Ecuadorian government, which had been supported by citizens due to the corruption and failures of past administrations, and the promotion of extensive partnerships between the state and private organizations. These policy shifts continued to exacerbate the already weakened state of the Ecuadorian government, as they prevented it from fully developing its own public environmental administration. This prevented the local governments from developing the accountability and experience they needed in order to benefit from the positive aspects that increased decentralization would have brought them (Qiao, Dong, & Lu, 2019 + Dimce, n.d). Because the state remained weak, Eco-Imperialism funding was allowed to continue to dominate the environmentalism movement. The power this funding monopoly would let Eco-Imperialist set the environmental agenda for the country, as no other sources of funding were available for groups with differing interests. It was left to the driven but poorly funded Eco-Resisters to pick up the slack left by the Eco-Dependent’s focus on achieving the conservation goals placed by their funders. This inability to work together caused immense friction to fester between the two sides and resulted in further division in the movement. Despite the issues inherent within the current system, progress was being made. Ecuador was advancing from a society based on economic synthesis to one of managed scarcity. However, this would movement would come to halt with the opening of hostilities between Ecuador and Peru in 1995. During this time period, Ecuador’s current administration decided it was in the country’s best interests to suspend further debt repayments for the time being. The resulting economic unrest resulted in uprising by indigenous peoples in various areas and the resignation of the sitting President. Ecuador would be further crippled by a drop in oil prices and natural disasters, resulting in the collapse of its banking system and economy. By 2000, the country would be entering the period of its history referred to as the Organizational Bust.
Dimce, N. (n.d.). Decentralization And Decentralized Governance For Enhancing Delivery Of Services In Transition Conditions . DECENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE FOR ENHANCING DELIVERY OF SERVICES IN TRANSITION CONDITIONS . UNDESA.
Qiao, M., Ding, S., & Lu, Y. (2019). Fiscal decentralization and government size: The role of democracy. Eureopean Journal of Political Economy, 59, 316–330. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268018304725