When Hydrocarbon Agendas Meet Indigenous Agency: Political Ecologies of Oil Conflicts in Ecuador’s Yasuni Amazon Forest
Date
2024-04-25
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Abstract
The Amazon Forest is a highly biodiverse and culturally rich region with global significance for combating climate change. However, extractive activities (e.g., oil drilling) threaten the region by accelerating its deforestation and increasing poverty and inequity. This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the multiscale politics of oil conflicts in the Ecuadorian Amazon, addressing questions relevant to indigeneity, violence, gender, and oil benefit-sharing policies. This study focuses on a worldwide visible case for hydrocarbon governance: Ecuador's Amazon Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. The Yasuní is in Ecuador’s northeastern Amazon and comprises the Waorani Ethnic Reserve, Intangible Zone, the Yasuní National Park, and transition and buffer zones. The region is the ancestral home of the Waorani, who are among Ecuador's most recently contacted Indigenous groups and have traditional Waorani (known earlier as Huaorani) tribes continuing to live in voluntary isolation. Over the past decades, the area has seen increasing territorial conflict and political contradictions between Indigenous agendas, climate efforts, changes in resource distribution policies, and the expansion of oil extraction in the region. Theoretically, this dissertation uses political ecology concepts and approaches to analyze power relationships and political strategies of key actors in this governance system, including the Waorani, the state, and oil companies. Empirically, this study draws on participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. The findings illustrate how local, national, and global pressures have shaped and been shaped by conflicts over resource distribution, gender constructions, indigeneity, and political participation, highlighting the fundamental role of constructions of Indigenous subjectivities in shaping this governance system. Given the complex socio-environmental dynamics seen in the Yasuní, this research contributes to resource governance literature and policy.
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Keywords
Indigenous, Political ecology, Amazon forest, Gender equality, Benefit sharing agreements, Oil policy, Violence
Citation
Borja, D. (2024). When hydrocarbon agendas meet Indigenous agency: political ecologies of oil conflicts in Ecuador’s Yasuni Amazon forest (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.