The Yasuni-ITT Initiative: Oil Development and Alternative Forms of Wealth Making in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Laura Rival (odid)

QEH Working Papers from Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford

Abstract: The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American countries poor in financial capital, but rich in biological diversity poses very specific challenges. This article examines some of the interests, claims, discourses and values of a range of social actors (government officials, business leaders, international development planners, intellectuals, indigenous representatives, and activists) involved in defining the future economic use of the Yasuni National Park, a Biosphere Reserve for Humanity located in the Amazonian Region of Ecuador, a small oil-producing country in Latin America. Two alternative development projects for this region are currently being debated by the government, the oil industry and civil society. The first one involves the development of a large oil and gas field in the Yasuni National Park, while the second proposes a financial mechanism by which Ecuador would be compensated for not exploiting the vast reserves of heavy crude lying underneath the park. Researched over a two-year period by combining social anthropology, ecological economics and various political and economic approaches to development policy, this case study illustrates the unique problems posed by the incorporation of the natural capital of ecosystems in economic decisions. Negotiations of trade-offs between development and conservation, it is concluded, cannot be properly understood without reference to morally framed notions such as work, productivity, ownership, exchange, reward and responsibility.

References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://workingpapers.qeh.ox.ac.uk/RePEc/qeh/qehwps/qehwps180.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to workingpapers.qeh.ox.ac.uk:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps180

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in QEH Working Papers from Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford Queen Elizabeth House 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by IT Support ().