Valuation struggles in the Ecuadorian Amazon: oil ‘non-conflicts’ and the inevitability of change among the Quichua people of the Lower Napo River

Thesis

The thesis investigates the acceptance of the ITT oil extraction project by the Quichua communities of the Lower Napo River, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and the consequences of such a project on people and territories. It sheds light on the structural mechanisms behind the apparent inevitability of oil extraction, development and change in the ribera – despite the struggles each step of incorporation triggers and ultimately leading to the weakening of already-weakened subsistence economies and an ecological crisis at the local level. The thesis seeks to reconceptualise the frameworks of ecological and cultural distribution conflicts – developed by Martinez-Alier (2002) and Escobar (2008) respectively in Political Ecology to explain the opposition of indigenous and poor people to ecologically damaging projects in their territories – in order to contribute to the search for solutions to the global ecological crisis which is at the heart of the project Ecological Economics. It argues, in particular, that because 1) valuation at one point in time is different from values and 2) values change in the process of change, indigenous people might embrace ecologically damaging projects in their territories in spite of their ecological and cultural ‘difference’ (Escobar, 2008), and in the name of ‘equality’. Oil extraction might thus result in non-conflictive, yet problematic situations rather than conflict. It follows that the challenge, rather than the use of alternative decision-making tools (such as multi-criteria analysis), which would allow a ‘better’ choice between various alternatives which are not satisfactory anyway, lies in the design of development alternatives which would go beyond the recurrent dilemma between ‘difference’ (the preservation of culture and the environment) and ‘equality’ (development), systematically faced not only by a growing number of indigenous people around the world but by the human species as a whole, in the context of an unprecedented ecological crisis.

Authors: Dayot, JEA

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-pvyxgrp6z
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: ecological economics; ecological crisis; multi-criteria analysis; political ecology; oil conflicts; indigenous people; valuation struggles