6. Biodiversity, Global Governance of the Environment, and Indigenous Peoples

This chapter examines the role of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in global environmental governance, and how the CBD has been applied by the Ecuadorian government through its National Biodiversity Strategy (2015–2030). It explores the mechanisms through which the Correa administrations were able to use the implementation of international treaties and conventions relating to biodiversity, as well as the country’s constitution, to legitimize the activities of extractive industries that threaten both the rights of indigenous peoples and the rights of nature. The construction of access roads to oil wells in the Ecuadorian Amazon since the 1960s has had an adverse effect on the biodiversity of the rainforest and has encouraged legal and illegal hunting of game, exacerbated by the bushmeat trade and the trafficking of wild animals to satisfy the global pet market. The reinforcing effect of this combination of external factors has resulted in greater scarcity of endangered species, for which one potential remedy may be the expansion of indigenous-controlled ecotourism projects in a context of transborder alliances of indigenous communities.