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The People’s Oil? Read chapter Read first chapter

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

5. The Citizen’s Revolution and the Failure of an Alternative Environmental Moment in Ecuador

Authors : Teresa Kramarz, Donald Kingsbury

Published in: Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the Yasuní-ITT Initiative in Ecuador as a puzzle for populist and commodity-determined accounts of Latin American politics and development. We begin with a deceptively simple question: why would Ecuador choose to incur economic costs to contribute to biodiversity and climate change benefits? The case of Yasuní represents a hard case because we are confronted with a poor country that depends on oil as its main export, has converted to a dollar-based economy, and requires currency that can only be acquired through exports, yet launches a global initiative to forego exploiting a large oil reserve if only partially compensated by the international donor community. Even in its failure, we argue, Yasuní demands a rethinking of accepted political rationalities in Ecuador and perhaps beyond.

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previous chapter “The Devil’s Excrement”: Venezuela as the Prototypical Extractive State
next chapter Extractive States and Prospects for Environmental Action
Footnotes
1
There have been wide disparities in the literature on this calculation due to the difficulty of future pricing of a volatile international commodity. Valuation of ecosystem services also relies on non-monetary calculations since many of nature’s goods and services are not accounted for in economic transactions.
 
2
An exception is Martin (2011).
 
3
This stands in contrast with the expectations of spiral models of norm socialization. In such cases, individual actors’ decision to adhere to normative behavior might initially arise from purely strategic, and material calculations however justifications based on standards of appropriate behavior begins to trap actors into compliance with such behavior (Rieth & Zimmer, 2004).
 
4
For example, for fiscal year 2018, the Ministry of Hydrocarbons said that 96.7% of oil has already been pre sold to Asian oil companies, leaving the state with only 3.6 million barrels for sale this year (El Universo, 2017).
 
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Metadata
Title
The Citizen’s Revolution and the Failure of an Alternative Environmental Moment in Ecuador
Authors
Teresa Kramarz
Donald Kingsbury
Copyright Year
2021
Book
Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-70962-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-70963-1

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70963-1_5