Strengthening Connections: Collaboration of Indigenous Communities in the Development of Environmental Policies in Ecuador

The UCSB Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies hosted a historic conference from October 25th to 28th, 2023, bringing together diverse voices to build alliances for ecological justice under the theme “The Future of the Amazon: A New Era of Indigenous Activism, Post-Carbon Environmental Models, and Latin American Partnerships with China and the Global South.” This gathering spotlighted indigenous perspectives in shaping sustainable policies. This piece focuses on Ecuadorian indigenous communities, showcasing their collaborations with NGOs to create policies that resist extractivism while preserving cultural and environmental heritage. The accounts here underscore the resilience of indigenous-led movements rooted in solidarity and self-determination.

What exactly are the struggles of communities against extractivism? What is happening on the ground in the day to day lives of these indigenous communities? These are the questions that Elizabet Durazno tackled. Durazno is from the Organización Comunitaria de Mujeres en Resistencia Sinchi Warmi Río Blanco, and is a defender of women's rights and nature. She spearheads projects for the defense of women’s rights, particularly focusing on issues to do with machismo culture in her territories. There is classical predatory development rhetoric at work here, namely that corporations bill their extraction initiatives to communities as a means of alleviating poverty, though no consultation or dialogue with local communities ever happens, and a clear violation of rights is on display.

These companies and extractivist initiatives have detrimental consequences, including the division of families and social units, and the destruction of environment and ecosystems. “They destroy nature in general and destroy us as communities,” said Durazno, “they also destroy our culture, which is why I do not speak Quechua. We have lost that culture, community, and people because of the mining companies. The threats to these communities are deadly, not only through environmental and cultural destruction, but with direct violence and assassinations of her community’s defenders, including her own uncle. “They kill our defenders, they make threatening calls to their homes. The mining companies are killing us,” she stated, yet they label Durazno and her organization terrorists and “stone throwers.” 

These are massive and destructive forces to oppose and resist, yet Durazno’s Organización Comunitaria de Mujeres has found a way. Durazno described some of their strategies to fight against this violence and dispossession: in particular the use of legal aid protective action, with the help of lawyers and the right to self-identification. This information and argument was crucial in one battle against the mining companies, who argued that Elizabet and her people do not constitute a community, thus allowing them to operate in those territories. By self-identifying as a communal group, they were able to halt mining projects and make progress in their goal to recover culture and territory, she explained. 

Elizabet Durazno also stressed the fundamental importance of maintaining direct relations between organizations like hers and with NGOs and with territories in Ecuador that also suffer along similar lines. “We have presented alternatives for the recovery of the production of culture, agricultural fields, and our weaving of handicrafts,” Durazno stated. They generated these projects as an alternative to mining extractivism. These connections with other organizations; NGOs, and communities are crucial, not least due to the very weak relations between indigenous peoples, indigenous communities, and the state, as was explained through the literal targeting of her community by mining companies backed by the state. This complacency and unwillingness of the state to exert pressure on these transnationals is a key part of the struggle.