Grants and Contracts Details
Description
"La ultima cosa que se muere es ki esperanza" (The last thing that dies is hope)- Woman from La
Chiquita, San Lorenzo canton, Chocó Region, Ecuador, summer 2007.
In the last decade, Northern countries concerned with the relationship between carbon emissions and
climate change have committed to increased use of biofuels and carbon trading. Policy frameworks
such as the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanisms motivate investment in African oil
palm plantation expansion in the global South to `store' carbon in these `forests' and to produce palm
oil-based biodiesel to substitute for `fossil' fuels. The proposed research examines the causes and
consequences of greatly intensified African oil palm cultivation in the Choco region of coastal
Ecuador. There, in the canton of San Lorenzo, Afro-Ecuadorian and Indigenous peoples confront the
effects of extensive landscape change, as rainforest is replaced by monoculture oil palm plantations.
This research engages with political ecology literature and connects to scholarship on
geographies of hope and ethnodevelopment. It is also framed by the broad climate change and
alternative fuel policy literature. Through archival research, policy analysis, and in depth qualitative
research in two communities, this project investigates intersections of the following: 1) global
climate change policies; 2) Ecuadorian state development plans to increase African oil palm
cultivation; 3) the environmental, social and economic effects of African oil palm plantation
expansion for local people; and 4), the strategies that the region's residents are mobilizing to secure
their livelihoods in the face of expanded cultivation of oil palms. This dissertation research inquires
into cultural and spatial practices through which ChocO peoples are able to carve geographies of hope
from fallen forests, poisoned rivers, and palm monoculture.
The intellectual merit of the proposed research project lies in its innovative combination of theoretical,
conceptual, and methodological approaches from political ecology and development studies, as it extends
political ecology through an engagement with ethnodevelopment and the idea of geographies of hope.
The research will also enable contributions on multiple levels on key questions, animating much social
science concerned with the complex impacts of climate change. By analyzing the proactive place-based
views and actions that constitute geographies of hope in Chocó communities and showing that
Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian people are not simply passive victims of global trends, this study speaks
against the often fatalistic discourses on global capital and climate change policy. In addition, it will
show how decisions made in reference to climate change, carbon trading, and alternative fuels are
penetrating the farthest reaches of human settlement. Scholars are only now recognizing the very recent
and very rapid spread of African oil palm plantations in response to bioftiel demand and carbon trading.
This research will be the first to examine these dynamics within Ecuador.
The broader impacts of the proposed investigation lie in its connection to on-going debates-
spanning science, social science, and policy~-over the effects of climate change and of the efforts to
address it. Specifically, by taking seriously the experiences and perspectives of historically
marginalized people whose lives are being intensely impacted by the expansion of oil palm
cultivation, the research will enable a rich, empirically solid contribution to deliberations over the
costs and benefits of such strategies to enhance biofuel production globally. Papers reporting this
research will be submitted to peer-reviewed geography journals such as the Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning A,
and Antipode, as well as to FLACSO-Ecuador's and the Latin American Studies Association's
scholarly journals. Results will also be shared with San Lorenzo communities and Ecuadorian NGOs.
Examining the intersections between global processes and local people's responses, and making
these findings available to local people and scholars in the Northern and Southern hemispheres is
critical to creating more environmentally, economically, and socially just policies and to highlighting
how institutions could assist local peoples in organizing and improving their quality of life.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 8/15/08 → 7/31/10 |
Funding
- National Science Foundation: $7,800.00
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