Nine - The politics of environmental justice: community development in Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia

Summary

Introduction

This chapter addresses community development with indigenous communities in Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia, whose territories have been the site of conflicts with the oil extraction industry. The argument developed in this chapter interconnects community development and environmental justice and is the result of a dialogue between the authors, based on case studies from the experience of one of us, Martínez Domínguez, who worked between 2000 and 2009 as an activist, researcher and community worker with indigenous communities in the oil production areas of the Amazon. The indigenous peoples with whom Martínez Domínguez conducted her work were the Cofán from Dureno, the Kichwa from Sarayaku, both in Ecuador, and the Shipibo-Konibo from Canaán de Cachiyaku in Peru. The case studies include work with these groups as well as with employees of the oil companies and ‘intermediaries’ in the NGOs, the Church, activists and academics, including many adopting the role of community development practitioner, whether employed to do so or not.

Martínez Domínguez describes the background to this work:

‘My original intention was to bring indigenous voices to the forefront of academic debate: to expose the impacts of the unsustainable development promoted by the oil industry and to identify the strategies used by indigenous people to regain control of their own development. From the beginning I thought my main informants would be indigenous people with whom I had built relationships over the years through my work in Amazonian communities.

However, people in all the oil-affected communities I worked with considered it necessary to include the points of view and strategies used by the ‘powerful’ oil companies as well as the indigenous people. Therefore, the decision of researching the ‘powerful’ in the oil conflict was taken in agreement with my informants. The ethical stance of the research remained politically committed to the interests of the indigenous ‘survivor’ communities.’

There is a lack of critical research about the powerful in society, and the need to ‘study up’ (Williams, 1989) has not been fully addressed. This is accentuated by the commodification of research and the barriers which powerful actors erect against researchers who are attempting to scrutinise the state and corporate power (Tombs and Whyte, 2002). The powerful are not exempt from public scrutiny. If they do not provide information when confronted with critical and independent research, they leave researchers with few options but to use deception and selective communication.