Environmentalism in a Climate-Vulnerable State: Rainforests, Oil, and Political Attitudes along Ecuador's Extractive Frontier

Abstract

To date, we have little evidence of what motivates environmental concern in developing countries. In contrast to the value-driven post-materialist argument that environmental issues are a concern only of the relatively affluent in advanced democracies, we offer an argument based on self-interest. First, we claim that vulnerability to environmental change greatly enhances concern over the environment. Second, we argue that a respondent's location on the " extractive frontier " (i.e. whether they live in an area where extraction is under consideration) will affect their environmental concern. Third, we propose that political attitudes affect individuals' environmental concerns because politics determine the extent to which citizens will benefit from extraction. Our analysis of an original survey of Ecuadorian citizens strongly supports our hypotheses. We further support our findings using qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with government and community leaders in Ecuador during the summer of 2014. Word Count: 9,880

Full text

Environmentalism in a Climate-Vulnerable State: Rainforests, Oil, and Political Attitudes
along Ecuador’s Extractive Frontier

Abstract
To date, we have little evidence of what motivates environmental concern in developing
countries. In contrast to the value-driven post-materialist argument that environmental issues are
a concern only of the relatively affluent in advanced democracies, we offer an argument based on
self-interest. First, we claim that vulnerability to environmental change greatly enhances
concern over the environment. Second, we argue that a respondent’s location on the “extractive
frontier” (i.e. whether they live in an area where extraction is under consideration) will affect
their environmental concern. Third, we propose that political attitudes affect individuals’
environmental concerns because politics determine the extent to which citizens will benefit from
extraction. Our analysis of an original survey of Ecuadorian citizens strongly supports our
hypotheses. We further support our findings using qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews
with government and community leaders in Ecuador during the summer of 2014.
Word Count: 9,880

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Across Latin America, rural, indigenous, and impoverished citizens are actively engaged in what
can best be described as environmental movements; they are undertaking collective action in an
effort to protect their lands and water from the effects of climate change and contaminants
stemming from resource extraction and consumption. Scholars that have studied such
movements often attribute these mobilizations to environmentalism (e.g. Taylor 2011), or
concern for the environment. However, political scientists in particular have little evidence
about what motivates environmental concern in developing countries, despite the fact that these
conflicts are inherently political.
A central challenge to understanding environmentalism in the developing world is the dominance
of value-based explanations that provide conflicting accounts of the factors that drive
environmental concern. Led by Inglehart (1990, 1995, 1997), many have argued that interest in
environmental issues is part of a bundle of post-materialist attitudes held by the left-leaning
affluent – individuals whose material needs had been met. Such post-material values celebrated
diversity and progressive politics across a range of areas. Inglehart and his colleagues based this
theory largely on evidence from Western Europe, where prominent Green Parties emerged
beginning in the 1980s. More recently, scholars such as Konisky, Milyo and Richardson (2008),
McCright and Dunlap (2011) and Arbuckle and Konisky (N.d.) have argued that value-related
causes, such as ideological and partisan affinities, as well as religious beliefs, impact survey
respondents’ level of concern relating to environmental issues like climate change. These studies
add further credence to the widely held claim that values shape attitudes on environmental
issues.
Although value-based theories have made substantial contributions to understanding aspects of
environmentalism, they are limited in explaining why the poor, specifically, may care for the
environment. Part of the limitation is methodological: the majority of the studies that utilize a
post-materialist framework have been conducted at the national level, so even though they
demonstrate that post-materialism has no effect (Brechin and Kempton 1994) or a negative effect
(Dunlap and Mertig 1997) on environmental concern, they do little to distinguish how post-
materialism relates to affluence and environmentalism at the individual level. Some studies have
extended post-materialism to the individual level, but have had mixed results, with most finding

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that post-materialism has no relationship (Grendstad and Selle 1997; Stern et al 1999; Davis
2000) or a negative relationship (Göksen et al 2002) with environmental concern.
In fact, new survey evidence from the developing world indicates that the poor who live off the
land - those on the front lines of climate change and other manifestations of environmental
degradation - have even stronger perceptions of the importance of environmental problems.
Based on an unprecedented nationwide survey in Ecuador with a rural oversample, this article
analyzes whether vulnerability theory, as argued by geographers and political ecologists, better
explains citizen environmental attitudes in the developing world, where affluent citizens are the
minority and Green Parties have not taken hold. Our argument is based on the idea that
environmental attitudes reflect individuals’ self-interest, and specifically, the extent to which
environmental degradation impacts individual livelihoods.
Postmaterialism and Its Challengers:
Vulnerability Theory, Political Attitudes, and Framing in Local Extractivist Debates
Post-materialism did originally aspire to explain more than just the affluent European economies.
The original argument, as articulated by Inglehart and Flannigan (1987), sought to explain
leveling in the curvilinear relationship between economic development and income inequality
that occurred in “mature industrial societies (1987, 1291)” only. That argument, based loosely
on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs1, was that after basic needs were met (as they most frequently
were in affluent nations), they were free to address “less basic” issues like environmental
protection (as well as quality of life, womens’ rights, etc.). However, in his 1995 piece, Inglehart
appropriately criticized scholars of the “boom” in environmental interest, through a statement
which holds equally true today: “much of this research is limited to the tip of the iceberg,
focusing on what people think about environmental problems without probing into why they
think it or how deeply they are committed” (1995, 57). Using cross-national World Values
Survey data from 43 countries at the time, Inglehart’s conclusions were two-fold: 1) that post-
materialist cultural factors – defined as “emphasizing self-expression and . . . quality of life” –
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1 Brechin makes the connection between “post-materialism” and Maslow’s Hierarchy on page
794 of his 1999 piece.

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were critical, but that 2) “people are concerned about the environment because they face serious
objective problems [such as air and water pollution]” (1995, 57).
Brechin (1999) critiqued the “post-modernism plus objective problems” theory, arguing that
while it was true that citizens from poor countries were more concerned with local environmental
problems, there were no patterns of difference in views of more abstract and global problems
between the respondents in rich nations and those from poor ones. Carrying Brechin’s concern
further, we seek to more systematically explain differences in the attitudes of survey
respondents, but as being related more to environmental vulnerability, local extractivist debates,
and political attitudes.
Formerly just the purview of human and political ecologists, vulnerability theory seems ripe for
consideration by political scientists as a source of political attitudes. To Adger (2006, 268-269),
vulnerability (“the susceptibility to be harmed”) is the flip side of resilience, “the magnitude of
disturbance that can be absorbed before a system changes to a radically different state as well as
the capacity to self-organize and the capacity for adaptation to emerging circumstances.” In his
2006 review of the literature, Adger emphasizes the need for giving greater consideration to
human factors in vulnerability, as “the common property resource tradition, for example, stresses
the importance of social, political, and economic organizations in social ecological systems, with
institutions as mediating factors that govern the relationship between social systems and the
ecosystems on which they depend” (269). Still, Adger states that there has been little in the way
of a synthesis of social and ecological factors into considerations of vulnerability, and he
acknowledges the challenges of “developing metrics that incorporate both human well-being and
recognize the relative and perceptual nature of vulnerability” (274). While an elusive set of
indicators linking ecological and social/political vulnerability has not yet been found, in this
paper we follow Carlin, Love, and Zechmeister (2014) in seeking to use public opinion to study
these issues. However, we address what Adger references above as “the relative and perceptual
nature of vulnerability” by considering citizens’ perceptions of their vulnerability in relation to
particular empirical manifestations of environmental degradation.

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The “extractivist debate” frame argument is based on claims (Kurtz 2004, Silva 2009) that 1990s
neoliberal reforms in Latin American demobilized labor and other traditional groups, but may
have opened spaces for the mobilization of other groups such as indigenous communities in their
efforts to control natural resource extraction (Arce 2014, Yashar 2005). Protests to resist oil
extraction reached their zenith near the Peruvian town of Bagua, in 2009, where 32 people were
killed and hundreds were injured. Clearly, that event galvanized the debate in Peru, and authors
like Arce (2014) and Vasquez (2014) have claimed that localized debates over whether to open
up environments to extraction have a great effect on public opinion and citizen mobilization.
As with vulnerability, extractivism in developing areas often taps into individuals’ self-interest
when it comes to environmental concern. Extractivist efforts can harm the land and water upon
which poor, rural, and indigenous communities depend for their livelihoods, but extractivism is
also promoted by developing-area governments as a means of economic advancement. Mining
and oil contracts often stipulate that a percentage of royalties be redistributed back to local
communities in the form of development projects (see Becker 2012 for a discussion of this
phenomena in Ecuador). Indeed, the increasingly state-dominated extractivist efforts across the
Andean region promise to redesign the economic model of these countries, reduce dependency
upon developed nations, and create an unprecedented level of development. Not only are
extractivist debates divisive, they are also crucial for motivating concern over the environment –
or lack thereof. We argue that the extent to which extractivist debates affect environmental
concern is conditioned by the belief that the government will fulfill its promise to redistribute
mineral profits back to the community.
Theory and Hypotheses
The explanation that, at least for some time, has held “hegemonic status” (Guha and Martínez-
Alier 1997, xiv) in the study of comparative environmentalism is Inglehart’s (1992; 1995; 1997)
theory of post-materialist values. As we outline above, Inglehart argues that poor people
struggling to meet their basic needs simply cannot afford to value the environment. However,
we suspect that Inglehart’s argument will be insufficient to explain environmentalism in
Ecuador, and instead offer three alternative hypotheses. In order to assess the validity of post-
materialism, we summarize this hypothesis as follows:

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Hypothesis 1 – The Post-Materialist “Values” Hypothesis: Post-materialist living
conditions and the associated post-materialist values are expected to increase a
respondents’ level of concern over the environment.
Recent research using cross-national survey data raises doubts about Inglehart’s theory, but does
not provide an alternative explanation for why poor people value the environment (Dunlap and
York 2012). Our remaining hypotheses present such alternatives. The dominance of post-
materialism within political science means that environmentalism among the poor, and in
developing countries such as Ecuador, has been under-theorized. However, work in the
interdisciplinary field of human and political ecology has begun to formulate potential
explanations for environmental concern among impoverished communities. For many poor
populations, access to clean water, biodiverse forests and uncontaminated land are not merely
issues related to their quality of life. Instead, communities like the indigenous or rural
agricultural workers rely upon subsistence farming or hunting and gathering, so natural resources
form the cornerstone of their livelihoods. Thus, we argue that motivation for environmentalism
among the poor stems not from post-materialist concerns for the “rights of other species” or
moral concerns for future generations of humans, but rather from “a material interest in the
environment as a source and a requirement for livelihood” (Martínez-Alier 2002, 11). More
specifically, individuals may be objectively vulnerable to environmental damage because they
depend upon the environment for their livelihood, or because they lack basic resources such as
water and energy that are particularly threatened by environmental change. Individuals may also
perceive vulnerability to such change given the extent to which they depend upon natural
resources for their livelihood, or the extent to which they believe themselves and their families to
be impacted by environmental changes. Our second hypothesis is thus:
Hypothesis 2 – Vulnerability Hypothesis: Objective conditions of vulnerability to
environmental change and perceptions of vulnerability to environmental change are
expected to increase a respondents’ level of concern over the environment.
Extensive oil production has been found to hinder nations’ environmental performance, possibly
due to the expectations such oil production brings for economic development, and how that
production gets distributed (Eisenstadt, Fiorino, and Stevens N.d.). Additionally, in the Andean
region, “the negative environmental and social externalities brought about by the boom in the

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exploration and development of hydrocarbons reserves, and the impact these have had on local
communities, constitute the main trigger of local conflicts today” (Vasquez 2014, 5). In addition
to triggering actual conflicts, we believe that the possibilities of hydrocarbon production – with
all of the attendant environmental, political, social and economic complications this may bring –
becomes a focal point in communities which then frames their attitudes on environmental issues.
Hypothesis 3 – Extractivist Debate Hypothesis: Respondents in localities where
debates over hydrocarbon and/or mineral extraction frame views on the environment are
likely to express greater concern for the environment.
However, extractivism in developing areas tends to be highly politicized, particularly because
extractivist efforts are increasingly driven by the state, and justified for the development
opportunities they provide. Individuals that expect extraction to reward them with economic
benefits – in the form of employment opportunities, development projects, or even community-
level cash transfers – should not be as concerned for the environment in the face of extractivist
debates. Indeed, economic self-interest has effects on a wide range of attitudes, particularly
when individuals perceive the consequences of political activity to be relevant to their own
economic situation (Doherty et al 2006). When individuals have trust in the government, they
are likely to have faith that state-run extractivist efforts will provide the promised economic
benefits. We argue that this expectation should mitigate environmental concern in areas where
there is an extractivist debate. Specifically, the effects of the presence of extractivist debates on
environmental attitudes should be conditional on trust in the government.
Hypothesis 4 – Political Attitudes Hypothesis:
(a) Respondents who identify with political parties and social movements that
oppose extractivist efforts should express greater concern for the environment.
(b) Extractivist debates should lead respondents to have increased environmental
concern, but the positive effect of extractivist debates should be less for
individuals with high trust in the government.
Case Selection and Survey Methodology
Ecuador was selected as the site for the survey of dispositions towards the environment for
several reasons. First, it is a developing country of the sort needed to test the post-materialist
values hypothesis, as it possesses great variance in income levels. Second, Ecuador’s widely

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varying terrains offer a range of ecosystems, and hence a range in vulnerability to environmental
degradation, which takes different forms in the country’s mountainous terrain and in its low-
lying Amazon rainforest ecosystems. Third, given the nation’s small size, its overall
vulnerability to climate change, and its reliance on extractive industries (oil and minerals),
environmental issues are an important part of the national policy dialogue, meaning that at least
some people would have a strong knowledge of environmental issues, thus ensuring variance on
several key variables.
The nationwide survey was conducted in Ecuador between March and June 2014 after several
focus groups and trial questionnaires were administered throughout different parts of the country
in January 2014. The survey was administered face to face in three separate strata: 1200 to the
urban Ecuador population usually polled (300 each in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, and
Manta/Portoviejo); 600 to rural dwellers in rural areas of the nation’s central Andean indigenous
region provinces (150 each in Azuay, Pichincha, Imbabura, and Tunguragua), and 750 in
provinces located in the Amazon region (150 each in Napo, Sucumbios, Orellana, Zamora
Chinchipe, and Pastaza). This sample assured us of coverage of most of the nation’s poor, rural,
and indigenous communities and, among each of the three samples, ensured a 4 percent (or less)
error at a 95 percent confidence interval. See Appendix B for a more thorough description of our
sampling technique. Below we elaborate the questions used to represent different theories, and
then estimate our models and our findings.
Data and Variables
In order to test the above hypotheses, we use the results of our nationwide survey of Ecuadorians
to capture citizens’ concern for the environment, as well as the extent of their post-materialist
values, their vulnerability to the environment, political attitudes, and whether their localities
experienced extractivist debates. In this section, we describe the measures of our dependent
variable and key independent variables that we use to evaluate our hypotheses.
To test all four of our hypotheses, it is necessary to conceptualize citizens’ concern for the
environment (the dependent variable). We rely on one measure that we developed based on
citizen responses during focus groups and extensive field tests of the survey instrument. The

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question involves two stages. First, we provide individuals with a list of concerns, including
basic needs (employment, ability to buy basic goods, health problems, and security), as well as
arguably higher-order or abstract concerns (ability to obtain or pay for education, interpersonal
relations, the overall situation of the country, and the environment), and ask them if they are
worried about each of these concerns with a simple “yes” or “no” response. We then followed
up with a question that asked: “Taking into account the previous list, how much do you worry
about the environment? Not at all, less than most other concerns, more than some of the other
concerns, more than the majority of the other concerns, more than any other concern?”2 The
responses therefore capture citizens’ concern for the environment relative to other concerns that,
in theory, should be important for individuals with post-materialist values, as well as for more
vulnerable populations. The response to the question is ordinal, where 0 represents that the
environment is not at all a concern compared to other problems, 2 indicates that it is more of a
concern than some of the other problems, and 4 represents that the environment is more
worrisome than any other problem. In the sample, the mean response is 1.94, and 25.75% of the
citizens indicate they are concerned about the environment more than the majority (3) or more
than any other problem (4). Please see Table A1 in the Appendix for a description of the survey
items, question wording, and coding of this and all other variables included in the analysis.3
Seven elements of the survey instrument allow us to develop measures of post-materialism. In
order to evaluate the Post-Materialist Values Hypothesis, we include a variety of measures that
in theory should either directly or indirectly correspond with citizens’ greater concern for the
environment. First, we include three demographic indicators to assess the post-materialist
argument at its most fundamental level: that more affluent, professional, and technologically-
integrated citizens care more about the environment. The Income variable is an ordinal variable
that indicates an individual’s self-reported monthly income level (0 represents no income, 5
represents $301 to $500, and 10 represents an income of over $2000 per month, with a mean of
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2!Please see the appendix for the survey question used to create this variable, and all of the
survey-based variables outlined hereafter. !
3 While this variable may appear somewhat complicated, we focus group tested it in both rural
and urban areas in Ecuador’s three regions (coast, Andes and Amazon) and found that
respondents in focus groups understood the concepts, and that this was a useful indicator of
respondent interest in the environment.

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4.67). According to classic post-materialist theory, income should have a positive effect on
concern for the environment, since more affluent individuals can “afford” to care about the
environment.
The Professional variable indicates whether an individual is a professional, intellectual, scientist,
technician or mid-level professional (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) and should also have a positive effect
on concern for the environment based on classic post-materialism. Around 4.21% of our sample
claims to be a professional. Third, the Social Media variable indicates whether an individual has
used a social media outlet like Facebook or Twitter in the past week (1 if yes, 0 otherwise).
Among our respondents, 38.12% said that they had accessed social media in the past week. We
argue that social media is a proxy for an individuals’ level of involvement in post-materialist
society, and therefore should have a positive relationship with environmental concern if post-
materialism is indeed the source of such concern.
Finally, according to post-materialist theory, a key expression of such values is a respondent’s
ability and willingness to donate to a cause. The Eco Donation variable indicates whether an
individual has ever donated to an ecological organization (1 if yes, 0 otherwise). We expect this
donation to have a positive relationship with concern for the environment relative to other
problems. In our sample, 3.59% of respondents have ever made such a donation.
Other variables that may also correspond with concern over the environment are those that
measure an individuals’ propensity to give consideration to what Inglehart (1995, 1999)
considers to be higher-order values, such as human rights, equality, and democracy. In an effort
to capture these values, we include the variable Human Rights which indicates whether a
respondent ranks human rights among the six most significant problems facing the country (1 if
yes, 0 otherwise); Indigenous Leader which codes whether the respondent agrees that the
indigenous do not make good leaders (1 if no, 0 otherwise); and Dem vs Dev which is coded a 1
if individuals believe that democracy is more important given the choice between democracy and
development. The breakdown of these indicators in our sample is as follows: 4.94% rank human
rights as one of top six problems; 52.11% disagree that indigenous cannot be good leaders; and
31.33% think that democracy is more important than development. In sum, post-materialism is

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measured by investigating how hypothesized factors such as demographics (income, profession),
behavior (social media, donations) and values (human rights, racial equality, democracy) affect
concern over the environment.4
We turn now to variables necessary to test the Vulnerability Hypothesis. The key explanatory
variables are both objective and subjective measures of individuals’ susceptibility to harm from
changes in the environment. Specifically, our survey assessed the extent to which individuals are
actually vulnerable to environmental damage – because they lack regular access to water and are
dependent upon subsistence farming – as well as their perceived vulnerability to such damage.
Survey respondents indicated how often they had water available to use in their home, which we
use to create the Water Scarcity measure (coded 1 if they never have water available, or have it
available only a few times a month or few times a week; 0 otherwise). Approximately 10.82%
of our sample claims to live with scarce access to water. Similarly, we asked respondents to
indicate whether they produced on their land, and if that production was for commercial or
familiar consumption. We used this question to create the variable Subsistence Farming (coded
1 if they produce for family consumption, 0 otherwise). Around 27.29% of our sample identifies
as subsistence farmers. We argue that individuals who lack basic resources, such as water, and
who depend upon subsistence farming are among the most vulnerable to environmental damage,
and are therefore more likely to be concerned for the environment.
Another objective measure of vulnerability to environmental damage is the extent to which an
individual’s livelihood is derived from the environment. The variable Ecotourism indicates
whether an individual directly benefits from ecotourism in their community (1 if yes, 0
otherwise), of which 13.59% of our sample does. We expect individuals who rely upon
ecotourism to express greater concern over the environment, given that their livelihoods are
directly threatened by environmental degradation.
Vulnerability to environmental damage can also be assessed from the perceptions of individuals.
We designed questions on our survey to capture whether or not Ecuadorian citizens perceive
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4 We created an Index of Post-Materialist Values from these seven variables using principal-components analysis,
but the items did not load together well, resulting in a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.19. We therefore decided to
analyze them separately.

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themselves to be vulnerable to environmental changes. The variable Climate Change Concern
indicates the extent to which individuals worry that events related to dramatic climate change,
such as droughts and floods, could affect themselves or their families in the next six months
(ordinal scale where 1 represents not worried and 4 very worried). By our reasoning, the more
worried citizens are about the impact of climate change (37.56% of the sample are very worried
when asked a more general, overarching question), the more vulnerable they perceive themselves
to be to environmental damage, and the more likely they should express concern over the
environment. Hence, we also asked respondents a series of questions about whether they have
experienced a variety of possible impacts of climate change, including droughts, floods, heat
waves, and increase in sunburns over the past five years (for each of the phenomena 1 is yes, 0
otherwise). We created an Impact Index by deriving the first component of these measures using
principal-component analysis, and expect that that more impact individuals have experienced,
the more they should be concerned about the environment.5
We tested the Extractivist Debate Hypothesis by constructing two sets of indicator variables.
The first, based on the Ecuadorian government’s list of mining projects and the map of their
locations (ARCOM 2012) assigned a value of 1 if the respondent’s locality is within about 30
kilometers of an active mine, and 0 if not. About 17.86% of our respondents lived in localities
where mining occurs. Two other variables were used to code whether the respondent’s locality
was within about 30 kilometers of an area where oil is actively being extracted or not, and
whether, if oil is not yet being extracted, the area is in a “block” the Ecuadorian government was
considering for concession to an oil company. The History of Oil Extraction variable is coded a
1 for areas where oil is being actively extracted, while the Oil Debate variable is coded a 1 if the
locality is part of an oil block under consideration by the government. About 6.58% of our
sample lives in areas of active oil extraction, while about 14.94% of our sample lives in areas
where oil extraction is under debate. The information was taken from government oil block maps
given by SHE – the Ecuadorian Secretary of Hydrocarbons (N.d.).
In order to test the Political Attitudes Hypothesis, we used several measures to capture
individual-level confidence in the government and the belief that the state will keep its promises
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5 The items used to create the Impact Index have a Chronbach’s alpha score of 0.62.

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to use extractivist funds for development purposes. The first variable is whether an individual
identifies with the Pachakutik party – an indigenous political party that is active in its opposition
to government extraction for environmental and cultural reasons (1 if identifies with party, 0
otherwise). We therefore expect those who identify with this party to be more concerned about
the environment. About 7.24% of our sample identifies with the Pachakutik (opposition) party.
We also include a variable that measures trust in the national indigenous movement organization
(CONAIE, Confederación de Nacionalidades Autonomas Indígenas de Ecuador – Confederation
of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador). Like the Pachakutik party, the indigenous movement
has been critical of the government, and in doing so, has adopted a pro-environment stance
against state extractivism (Becker 2012). This variable is coded 0 (no trust) to 3 (high trust), and
the mean in the sample is 1.12 (between little and some trust in the movement).
Finally, in Ecuador’s presidential system, the president – Rafael Correa – and his party – PAIS –
are the biggest promoters of using oil and mineral wealth to develop Ecuador. We include a
variable that measures whether an individual identifies with the PAIS party (1 if so, 0 otherwise),
and about 9.62% of the sample does.6 Furthermore, as the most visible political figure, President
Correa is viewed as the chief representative of the state. When it comes to the extractivist
debate, Correa has been active at promoting the state’s mining and oil policies, discussing them
in his weekly Saturday television shows (sabatinas), and developing a significant public
relations campaign centered around his government’s efforts to develop using mining and oil
funds. We therefore also include a measure of respondents’ trust in the president (0=no trust;
3=high trust), and on average, respondents have between little and some trust in the president
(1.66). We expect individuals that identify with PAIS and trust the president to express less
environmental concern. Because we expect the effects of Oil Debate to be conditional on Trust
in the President, we also include an interaction term to estimate whether presidential trust
mitigates the effects of the extractivist debate on environmental concern.
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6 Ecuador has a weakly institutionalized party system, and party identification is correspondingly
low. The vast majority of respondents in our sample (77.77%) claimed they did not identify with
any political party. The PAIS governing party and the opposition Pachakutik party – as the most
established parties – have the highest percentages of party identifiers in the sample.

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We also include a number of control variables that the literature identifies as having a potential
effect on concern for the environment. We control for Media access (coded as 1 for never
having access to any media outlet, and 5 as daily access to media outlets) and Popular
Knowledge (an index created by asking respondents if they have ever heard of a list of 14
different phenomena prevalent in the media). Average media access is 4.28, and popular
knowledge ranges from 16.8% familiarity (respondents who had heard of the 169th Convention
of the International Labor Organization) to 81.57% familiarity (respondents who had heard of the
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE). We controlled for Religion by
asking how important it is to an individual’s life (1 is not at all, 4 is very important, with the
sample mean being 3.5). We also controlled for several demographic factors, such as Indigenous
ethnicity (1 if respondent self-identified as indigenous, 0 otherwise, with 40.24% of sample
identifying as indigenous); Education (ordinal variable where 1 is no education and 8 is
postgraduate education, with mean of 4.21, where a 4 corresponds to incomplete secondary
education); and Age (continuous variable ranging from 16 to 85, mean of 37.56).
To get a sense of the dependent variable – concern over the environment relative to other
significant problems – we have plotted average environmental concern by locality according to a
key independent variable for the Extractivist Debate Hypothesis: oil debate. Figure 1 displays
the variation in average environmental concern by parroquia – the lowest level of aggregation
available to identify respondents’ location.7 This plot illustrates the extent to which average
environmental concern varies by locality. In addition, it shows that while there is great variation
among localities where there is no oil debate, there is relatively less variation in average
environmental concern among localities where there is a debate over oil activity. This provides
some preliminary support for the Extractivist Debate Hypothesis – on average, respondents in
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7 Ecuador has three levels of administrative divisions – the province (24 in the country), the
county (within provinces) and the parroquia (within counties).

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Figure 1. Mean Environmental Concern Across Localities by Presence of Oil Debate in
Nationwide Survey Sample of Ecuador
Note. Environmental Concern measure is ordinal, where 0 = environment is not at all a concern
compared to other problems, 2 = environment more of a concern than some other problems, and
4 = environment is more worrisome than any other problem.
localities where oil is debated care more for the environment (2 or greater, which indicates
individuals believe environment is more important than some other problems). It also illustrates
the importance of considering variables at the level of locality, given the extent of variation in
mean environmental concern across communities. The variation by locality, coupled with the
multi-level nature of our data – individual-level variables from the survey and community-level
variables measuring the context of extractivism – indicates that our analysis is best conducted
using a multi-level model. Below, we develop such a model to further analyze the importance of

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post-materialist dispositions and values when compared to individuals’ vulnerability, extractivist
debates, and political attitudes.
Results and Discussion
In order to analyze the relationship between our multi-level independent variables and our
ordinal dependent variable of environmental concern, we used mixed effects ordinal logit and
logit with clustered standard errors. Our results largely support our conjecture that post-
materialism does not adequately explain environmental concern in developing countries like
Ecuador. Instead, we find substantial support for our hypotheses about the importance of
vulnerability, extractivism, and political attitudes. In this section, we briefly review and discuss
the results of our analyses. All of the results discussed here refer to Model 1 in Table 1, unless
otherwise stated.
First, we turn to the analysis of the Post-Materialist Values Hypothesis. Recall that post-
materialist theory expects that certain demographics (income, professional status), behaviors
(social media, donations), and values (human rights, racial equality, democracy) should lead to
greater environmental concern. Controlling for vulnerability, extractivism, political affiliations,
and other demographic factors, we find that only one of these variables has a significant effect on
environmental concern, and that effect is in the opposite of the relationship expected by post-
materialist theory. Specifically, we find that valuing democracy over development has a
significant and negative relationship with concern for the environment. In fact, in Model 3,
where we analyze how our independent variables affect the highest level of environmental
concern only, income has a negative coefficient, meaning that the more affluent are the least
likely to express concern for the environment over all other problems. These results suggest that
we should question whether environmentalism is a post-materialist value, since those individuals
that seemingly have their needs met and who claim similar “higher-order” values are not those
that express the most concern over the environment as a problem.
Instead, it appears that those individuals who are most vulnerable to environmental damage are
likely to express the greatest concern over the environment. Returning to Model 1 in Table 1,
two of the measures evaluating the Vulnerability Hypothesis are significant and in the expected

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Table 1. Individual and Local Predictors of Environmental Concern (Dependent Variable)
1 (All Levels)
2 (All Levels)
3 (Highest Level)
Post-Materialist Hypothesis
Income
-0.039
-0.037
-0.132
(0.037)
(0.037)
(0.069)*
Professional
0.225
0.193
0.746
(0.265)
(0.266)
(0.401)*
Social Media
0.034
0.037
0.134
(0.129)
(0.129)
(0.273)
Eco Donation
-0.238
-0.218
0.246
(0.268)
(0.268)
(0.443)
Human Rights
-0.304
-0.309
-0.726
(0.232)
(0.232)
(0.580)
Indigenous Leader
0.171
0.172
0.259
(0.105)
(0.105)
(0.180)
Dem vs Dev
-0.289
-0.298
-0.392
(0.112)***
(0.112)***
(0.294)
Vulnerability Hypothesis
Water Scarcity
0.318
0.303
0.322
(0.185)*
(0.185)
(0.310)
Subsistence Farming
0.164
0.173
-0.060
(0.133)
(0.133)
(0.294)
Climate Change Concern
0.726
0.731
0.673
(0.073)***
(0.073)***
(0.173)***
Impact Index
0.007
0.007
-0.043
(0.045)
(0.045)
(0.067)
Ecotourism
0.348
0.348
0.255
(0.150)**
(0.150)**
(0.243)
Extractivist Debate Hypothesis
Mining
0.296
0.309
0.274
(0.169)*
(0.170)*
(0.179)
History of Oil Extraction
-2.629
-2.655
(0.460)***
(0.461)***
Oil Debate
0.240
0.643
2.396
(0.268)
(0.378)*
(0.478)***
Political Attitudes Hypothesis
Pachakutik (Opposition) Party ID
0.425
0.413
-0.503
(0.207)**
(0.207)**
(0.492)
PAIS (President) Party ID
0.087
0.091
0.242
(0.181)
(0.181)
(0.274)
Trust in Indigenous Movement
0.132
0.131
0.064
(0.066)**
(0.066)**
(0.132)
Trust in President
-0.147
-0.112
0.220
(0.058)**
(0.063)*
(0.157)
Oil Debate*Trust in President
-0.231
-1.299
(0.153)
(0.281)***
Controls
Media
0.009
0.012
-0.066
(0.057)
(0.057)
(0.121)
Religion
0.025
0.028
0.408
(0.075)
(0.075)
(0.209)*
Popular Knowledge
0.100
0.100
0.017
(0.029)***
(0.029)***
(0.055)
Indigenous
-0.141
-0.127
-0.443
(0.191)
(0.192)
(0.383)

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17
Education
0.110
0.113
0.056
(0.049)**
(0.049)**
(0.096)
Age
-0.002
-0.003
-0.007
(0.004)
(0.004)
(0.008)
Constants
Cut 1/Constant
-1.858
-1.754
-5.926
(0.553)***
(0.557)***
(1.324)***
Cut 2
1.951
2.055
(0.533)***
(0.538)***
Cut 3
4.035
4.140
(0.542)***
(0.547)***
Cut 4
5.682
5.792
(0.552)***
(0.558)***
Variance Component
0.493
0.493
(0.130)***
(0.130)***
N
1,538
1,538
1,443
* p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.01
direction. Among the objective measures of vulnerability, water scarcity and ecotourism are
both factors that make a respondent more likely to worry about the environment. For example,
respondents with scarce water (access to water is never, few times a month, few times a week)
on average have a 23% probability of stating that the environment worries them more than the
majority of other problems, compared to a 17% probability for those that have more stable water
supplies. This trend is replicated for ecotourism. Subsistence farming, by contrast, does not
have a significant effect on environmental concern.
Perceived vulnerability also appears to play a role in environmental attitudes. Concern over
climate change has a significant and positive effect on worrying about the environment relative
to other problems. For example, those who are not at all worried about climate change have a
4% likelihood of claiming to worry about the environment more than the majority of other
problems, compared to the 25% probability of those who are very worried about climate change.
Perhaps surprisingly, we find no relationship between perceived impacts of climate change and
environmental concern based on the estimated coefficient of our Impact Index. This result
suggests that more perceived impacts of climate change (droughts, floods, sunburns, heat waves)
do not correspond with greater worry over the environment. One possible conclusion we could
draw from this finding is that objective vulnerability is a better predictor of environmentalism
than perceived vulnerability.

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Figure 2. Marginal Effects of Oil Debate on the Probability of Highest Level of Environmental
Concern Across Levels of Presidential Trust
Note. This figure is based on Model 3. Levels of trust in president is coded 0 = none, 1 = little, 2
= some, 3 = a lot. The dashed lines are the 95% confidence intervals.
Other strong predictors of environmentalism are the presence of mining, oil, and the debate over
oil in the locality of the respondent. Mining seems to make individuals much more likely to
express concern for the environment over all other problems. Respondents who live in localities
with mining are over twice as likely to express such concern for the environment compared to
individuals who do not live with mining (15% probability compared with 6%). The dynamic is a
bit different for the presence of oil extraction, which has a negative relationship with
environmental concern. This coincides with the experience specific to Ecuador, where mining is
still relatively new so is highly salient in areas where it is taking place, and oil extraction that is
already underway for some areas began decades in the past, and has left the environment already

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devastated. In areas with a history of oil extraction, and where the environment is already quite
degraded, individuals are much less likely to express concern over the environment. Individuals
that live in localities with a history of oil have a miniscule 0.46% probability of being concerned
about the environment over any other problem, and instead have a 15.35% likelihood of being
not at all concerned about the environment.
The findings for oil debate are more nuanced. Oil debate alone does not have a significant effect
on expressions of environmental concern (see Model 1). However, when we interact oil debate
with trust in the president, we find that oil debate has conditional effects on environmental
attitudes, based on whether or not an individual has faith in the president (Model 2). In order to
simplify the interpretation of the interaction between oil debate and trust in the president, we
created a binary dependent variable which measures the most extreme level of environmental
concern – believing that the environment is more worrisome than any other problem – and used a
logit model with clustered standard errors to estimate the coefficients (see Model 3). In this
model, both oil debate and its interaction with trust in the president are both significant, and in
the directions we expected. When presidential trust is zero, living in a locality where oil is
debated has a positive effect on environmental concern. However, once presidential trust begins
to increase, the effect of oil debate is dampened, as given by the negative coefficient on the
interaction term.
To further illustrate the effects of oil debate and presidential trust, we plotted the marginal effects
of living in a locality where oil extraction is debated across levels of presidential trust (see Figure
2). This figure clearly demonstrates that oil debate is likely to influence whether respondents
believe the environment is the greatest concern – but only when presidential trust is very low.
As presidential trust increases to about 1.5 (between little and some trust), the effect of oil debate
becomes indistinguishable from zero (the confidence intervals split the zero line). Interestingly,
once presidential trust reaches the highest level of 3 (a lot of trust), the effect of oil debate
actually becomes negative, meaning that respondents who live in areas with an oil debate but
have a huge amount of faith in the government are actually less likely to express the greatest
level of concern over the environment. We argue that these findings demonstrate that individual
expressions of environmental concern are influenced by their local experience with extractivism,

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but also the extent to which they have faith in the government to use profits from extractivism to
benefit local communities.
Qualitative Support for Results: Evidence from the Field
Over 100 open-ended interviews at over a dozen localities throughout Ecuador in June 2014
strongly confirmed these statistical findings. Not only was the post-material argument
disconfirmed by the fact that the poor demonstrated stronger “post-materialist” views on the
environment than more affluent respondents, but also those in rural communities (indigenous
groups and campesinos) whose livelihoods depended on the environment and were thus more
vulnerable to its shifts. For example, in defiance of the neo-Marxist interpretations of Inglehart,
a Sapara leader said, “[f]or us there is no capitalism. Everything is collectivism. Anyone can
harvest what they want, but the land belongs to everyone” (Ushigua interview). He further
added that money was not important to his people. Rather, what mattered was “living well with
the richness of the earth.” Indeed, to Ushigua, having lots of money and living well with the
environment were almost incompatible. Puyo Mayor de la Torre argued similarly that what
matters is development rather than wealth, adding that “development cannot be measured by
meters of freeways built . . . It is when one has a way to get up and work in something useful that
fills the basic needs of his/her children” (de la Torre interview). In this way, the environment
forms an integral part of citizen livelihoods, and is valued for the role that it plays in meeting the
most basic needs of rural, indigenous and impoverished citizens.
The rural respondents surveyed were especially vocal in relating their material (and spiritual)
outlooks to the environment. According to one Santa Isabel activist, “Ecology has become
fashionable . . .But . . . the underlying problem is inequality and we need to focus on that” (Arpe
interview). Some, like a federal government official in Sucumbios, argue that oil and mineral
extraction is what will diminish vulnerability to poverty and the elements, even if it does carry
some inevitable environmental costs. “There is social remediation,” he said (Sallo interview).
“Petroleum extraction helps us attend to peoples’ basic needs.” That sentiment was echoed by
dozens of interviewees - that environmental exposure to oil-drilling, in particular, may make
people vulnerable to sickness and pollution, but that it does help them meet their basic needs.
This argument is highly controversial, however, and scores of interviewees also argued for

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restricting extractivism, but based on perceived effects of pollution on the economy of poor rural
residents more than on any innate post-materialist position in favor of the environment.
Political attitudes and location on the extractive frontier were also considered to be very
important. As has been the case in Ecuador for decades, the Andean indigenous groups,
affiliated with the CONAIE indigenous movement and the Pachakutik political party, opposed
the government and also had strong views of the environment. As we explain further below, the
situation is more complex when it comes to the debate over oil extraction in the Amazon region.
In the Amazon region, interviewees were much more divided regarding their views of the
environment, and those living near the already-exploited northern oilfields had much more
sanguine views. Further to the north, the focus was more on mitigating environmental damage
already done, and interviewees seemed to place a lower priority on environmental protection
than on economic development. The Waorani indigenous group, centered in Lago Agrio where
Texaco/Chevron left open pits of oil that drain directly into the water supply, strongly criticized
the central government’s failure to attend to environmental degradation, but were divided over
whether to further explore and drill for oil. Indeed, the national president and vice president of
this group openly disagreed in a joint interview over whether they should allow the national or
provincial governments to extract more oil from Waorani land (Cahauigia and Moi interviews),
although others, like the Andwa peoples, said they would accept reasonable compensation for oil
drilling on their lands (Proano interview).
Further south in Coca and Puyo, where oil concessions are more recent, and in some cases still
being negotiated, Kichwa, Shuar, and Waorani leaders conveyed ambivalence about whether to
cooperate with further oil extraction efforts (Ampush, Grefa, Omentoque interviews). In the
pristine rainforest areas of the far south (near Macas), Achuar and Shuar leaders say they are
completely against oil drilling, and have more strongly articulated pro-environmental attitudes
(Callera, Paes, Tibi, Wachapa Atsau interviews). The geographic relativity of community
positions was summarized by a Sapara leader near Lago Agrio, “Those whose lands have been
polluted are in favor (of more extraction). They live in that reality. Those who are opposed are

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those of us whose lands have not yet been contaminated, and above all, those of us who do not
live near a paved highway (Ushigua interview).”
Having demonstrated statistically that rational explanations – vulnerability, political attitudes,
and location along the extractive frontier - are more important to Ecuadorians than post-material
“values-based” arguments for their valuation of environmental issues, we have also offered at
least an introduction to the public debates – revealed extensively to us in interviews - which
strongly corroborate our causal claims. In the concluding section, we briefly discuss Ecuadorian
intellectuals’ efforts to create a materialist argument, but on a different premise from that of
Inglehart and his colleagues. The formulation of a “good living” philosophy (referred to most
often by its Quichua name, sumak kawsay, in Spanish buen vivir) seeks to better define a pro-
environmental worldview which also involves elements of vulnerability and development (to
diminish vulnerability).
Conclusions and Implications: Sumak Kawsay as Indigenous Synthesis of Anti-Materialist
Environmentalism, Vulnerability Theory, and the Extractivist Debate
Over the last decade, a movement to synchretize a strong position on environmental rights has
emerged in Ecuador and elsewhere in the Andes, based loosely on Kichwa worldviews. A few
of the movement’s features will be briefly delineated here, as they address the need for a new
non-materialist representation of environmental issues within worldviews of the poor, the rural,
and those vulnerable to environmental catastrophes and human development setbacks. Giving
better framing to the issue than what is possible through survey responses, dozens of
interviewees offered perspectives on the meaning of sumak kawsay, which relate to the claims
we articulate above. We wish to offer a composite of how indigenous respondents crafted their
own articulation of an anti-materialist worldview revolving around environmental issues, which
strongly contradicts post-materialism, and reaffirms vulnerability theory. We briefly present the
autarkic version, focused entirely on inward-looking dynamics, but then mention a more
internationalist variant. Normatively speaking, the international variant holds the greatest hope
for the protagonism of indigenous peoples in helping resolve environmental degradation in their
lands, which are among the most biologically varied, resource rich, and unspoiled lands
remaining in the world.

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The purist view holds that sumak kawsay is based on ancestral views; people find their place in
nature, and this generates personal harmony and well-being in relation to other natural living
entities in the forest, and with Mother Earth (Pacha Mama) as a whole. As tersely summarized:
“El buen vivir is to live with our own riches, the waterfalls, nature and [ancestral] knowledge.
Any development has to be consistent with these times” (Tibi). Outsider involvement interferes
with the direct bond between humans and nature. The western introduction of money,
carcinogens in food, and environmental degradation have caused the links between human
beings, the forest, and nature more broadly, to uncouple. “Growing up with chemicals in your
body is not good,” said one sumak kawsay adherent. “I grew up without pain or sickness, but
everything is changing . . . now we have to buy everything with money . . . we have to raise only
corn and then sell it on the market” (Chimbo interview).
Some advocate for a modernizing of sumak kawsay to allow Ecuadorians to compete also with
the outside world. For example, one indigenous government official argued that: “We have to
meld traditional health practices with Western ones, just as in justice there is a uniting of
indigenous and state forms of law. However, the ancestral knowledge does not have human
talent [to give it full expression]. We need to develop that talent” (Tumink interview). Others
accuse sumak kawsay practitioners of using that philosophy as an excuse to undermine deals with
the state and extractive companies which would give poor communities clinics and schools, even
at the expense of an ethereal link between people and their natural environment. Those arguing
that indigenous communities accept contracts for oil extraction on their lands view buen vivir in
more conventional development terms: “Here you have to buy [things] and if you don’t have
money, you die of hunger. That is poverty. . . Vivir bien means to have nutrition, health, and live
in a collaboration between man and nature” (Santi interview).
While our analysis of survey results could not offer nuanced casual explanations, we have found
that it identified key problems in prior interpretations of interest in environmental issues. Field
research showed that these attitudes are outward manifestations of values formed in relation to
critical and even acerbic debates in many parts of Ecuador (and in the Andean region more
broadly), relating to the role of the state in using extraction as a development tool as it

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simultaneously tries to protect the nation’s people living in or near its fragile and unique
ecosystems. The state propels economic growth, and, more importantly, a strong boom in public
spending, by staking the nation’s public spending on oil royalties and those that can be derived
from extracting other resources like hydroelectric power and gold and copper mining. The oil
frontier in Ecuador, moving south and east from the heavily damaged area contaminated in the
past by egregious oil spills from wells run by Texaco (now Chevron) and the Ecuadorian state
into virgin rainforests, polarizes citizen attitudes strongly as it extends, giving even greater
credence to the vulnerability explanation for their positions. Importantly, such vulnerability
tends to hinge on not only perceptions about vulnerable, but also political positions and
confidence in the government, since politics determines how extractive resources will be
distributed.
From a normative standpoint, environmentalists worldwide have followed Ecuador’s strongly
pro-environment positions, from the unprecedented mention of the “human rights” of nature in
the 2008 constitution to the now-aborted several-year campaign to save parts of the biodiverse
and unspoiled Yasuni National Park from oil drilling. It seems the government has backpedaled
on its environmental commitment, leaving Ecuadorians, including our survey respondents and
interviewees, to take stewardship of the nation’s unspoiled natural areas into their own hands.
Parting from a variant of the sumak kawsay worldview, some Ecuadorian indigenous leaders are
adopting much more internationalist and scientific variants of environmentalism, which may help
pressure for international agreements and strong national environmental enforcement. For
example, in a counter to the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and [Forest]
Degradation program (REDD), which seeks to offset carbon dioxide emissions by polluter
companies through the preservation of carbon dioxide-absorbing forest lands, Tuntiak Katan of
the COICA (Amazon Basin indigenous peoples), has sought to expand the definition of REDD.
To Katan (interview), the integral conservation of the forest should also involve a role for the
humans who live there, if they can manage eco-system-friendly services and the practice of
cultural traditions which pre-date REDD’s commencement in recent years.
Reconciling respondents’ inward-looking need to address vulnerability to environmental changes
which could worsen poverty with an outward-looking effort to insert their communities into

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25
regional, national, and global debates about climate change and the equities related to this, may
be the attitude-defining debate of the next decade. Even the poorest and most remote
Ecuadorians have positions on these issues, and their perceptions of the urgency of these matters
may in the future offer even further evidence of the need to bring vulnerability theory into
political science. Indeed, participant observation at the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change 2014 meeting in Peru revealed that the developing world is a macrocosm of
the Ecuador rainforest peoples, as their positions regarding climate change policy are dictated in
large part on how vulnerable they are to environmental changes exogenous to their national
spheres of influence; where they are located (at least metaphorically) on the carbon emissions
“frontier” and what domestic actors have to gain or lose from engaging in the international
debate.8 Changes in the political importance of environmental issues are not just changes in
esoteric values, but stem from peoples’ rational dependence on the environment for day-to-day
survival and the extent to which they feel that environmental change may be outside their direct
control.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8 Author observed the Lima, Peru meeting from Dec 8 through 13, 2014.

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Interviews Cited
Ampush Juan, member of the Council of Nationalities of the provincial government of Orellana,
Coca, Ecuador, June 19, 2014.
Arpi, Abel, coordinator in San Isabel of the Assembly of Peoples of the South, San Isabel,
Azuay, Ecuador, June 5, 2014.
Cahauigia, Alicia, vice president of the Waorani Nation, Puyo, Ecuador, June 14, 2013.
Callera, Pasqual, economic development director for the Achuar Nation, Macas, Morona
Santiago, Ecuador, June 9, 2014 and Charapacocha, Pastaza, Ecuador, June 18, 2014.
Chimbo, Nelly, president of the Qichwas of Kallary Kausay-Romipampa, Coca, Ecuador, June
19, 2014.
Enomenga, Moi, president of the Waorani Nation, Puyo, Ecuador, June 14, 2013.
Entza, Hipolito, mayor of Macas, Morona Santiago, Ecuador, June 9, 2014.
Grefa, Blanca, president of FICCKAE (Interprovincial Federation of Kichwa Communities of
the Ecuadorian Amazon), Coca, Ecuador, June 19,2014.
Katan, Tuntiak, coordinator of climate change area for COICA Amazon indigenous peoples
international association, Quito, Ecuador, June 28, 2014.

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Omentoque Tega Baihua, Mima, head of the Association of Waorani Women of Orellana, Coca,
Ecuador, June 19, 2014.
Paes, Roberto, vice president of the Achuar Nation, Puyo, Ecuador, June 13, 2014.
Proaño, Alexandra, president of the Andwa Community, Puyo, Ecuador, June 14, 2014.
Quezada Ramos, Rodrigo, mayor of San Isabel, Azuay, Ecuador, June 5, 2014.
de la Torre, Roberto, mayor of Puyo, Pastaza, Ecuador, June 18, 2014.
Sallo Angel, director of Strategic Ecuador (Ecuador Estrategico) government agency in Lago
Agrio, Sucumbios, Ecuador, June 25, 2014.
Santi, Mario, coordinator of the municipal presidents, Puyo, Pastaza, Ecuador, June 16, 2014.
Tiban, Lourdes, Pachakutik party leader and National Assembly member, Quito, Ecuador, June
2, 2014.
Tibi, Gonzalo, head of external relations for the Shuar Nation, Macas, Ecuador, June 10, 2014.
Tumink, Tito, Shuar leader and head of the Ancestral Patrimony Department of the government
of Coca, Coca, Ecuador, June 19, 2014.
Ushigua, Ricardo, Sapara community leader, Sapara, Coca, Ecuador, June 22, 2014.
Wachapa Atsau, Augustin, national president of FISCH (Federacion Interprovincial de Centros
Shuar), Sucua, Ecuador, June 10, 2014.