Neoextractivism in hydrosocial territories: The case of the páramo of Kimsakocha, Ecuador

© 2018 Dr Denisse Elizabeth Rodriguez QuinonezThe Ecuadorian government has defined extractivism as the basis of the “strategy for accumulation, distribution and redistribution” to alleviate poverty and to secure development since 2013. The expansion of extractive activities, mining in this case, and the mechanisms adopted to translate extractive rents into development is called neoextractivism. This thesis examines an ongoing conflict in Kimsakocha, province of Azuay, ignited by neoextractivism and the incursion of mining in a life-sustaining and sensitive socio-ecosystem called the páramo (Andean wetlands). I argue that neoextractivism is not only a development model, but it also has the power to reconfigure existing socionatural configurations—conceived as ‘hydrosocial territories’—through asymmetrical power relations, legitimizing discourses and knowledge systems; while undervaluing its impacts on the interdependencies between peasant lifeways and the páramo. This has occurred when ‘other kinds of knowledges’ are neglected and demands for participation in environmental decision-making, or protest, are perceived by government officials as a threat to their authority over exploitation of natural resources as a means to support Ecuador’s economic growth. In consequence, development strategies based on large-scale exploitation of Nature cannot be analyzed independently from the potential modifications of the relationships between the state, Nature, society and the new actors it brings at play, in this case the mining industry. With this purpose, this thesis proposes an analytical framework informed by relational ontologies and political ecology (PE) for the study of socio-ecological conflicts derived from resource-based development. It is based on the following premises: i) The territories of influence of resource extraction projects are socionatures: The territories where ‘resources’ are located are spaces where Nature and communities have developed in close interdependence, thus, extractivist projects are not bounded by physical limits of the mine site but these expand as far as society and Nature are engaged in those socionatures in general. ii) Development strategies based on resource-extraction are (hydro)territorial projects that reconfigure the relationships within socionatures: Extractivism is a political, economic, social and environmental project that interacts, even overlaps, with other projects lived and envisioned in the same territory. (Hydro)territorial projects reproduce the interests and values of all the actors or groups of actors involved; while discourses and knowledge systems are used to legitimize and impose dominant projects. iii) Impacts on socionatures cannot be understood if relational epistemologies are disregarded: The people actively co-producing socionatural configurations feel their actual or potential modifications. Only by being sensitive to the embodied knowledge emerging from the engagements between people and their socionatures, which are threatened to be modified by extractivism, can a PE approach get a deeper understanding of socio-ecological conflicts. I conclude that resource conflicts are not only struggles over control of, access to and decision-making over resources, or only over meanings and knowledges either, but they are also struggles over different relationships co-producing different worlds. Relational ontologies offer insights over these multiple ways of living in and co-producing plural worlds and PE as an epistemological and analytical approach is sensitive of these understandings