SACHA RUNA VALUES AND RESURGENCE: IMPLICATIONS ON PAYMENTS FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES – THE PROGRAMA SOCIO BOSQUE IN THE NORTHERN ECUADORIAN AMAZON
Public Deposited- Creator
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Grefa Andi, Fredy Rafael
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geography
- Abstract
- Fredy Rafael Grefa Andi: Sacha Runa values and resurgence: implications on Payments for Ecosystem Services - The Programa Socio Bosque in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon. (Under the direction of Gabriela Valdivia) Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is a market-based conservation approach that has attracted significant attention in academic and policy circles. PES is appealing for its simple market logic of incentives: it is a mechanism by which land users, who may not be motivated to protect nature on their land, are encouraged to do so through direct payments (incentives) from buyers interested in ecosystem services provided by said nature. PES programs have increased in the last decade as an alternative to reduce native ecosystem loss. They are especially promoted in developing countries as a way to alleviate and combat poverty. My dissertation integrates political ecology, historical geography, indigenous geography, and Napo Runa cosmovision (sacha runa) to examine the case study of the community of Wamaní, which participates in the Programa Socio Bosque (PSB) in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, an established and high profile PES program in Ecuador. PSB enrolls indigenous peoples with the aim to contribute to the protection and conservation of forests and biodiversity, and to promote cultural survival through monetary support for housing, education, and other needs. While much attention has focused on the effects of neoliberal ideals and private property used by PES on indigenous communities, less has been said about how indigenous peoples’ experiences and their struggles for survival within (and despite) settler systems of assimilation and dispossession, matter to the workings of PES programs. Drawing on my identity as a Napo Runa, I combine interviews, storytelling, autoethnography, and archival research to show how sacha runa in Wamaní contests, challenges, adapts and appropriates market-based conservation approaches. I argue that Napo Runa is not a static, ahistorical category, but one that challenges how PSB works. In other words, PSB is as a much a result of ideas of market integration and neoliberal valuation as of how communities use their collective vision of forest life to challenge the terms and mechanisms of engagement, incorporation, and participation. My dissertation is sympathetic with the proposal that local socio-political processes shape how PES contributes to the consolidation of existing or emerging social transformations that promote cultural self-determination, but also cautions against westernized conservationist approaches that foster geographies of power that erase local conceptualizations of life and sacha runa values.
- Date of publication
- 2020
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Advisor
- Valdivia, Gabriela
- Valdivia, Gabriela
- Havice, Elizabeth
- Shapiro-Garza, Elizabeth
- Pickles, John
- Keme, Emil
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2020
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