IN 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), took place in Rio de Janerio, with the hopes of finding the middle ground between environmental protection and economic growth. The conference promoted the idea of sustainable development, because this type of development would provide for the needs of the current generation without compromising the needs of future generations, to us in 2021 this sounds obvious, but this was a revolutionary idea back then. The summit put Ecuador in the spotlight, which forced its government to either actually work towards the goals set in the summit, or at least seem like it was. For example, two new national parks were created: El Cajas and Llanganates National Parks. The issue with the parks, however, were that they were severely underfunded. Essentially, Ecuador wanted to be a part of the international environmental community, but could not fully participate due to lack of funds or because it could not act independently, which leaves openings for ecoimperialists to find and fill.
Due to Ecuador not being to sufficiently fund its own projects, international donors had to provide the capital. Both the USAID and German GTZ, as well as The Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature poured money into the projects. To give an example, the USAID in 1994, was the largest biodiversity donor having donated $74 million spread out across 40 nations. Because all of these international stakeholders started providing funds, many ecodependent organizations started popping up. Some newly emerging organizations were grassroots, but a majority of them were funded by international donors. While FN had broad agendas and goals, many of these new organizations had very focused goals, whether it be topic based, such as environmental communications, or location based, such as bolstering Quito's science and research. However, a new problem emerges: with all of this money flowing around, how do the donors know who to give to and if the money is being used properly?
As new groups emerged, professionalism became a big priority. Accountability, just like the environmental hype-train (er, elevator?) was on the rise. Suddenly, international donors, such as USAID had requirements that needed to be fulfilled, with one of them being accounting. Personally, I think increased professionalism and accountability is incredibly important. If I was USAID, I would want to know where my millions of dollars are going towards, what projects are being built, what processes are being created with the money I'm providing. However, I also see how it became much more bureaucratic, and suddenly it is less about saving the environment and more about being able to write a good persuasive essay and maintaining an Excel Sheet.
Another issue, that has been touched upon is the fact that international donors tend to support "green" issues, such as biodiversity and land conservation, but ignore "brown" issues, such as air, land, and water issues. And this is where ecoimperialists and ecodependents really differ from ecoresisters, because each fight different causes, yet at the end of the day still want a better Ecuador.