The 9/11 attacks didn't just affect the US, it also affected Ecuador's environmental funding. As the US was siphoning more money towards war efforts, less money could go towards saving the blue-footed booby. There were two other reasons why funding for Ecuador's NGOs was running low: 1) Ecuador was aligning their currency with the US', aka dollarization, this made goods and services more expensive, effectively causing an economic downturn; 2) USAID's SUBIR and the Dutch project, Programa Podocarpus, were starting to finish up. These three factors caused NGOs to decline, but what broke the cam- tortoise's back was how NGOs handled, or should I say didn't handle, the OCP pipeline. The OCP pipeline runs through internationally recognized biodiverse environments for birds, however NGOs were nowhere to be seen, or their campaigning just wasn't good enough - as evident by my word choice, the pipeline was created.
Four strategies were laid out for declining NGOs: 1) shut down, clearly there were too many NGOs and once the supply of funding ran out, the remining drips of funding could not support the demands for NGOs; 2) shift agenda, NGOs could shift their agendas to match the agendas of international donors in order to potentially appease and receive funding; 3) proyectismo, which essentially had the NGOs go around and complete projects that donors wanted completed - like mercenaries, once they were finished one project they would move to the next; finally, 4) generate regular income, charge some kind of fee for regular service, the best example would be ecotourism or working on farms.
Once section of the chapter asks if this was an environmental movement. I would say that yes this was a movement. Movements don't always have to be large and grand, some can be small, which eventually leads to the bigger, more known movements. Additionally, at the end of the day, all environmental stakeholders wanted a better Ecuador, some just had different visions than others.
In the last chapter, we read about the rise of NGOs, due to international funding, but now there is a decline in them due to a lack of funding. However, this doesn't stop people from caring about their country, and as such, ecoresisters are on the rise. Two major ecoresisters rise from the ashes of the NGOs; DECOIN and C-CONDEM. DECOIN stopped a Japanese mining operation in a cloud forest, by a series of confrontations, one of which included burning down their camp. DECOIN then started a cofefe cooperative and crafts group in order to create alternative sources of employment, stifling the mining operations. In terms of organisms, C-CONDEM fought against mangrove deforestation, which would have turned into shrimp farms. C-CONDEM seeks economic independence, and one of the ways they do that is by encouraging and teaching selling fish directly to restaurants.
Ecoentrpreneurs are also on the rise, two specifically are pointed out: FONAG and the Corporation for Environmental Health of Quito - Life for Quito. Three things truly separate ecoentrepreneurs from ecoresisters: 1) they were no responding to a local crisis, 2) they did not resist the dominant form of development, and 3) they were not trying to create an alternative to the system. Ecoentrepreneurs simply wanted to seek novel ways to solve recurrent problems, while making a quick buck.