ihe author first reviews the four major eras: the origin of the environmental movement, the neoliberal boom, the neoliberal bust, and the citizen's revolution. In the first era, we see that Ecuador is largely dependent on oil exports to fund itself, however this comes at the cost of environmental and societal degradation. International organizations and communities started to explore different countries and looked at Ecuador due to its unique geography and higher-than-normal biodiversity and wanted to protect it. Thus, organizations, like USAID, began pouring money into NGOs in order to conserve the biodiversity and land. Notice how the international company funds the NGOs and then the agenda of the international company is fulfilled, the international companies fund what they want fixed (ecoimperialists), while the NGOs complete what the companies want (ecodependents). We then move into the next era, and we see that international funding continues to increase as more and more people around the world become more obsesses with conserving the environment. This leads to an increase in NGOs. Then, in 1992, a environmental conference takes place (Earth Summit), and this only exacerbates international funding and NGOs increasing. But an issues arises, international donors and NGOs only focus on "green" issues and not the more human-impactful "brown" issues. This leads to the development of ecoresisters, organizations or a rag-tag group of individuals that try to fight against the the "brown" issues that mostly takes place due to neoliberal practices. While ecodependents fight for policies and international funding, ecoresisters fight for human-environmental interaction issues and depend on local funding. Groups of individuals that wish to solve local issues with novel ideas and make a quick buck begin to rise, these are known as ecoentrepreneurs. Suddenly, in the early 2000s, several causes result in international funding drying up and being unable to support the mass amounts of NGOS, we are entering the neoliberal bust era. Not only are NGOs losing funding, which causes them to shut down, switch agendas, become workers for hire, or find a consistent source of revenue, but they are also not as loud and willing to fight as the locals would want. The construction of the OCP pipeline exemplifies this, so while ecodependent NGOs are on the decline, ecoresisters, like DECOIN and C-CONDEM are on the rise. They fight for locals and against international corportations trying to exploit Ecuador. DECOIN fought against mining, whereas C-CONDEM fought against deforestation of mangroves. They taught communities how to survive and make money without the need to give into international corporations and exploit the land. In the final era, we see President Correa become elected, with environmental protection as a major platform for him. However, we later discover that he will cave into neoliberal tendencies. At the start of his election, he makes Ecuador distance itself from the US and starts implementing policies that increase his favorability among the people. He introduces the idea of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, which doesn't get the international support that was expected, and as such leads to Correa needing to extract oil in order to continue funding the state. This eventually leads to protests, which are stifled.
The authors posed three questions at the beginning of the book: 1) What role did transnational funding play in Ecuador's environmental movement?, 2) How did the movement change over time?, and 3) How did the environmental movement's relationship to transnational funders affect the state's environment and development policies? I find, as does the author, that the first two questions are linked. International funding pushed for the growth of the environmental movement, as more funding came in, the more NGOs started sprouting up. However, and this leads to the second question, as funding started to dry up, NGOs started to decline, whereas ecoresisters started to rise up. The movement went from "green" issues involving policy, to "brown" issues involving the humans interacting with the contaminated environment. Finally, for the third question, when NGOs were dominate and continued to appease ecoimperialists, policies were aligned with international laws and insitutions, whereas when ecoresisters were dominate, polices were based alternative practices. However, the state has yet to move to towards an ecological synthesis, and still gravitates towards development-focused policies.
The author then goes into detail about different hypotheses about environmental and social changes due to transnational funding. Essentially, transnational donors will target countries and nations with weaker governments, because they tend to have less capital, which causes international organizations to influence and assert their will over those countries and nations. In terms of diversity, earlier chapters stated that countries rich in biodiversity, tend to be economically poor. So, after the donors donate, NGOs will start using the money, however, there will be resisters, since the agendas of the donors tend to be more big picture, rather than focused on a microscale. In terms of both environmental and societal movements, these international donors, or imperialists, as well as the dependents, tend to go towards the status quo, where as the resisters have the potential to shift the state towards alternatives. However, in order for the alternatives to occur, the state must give resisters the power to do so, rather than limit them. I feel as though some of the big donors don't see some of the "brown" issues and that is why they do not donote towards those causes. On the other hand, it is probably cheaper to donate towards a project that creates a fence and some signs, rather than towards human problems - the former donation is a one-time thing, while the latter could be a continuous donation.
I will say, that it is very Western (or I guess Northern, in the case of this book) to judge poorer countries on how they handle their environment, when they have less capital than we do. We all want the Rainforest to thrive, but some of the families in those areas also need to eat and subsist. I think it is unfair to those in the poorer countries to be looked down on for their pursuit of economic gains, simply because they want the same life-style that we have. I believe it is the goal of richer countries, like the US, to support economic poorer, yet biologically richer countries. We, the countries that have destroyed our environments, have obtained the benefits, because of that we should learn from our past and help countries not completely turn into us. Therefore, I was saddened to learn about the Yasuni-ITT imitative, because I already knew it wouldn't have worked out - fantastic in theory, but humans are far too greedy. That is were international donors come in, sometimes it is just easier to dump money into the bigger picture agendas, than the 'brown" issues, because it sounds better and more grandiose - "I just donated to saving some hundred year old tortoises!" compared to "I just donated to clean up an oil pit!" the former sounds more attractive. As the author notes towards the end of the book, activism and resisters are important. While the imperialists and dependents focus on grand, big pictures, the resisters focus on more local issues and that can lead to eventual big picture agendas. Even in the US, resisters have been instrumental in helping the environment - pipelines, clean water, etc.
I think the biggest take away I got from the book was how international donors can affect policies in countries. It never dawned on me how donors for the environment could affect government and people beyond the parks and projects the donations fund. I have also gained a new insight towards ecoresisters, before I heavily favored ecodependents, but I am more 60% dependents 40% resisters. I am saddened that I won't be going on the trip, but happy that I got to learn more about Ecuador and it's colorful history.