Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
on environmental justice. In this way, dependence on foreign funding
further entrenches environmental inequities.
For the most part, Ecuadorian organizations that have the greatest
capacity are chasing foreign funding rather than setting their own agenda.
Funding from the global North is channeled through Ecuadorian envi-
ronmental NGOs and as a result of donor choices, most Ecuadorian
environmental organizations are focused on biodiversity projects rather
than the environmental issues of concern to locals. While biodiversity
protection is important, the unintended consequence of supporting it
through environmental aid is that other issues, such as environmental
justice, are not addressed.
The prominence of ecoimperialist and ecodependent organizations
lets them overshadow organizations with justice concerns. Social and
economic justice are not conceptualized as part of the environmental
agenda. Nevertheless, ecoresisters, though few in number, push their
broader conception of environmentalism into public discourse, most
notably through television and newspapers. They have less capacity to
implement “projects,” and instead focus on empowering and mobilizing
local actors whose concerns are primarily economic and social justice
in issues related to the environment, in that order. Ecoindependent
sustainability organizations have not embraced “environmental justice”
as a frame and it is unlikely that they will; nonetheless, the actions
they have taken have served a diverse segment of urban populations, at
least on issues of quality of life and public health, but not on jobs and
democracy. The types of groups least likely to receive “environmental
goods” from the global North are those that work most for environmen-
tal justice.
What is occurring in Ecuador is not unlike what has occurred with
the U.S. movement. Aid (from within the United States) for U.S. organi-
zations has not been distributed equally across different types of projects
and organizations. In a recent analysis, Brulle (2009) found that envi-
ronmental health, environmental justice, and the green/antiglobalization
organizations receive just 2 percent of the income of the U.S. environ-
mental movement. By contrast, preservation groups receive over 50
percent. In many ways, transnational civil society relationships mirror
dependency relationships within nations and between international aid
organizations and governments from the global South. Organizations in
the South are dependent on Northern donor priorities. The distribution
of environmental goods promotes the interests of the “global” (North-
ern) community. Despite this, the existence of alternative organizations,
