Ecuador

Context

Ecuador placed 77th out of 169 countries on the United Nation’s 2011 Human Development Index, a table that ranks nations according to life expectancy, educational attainment, income per person, and other indicators perceived to demonstrate development. Macroeconomic indicators and rankings like the HDI show an upward trend that gives the impression that Ecuador is making generalized, lasting development gains. In many ways this is misleading.

Traditionally a farming country, Ecuador’s economy was transformed after the 1960s by the growth of industry and the discovery of oil. Yet, as in many other nations, the wealth and power of Ecuador’s elite grew prodigiously while the vast majority of Ecuadorians, especially the indigenous peoples and those of mixed descent, benefitted very little. Poverty and obstacles to local development in rural Ecuador are just as challenging as in other Latin American countries, such as Honduras, with much lower HDI and macroeconomic rankings.

Soil, water availability and seeds (genetic material), the essential elements of all agricultural systems, are under increasing stress in the central and northern Ecuadorian Sierra regions where Ekorural works. Few places in the Western hemisphere will be more affected by climate change than the Andes. Already the region is experiencing fewer, more intense rainfalls, which have produced both drought and flooding and accelerated soil erosion and the loss of soil organic matter, diminishing the soil’s capacity to capture and filter water. At the same time, the loss of biological diversity is undermining agriculture in Andean communities. The vast majority of resource poor farmers are rapidly losing control over germplasm and genetic materials, the biological foundation for food security. Local seed sources are particularly important now that farmers must contend with climate change because biodiversity of traditional Andean crops often have a greater threshold for enduring drought and adverse conditions than do non-native crops. In recent years, seed conservation and availability have become more insecure as a result of modern market forces as well as government “modernization”, which has led to the dismantling of public services and have effectively increased the marginalization of rural communities.

Groundswell’s Response

In light of this situation, EkoRural and its partners have come together for the purpose of shining light on the hidden opportunities embedded in existing healthy living and being. In particular, provided the context of overall socio-environmental decline, they are seeking to find families and communities that practice relatively healthy, financially successful, and sustainable lifestyles. Everywhere, in even the most difficult conditions of hardship and social marginalization, there are families that manage to live well and flourish. Ekorural searches out such “positive-deviance” and endogenous change processes as hope and inspiration for a new tomorrow. Working in both formal and informal spaces of policy (defined not through bureaucratic processes and legislations but rather more concretely as peoples’ daily practices), Ekorural and its partners aim to influence how people think, do, and organize for development. EkoRural strategically intervenes to influence how local practices in two interactive social spaces: 1) depth – families, neighborhoods, communities operating in geographies and 2) breadth – knowledge systems and social networks where people complete, collide, and collude to define and determine institutional norms.

Using this approach, since 2009, EkoRural has helped some 10,000 farmers in Ecuador’s northern and central highlands to improve their lives. The work is strengthening market linkages between them and their urban consumers; improving local seed production; supporting farmer innovation to improve water harvesting, management and irrigation to increase production in the face of changes in the local climate; and improving community and reproductive health through education and training.

Below is a slide show outlining some of the key elements of Ekorural’s and Groundswell’s work in Ecuador: