Yasuni: The Battle over Oil and Biodiversity in Ecuador´s Amazon:

Pre-Trip Essay Assignments

Students are to complete the assigned readings for this course and submit four 1000 word essays based on assigned study questions before arriving in Ecuador on December 27th, 2014. Send completed work in MS Word format to [email protected]

All four essays should attempt to answer the assigned study questions through logic, illustrative examples from the text, and personal analysis. Each essay will (1) use at least five cited references from the assigned readings of which one must be from the UVM library, (2) refer to and outline the main ideas and arguments of readings, and (3) include questions, commentary, analysis, protests, opinions, or any combination of these. Students are free to use other cited sources as well.

STUDY QUESTIONS (1000 words each; cite at least five sources from assigned readings for each essay of which one must be from the UVM library).

 How has the physical geography of Ecuador historically affected human and economic development patterns?

 How has the discovery of oil changed the economic and social development of Ecuador?

 What are the main tenets of the Yasuní ITT proposal?

 Discuss the reasons for, and arguments against, oil extraction within protected national park boundaries.

ASSIGNED READINGS

Readings available online:

Lost In Translation: Justice for the Ecuadorian Villagers in Chevron's Retaliatory RICO Trial http://www.eartheconomics.org/Page126.aspx http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp- content/uploads/Southgate_Wasserstrom_Reider_LASA_2009.pdf http://www.teachinggeography.org/Ecuador%20Oil%20FINAL.pdf

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-yasuni-national-park/wallace-text http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/

The following academic articles are available at www.academia.edu under the search headings Yasuní National Park, Ecuador and Yasuní-ITT:

The Slippery Slope of Tourism and Oil in the Amazon: The Story of Tena, Ecuador by Phyllis Enchill

A New EJOLT Report: towards a Post-oil Civilization. Yasunization and Other Initiatives to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Soil by Ricardo Coelho

The riddle of leaving the oil in the soil—Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT project from a discourse perspective by Cristina Espinosa

A New Conservation and Development Policy: Exploring the Tensions of the Yasuní ITT Initiative by Murat Arsel

Readings available at UVM Library:

Yasuni Green Gold: The Amazon Fight to Keep Oil Underground, Mauro Burzio, Ginés Haro Pastor, Georgina Donati and Troth Wells, New Internationalist Press, 2008.

Buscher, Bram, and Davidov, Veronica (Eds). 2013. The Ecotourism-Extraction Nexus: Political Economies and Rural Realities of (un)Comfortable Bedfellows. London: Routledge

Davidov, V.M. 2013. Mining versus Oil Extraction: Divergent and Differentiated Environmental Subjectivities in "Post-Neoliberal" Ecuador. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18(3): 485-504.

Zalik, Anna. 2011. "Protest as Violence in Oilfields: The Contested Representation of Profiteering in Two Extractive Sites" in S. Feldman, C. Geisler and G. Menon (eds) Accumulating Insecurity. Athens, University of Georgia Press. p 261-284.

Rain Forest for Sale: Demand for oil is squeezing the life out of one of the world’s wildest places, National Geographic: 2013, by Scott Wallace.

Drilling for Oil in Eden: Initiative to Save Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador Is Uncertain, Scientific American, March 17, 2012, by R. Douglas Fields