More than half of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been marked for oil drilling, overlapping with Indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity. The ecological and cultural impacts of oil extraction are well documented, and have fuelled some of Latin America’s most prominent environmental movements. Yet at the local level, extraction is not always met with resistance.

My research investigates why Quichua communities living along the lower Napo river in the Ecuadorian Amazon accepted oil extraction despite its expected environmental consequences such as river pollution, deforestation and habitat loss.

Their territories overlap with the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project, which became famous during the 2007-13 Yasuní-ITT initiative. This bold proposal attempted to leave 20% of the country’s last-known oil reserves underground in the Yasuní national park in return for US$3.6 billion (£2.6 billion) from international donors.

The initiative aimed to avoid the emission of 407 million tonnes of CO₂ and protect the biodiversity of Yasuní. Its failure in 2013, officially due to the lack of financial support, cleared the way for the ITT oil project, which began operating in 2016.

It also gave rise to a national conflict led by the Yasunidos, a coalition of youth groups defending Yasuní and its people. This culminated in a national referendum in August 2023, in which Ecuadorians voted to halt the ITT oil project.

When I first visited the lower Napo river in 2014, I wanted to investigate the potential consequences of the oil project for local people and their territories. I........

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