The materialization of the Buen Vivir and the Rights of Nature: Rhetoric and Realities of Guayaquil Ecol\xf3gico urban regeneration project

María Fernanda Ordóñez,Viviana D’Auria,Kelly Shannon

doi:10.1186/s40410-021-00147-w

Abstract

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare nature as a subject of rights based on the ‘Buen Vivir’ (Good Living) philosophy which is premised on an indigenous principle that envisions a world where humans are part-and-parcel of a larger natural and social environment. Although Ecuador’s constitution is groundbreaking from a legal standpoint, the question arises of how the rights of nature is spatially manifested beyond the designation of protected areas? To shed light on such interrogation, this article, based on qualitative research, focuses on the linear park component of the mega-project Guayaquil Ecológico heralded as a first materialization which champions the “Rights of Nature” under the vision of the Buen Vivir. It unravels the contested rhetoric and realities of the Guayaquil Ecológico linear park in a critical review of the as-built project in relation to the larger objectives of Buen Vivir. The Guayaquil Ecologico linear park promised to simultaneously upgrade both social and environmental dimensions. However, it did not fully address the complexity of Guayaquil’s socio-ecological context and some of the structural injustices of the estuarine territory. Buen Vivir was rhetorically mobilised to implement a project where aesthetic dimensions dominated, further perpetuating socio-ecological vulnerabilities through relocation and evictions. Furthermore, its implementation was dependent on a specific political moment, leaving it in a state of abandonment and neglect. The Buen Vivir philosophy—as a decolonial stance that challenges western forms of development—can offer a fundamental base to question current modes of territorial occupation based on extractivist planning and design strategies. It holds significant potential to serve as base to re-think the relationship between forms of settlement, natural dynamics, and worldviews.

Highlights

At the beginning of this century, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and limnologist Eugene Stoermer suggested we are currently living in the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 1999), a human-dominated geological epoch, where human activities are the driving force of environmental change
Nebot represented the local elites envisioning a city with its own political autonomy and introducing new form of municipal administration based on public–private partnerships where private foundations—managing public funds— were stablished to oversee urban regeneration projects
Ecuador’s legal framework of the “Rights of Nature” and the Buen Vivir vision is bold and stated with admirable rhetoric its practical implementation remains a challenge to overcome without recognizing and integrating a diversity of knowledges, experiences and the complex socio-economic realities resulting from years of structural injustice evidenced across a range of scales and dimensions

Summary

Introduction

At the beginning of this century, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and limnologist Eugene Stoermer suggested we are currently living in the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 1999), a human-dominated geological epoch, where human activities are the driving force of environmental change. Globally accepted, critics point to the SDG failure to question fundamental elements of western societies such as modernity, capitalism and anthropocentrism (Hidalgo-Capitán et al 2019:8) which are the cause of the current multidimensional crises we are not entering a process of change of paradigm, but rather an adjustment of an exhausted model looking for new ways of recycling and efficiency (Pengue 2017:17) while maintaining a capitalistic economic model that further sustains dualistic positions, market/economy, science and reality, the world as we know it, a ‘Unique World’ (Escobar 2017:112) where the move from declarations and protocols to concrete actions is infinitely more challenging and, ‘compromised summit declarations do not have a forceful impact’(Shannon 2017:50) in this sense, is worth noting that, ‘growing threats to bio-diversity at a global scale have prompted calls to extend legal rights to nature as an elaboration of existing humanist doctrines’(Gandy 2018:104)

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