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 expected to hear how residents would be affected. Instead, they kept telling me about the benefits they were going to receive.

While the project was expected to have knock-on effects on the river, land and forest, it would also bring jobs, indemnification money and so-called “social compensation” through projects in health, education and infrastructure. I started to perceive oil as a local dilemma: either livelihoods were going to be affected or potential benefits from the oil company had to be renounced.

What I didn’t yet understand was why this dilemma so often seemed to result in the local acceptance of oil extraction.

Understanding acceptance

I travelled back to this region in August 2016, a month before the inauguration of the ITT oil project. By then, the six Quichua communities whose territories overlap with the ITT fields had accepted it. Other communities along the river were about to face oil exploration for the first time. This allowed me to observe oil decisions as they unfolded over the next few months.

When oil exploration reached the community of Vicente Salazar, in January 2017, I asked what the community was going to decide – by which I meant: are you going to accept or oppose the oil project? It soon became clear that my question made little sense. “How come will they oppose, if the people don’t have anywhere to poop?” said Juan Manuel, a councilman and member of the community. “We are fed up with making small holes in the bushes.” Johnny, a local resident, explained: “Someone who would say that oil should remain underground, like this, there isn’t.”

I understood that if oil could be seen as a dilemma, it was a highly asymmetric one.

The thing is, oil extraction does not arrive in an untouched environment. While people rely on nature for their livelihoods, hunting and fishing, collecting wood from the forest and drinking water from the river are increasingly under pressure from river pollution, the growing scarcity of bushmeat and fish (due to factors including overhunting and river pollution), and conservation laws from central government constraining hunting, fishing and cutting down wood.

At the same time, these pressures create new needs for cash and services. Residents want access to all the basic services (including drinking water, electricity and sewage systems), better health and education. They also want money to buy “bigger things”: a fibre canoe, a zinc roof, a gas kitchen to make life easier, faster and more comfortable. As one resident put it: “Indigenous people have the right to progress too.”

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In this context, the oil company is often perceived by inhabitants as a provider of much-needed jobs, cash, infrastructure and services. And while extraction puts further pressure on nature and people’s livelihoods, some of the benefits it provides are seen as capable of addressing some of the consequences of both existing (past) and expected (new) ecological pressures. Drinking water provision, seen as a necessary response to the pollution of the Napo river, exemplifies this paradox.

Oil as problem and solution

The environmental consequences of oil extraction extend beyond the boundaries of particular oil projects. As the oil frontier pushes further and further into the rainforest, pollution travels through shared rivers, along which Quichua communities are settled. Along the Napo river, pollution largely originates from past oil projects further upstream.

By contrast, the benefits that come with oil are conditional on communities directly overlapping with oil projects. This means that the impacts of oil extraction can affect communities downstream long before an oil project enters their specific territories with the promised social compensation. As one inhabitant put it: “Here, we lack drinking water. They will pollute us, and they don’t give us drinking water.”

This is how oil becomes both problem and solution. By the time oil extraction reaches these communities, the question is often no longer whether it should go ahead, but what they should ask for in return. In the ITT case, all six communities demanded the provision of basic services. Four communities asked for drinking water specifically.

When I returned for fieldwork in 2023, I found continued support for oil extraction in all six communities.

As oil projects expand globally, many Indigenous communities face environmental threats alongside pressing needs for jobs, services and infrastructure, as well as aspirations for a better life. In places such as the Ecuadorian Amazon, this can lead to uneasy compromises where the choices are far from equal. These quiet situations are a reminder that the absence of visible conflict does not mean the absence of struggle.