Coping with Mining Risks in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Daily Life in the Grip of the Anthropocene

The Ecuadorian Amazon region is at the heart of tensions between environmental preservation and economic development. Long isolated, it has been integrated into the global economy through the exploitation of its natural resources. Today, extractivist policies and the “Buen Vivir”-oriented Constitution have created a complex context where development issues, environmental preservation and indigenous rights tend to collide. Their friction influences lifestyles, land use and socionatural relationships, in a context of contamination risks. Our study focuses on the Tena region, where legal and illegal mining expansion is rapidly transforming territories and exposing populations to various pollutants.

Using an ethnographic approach, we reveal how communities living near mining activities interpret, experience and deal differently with environmental threats, while considering the structural inequalities that influence their vulnerability. Our aim is to examine how they live and cope with the challenges of the Anthropocene, negotiating between traditions, economic necessities and new environmental realities. Reconstructing the weft of ordinary experiences and knowledge enables us to better grasp the reality of risk society in the Amazon, and identify ways of living in the ruins of extractivism.

The final purpose is to enrich our understanding of the socio-exposome concept as developed by P. Brown and L. Senier to decipher the complex dynamics that shape exposure to pollutants, taking into account social practices, socio-economic contexts and power relations. It is also a way of discussing indigenous alternatives to the current crisis of global contamination.