Presentation short abstract

This paper explores alternatives to development as everyday degrowth in Imbabura region of Northern Ecuador. We explore how local communities in conjunction with local social organization and municipality resist mining by creating alternatives that are based on Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir.

Presentation long abstract

Exploring alternatives to development stemming from resisting extractivism in Imbabura region of Northern Ecuador, this contribution explores the various everyday degrowth in the context of pluriverse. Building on Walter Mignolo’s decolonial dynamics of resistance and re-existence, this paper explores how indigenous communities with municipality alliance create not only resistance to neocolonial extractivism, but also projects aiming of re-existenance.

Ecuador became world known in 2008 after adopting a plurinational constitution in the age of the socialist Correa government. At the time it became the first nation to recognize the rights of nature, plurinationality as well as to officially adopt alternatives to development approach in economic development. Social development was blooming at the time due to large scale infrastructural investments. Halfway of the millennium, the oil prices plummeted and extractivist economic activities intensified. One of the regions which this is exemplified is the municipality of Cotacachi in Imbabura.

As a response, local indigenous communities, a local umbrella organization of indigenous and peasant communities UNORCAC, and the municipality of Cotacachi started to carry out alternative development projects, based on small-scale hydroenergy production, agroecology, communitarian tourism and handcrafts. These initiatives aimed not only to stop negative impacts of mining to the communities, but to create ways to enhance self-sufficiency and autonomy of these communities to preserve their ways of life.

This study is based on series of interviews conducted in Ecuador in November 2025, after the recent aftermath of the popular uprising in Imbabura.