Over the past 30 years, the three companies that have managed Block 10, an oil extraction site in the Ecuadorian Amazon, have sought to divide local communities and increase their reliance on their corporations. However, Indigenous leaders and organizations are actively pushing back against these efforts.
Category: Ecuador
The Amazon rainforest emerges as the new global oil frontier
Half a century of oil exploration has left the world’s largest rainforest scarred by deforestation, water contamination and air pollution. Indigenous lands have been infringed and economic disparities exacerbated. Now a new wave of drilling threatens to perpetuate this destructive legacy.
How did we investigate oil data in the Amazon?
Por Renata Hirota April 1, 2025 This story is part of the special series EVERY LAST DROP Since July 2024, the cross-border project Every Last Drop has investigated and mapped available data on oil and gas exploration across the Amazon, focusing on the biome’s reach into Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, and Peru. The analysis used […]
Colombian and Ecuadorian criminal groups expand their violent influence throughout the Amazon
By Plan V* The Comandos de la Frontera, a Colombian armed group that also operates in northern Ecuador, and the Ecuadorian gang Los Choneros have imposed a regime of terror in the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana, although the alliances between them are unclear. One of the illegal activities that has grown the most […]
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, oil threatens decades of Indigenous-led conservation
Ecuador’s Socio Bosque project has been key to safeguarding the rainforest. Now the country’s state-owned oil company is exploiting its many loopholes.
Welcome to the Amazon Underworld
The Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, is also a source and transit point for illegally extracted jungle resources and narcotics. As criminal economies expand, violence and deforestation worsen
‘Defending the jungle is defending community life,‘ says leader from Ecuadorian Amazon
Rosa Aranda faces two miseries. One in her own body: she was infected by Covid-19. The other is the historical pollution generated by the oil industry, which threatens the territory in which she lives, Piwiri, in the Ecuadorian Amazon forest.
Land of Resistants: defending the environment has never been so dangerous.
A team of 45 journalists from ten countries gathered to investigate episodes of violence against environmental leaders and their communities.