Development: Two Ways of Seeing the Land
Development: Two Ways of Seeing the Land
Unit 3: Development, Land, and Climate — Lesson 11
Unit 3: Development, Land, and Climate — Lesson 11
Learning Goal: I can explain what "development" means from an Indigenous perspective and contrast it with a Western industrial perspective on land and resources.
A Western industrial model measures development by growth. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, adds up everything a country produces and sells in a year. A country develops when that number goes up. Land counts as an input: oil under the ground, timber in a forest, ore in a mountain. The point of land, in this model, is to extract what it holds and turn it into money.
Quechua and Aymara communities in the Andes describe development differently. They call it Sumak Kawsay in Quechua, or Suma Qamaña in Aymara, usually translated into Spanish as Buen Vivir and into English as "living well." Sumak Kawsay does not ask whether a country produced more this year than last year. It asks whether people, animals, plants, and land are in balance. Pachamama, the term often translated as Mother Earth, is not a resource in this framework. She is a relative. A community that clear-cuts a forest to sell the timber has not developed. It has damaged a relationship it depends on.
In 2008, Ecuador rewrote its constitution. The Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, known as CONAIE, pushed for Sumak Kawsay to appear in the document as enforceable law, not as a metaphor. Articles 71 through 74 grant Nature itself the right to have its existence respected and its cycles restored. Ecuador became the first country in the world to put Rights of Nature into its constitution.
Bolivia followed a similar path. Evo Morales, an Aymara coca farmer who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president in 2006, backed a new constitution in 2009 that named Pachamama and Suma Qamaña as guiding principles for the state. In 2010, Bolivia's legislature passed the Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, the Law of Mother Earth, listing specific rights for the natural world: the right to life, the right to water, the right to clean air, the right to be free from genetic alteration.
Two countries had written an Indigenous relationship with land into their highest legal documents. The next test was whether the law would hold when it collided with an oil field.
Yasuní National Park sits in the Ecuadorian Amazon, on land that has belonged to the Waorani nation for generations. Deep inside the park, in voluntary isolation from outside contact, live the Tagaeri and the Taromenane, two peoples related to the Waorani who have chosen to avoid contact with the outside world entirely. Yasuní also sits on top of one of Ecuador's largest oil reserves, in a block known as ITT.
In 2007, Ecuador's government proposed something unusual: leave the ITT oil in the ground permanently, in exchange for wealthy countries paying Ecuador roughly half of what the oil would have earned on the market. The plan collected some donor pledges but fell far short of its target. In 2013, Ecuador abandoned the initiative and approved drilling in Yasuní.
Ecuadorians pushed back. A campaign called Yasunidos gathered enough signatures to force a national referendum, and in August 2023, voters chose to stop oil drilling in the ITT block for good. The government was slow to comply, and drilling continued past the deadlines the referendum set. In March 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that oil extraction in Yasuní was polluting the region and raising the risk of forced contact with the Tagaeri and Taromenane, and it ordered Ecuador to halt operations. As of March 2026, Human Rights Watch reported that the Ecuadorian government was still defying that order.
Sumak Kawsay is written into Ecuador's constitution. The right of the Tagaeri and Taromenane to remain uncontacted, and the right of Pachamama to have her cycles respected, are both legally protected on paper. Yasuní shows what happens when an oil economy keeps pushing anyway.
Sumak Kawsay / Buen Vivir
A Quechua and Aymara concept of development based on balance among people, land, and other living things, rather than growth in production or profit.
Pachamama
Often translated as Mother Earth. In Andean Indigenous thought, the land is treated as a relative to maintain a relationship with, not property to use up.
Rights of Nature
A legal idea, written into Ecuador's constitution in 2008, that grants ecosystems enforceable rights, such as the right to exist and to have damaged cycles restored.
Extractivism
An economic model built around removing raw materials such as oil, minerals, or timber from the land and selling them, usually with little processing done locally.
GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
The total value of everything a country produces and sells in a year. The standard measurement of development in the Western industrial model.
Voluntary isolation
A term for Indigenous peoples, such as the Tagaeri and Taromenane, who have deliberately chosen to avoid contact with the outside world.
Sumak Kawsay treats land as a relationship to maintain, not a resource to spend. Ecuador and Bolivia wrote that idea into their constitutions. Yasuní National Park shows that writing an idea into law does not settle the argument. It just moves the argument into court.
Republic of Ecuador. Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, 2008, Title II, Chapter Seven, Articles 71-74 (Rights of Nature).
Plurinational State of Bolivia. Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (Law 071), 2010.
The Conversation. "Buen Vivir: South America's Rethinking of the Future We Want," 2015. Written by a non-Indigenous researcher on Andean development concepts, not an Indigenous source.
Inside Climate News. "Landmark Ruling on Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples' Rights Strikes at Oil Industry," March 13, 2025.
Human Rights Watch. "Ecuador: Government Defies Court-Ordered Oil Ban," March 16, 2026.