Leaving oil in the ground: Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT initiative and spatial strategies for supply-side climate solutions

Abstract

Rather than a surprising and illogical move to leave oil in the ground for international compensation, Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT Initiative should be understood as an outcome of ongoing struggles of interests within the state at the time. In this landmark oil moratorium attempt, launched in 2007, the Ecuadorian government offered to forego extraction of its largest oil reservoir, projected to contain 20% of the country's oil reserves, if it received international compensation totalling half the expected revenues. If successful, the initiative could have constituted a post-extractivist economic model that would have favoured indigenous and environmental interests at the expense of oil interests. However, the initiative was cancelled in 2013, after only a fraction of the requested sum had been received, and oil production is now ongoing. Most academic literature highlights how a developmentalist petro-state was willing to abstain from extracting its largest oil reserves, yet encountered a range of national and international obstacles. This article defies this ‘against all odds’ framing. It examines the initiative as a space-making process and understands the attempted internationalisation of the Yasuní oil as the state's spatial strategy to ensure continued income from oil, either in the form of compensation or by legitimising their continued existence as a petro-state and for business as usual if the attempt failed. This analysis demonstrates how understanding political economic resource governance and its space-making processes as outcomes of struggles and complex negotiation processes within the state could bring new insights into energy transition processes.