Angélica María Bernal

2022-2023 ISSR Scholars Project Title: Extractivism & Women’s Resistance in the Ecuadorian Amazon

As we have seen increasingly in the past decade, addressing climate change is a deeply politically challenging issue.  In the Americas alone, both right and left governments have created significant political and economic obstacles, including most egregiously the direct intensification of large-scale natural resource extraction, from petroleum and natural gas, to mineral, water, shale, and lumber to name a few.  This intensification, however, has been met with resistance by affected populations.  This project examines the rise of a new social movement centered on resistance to and rejection of extractivism, with a specific focus on one of the catalysts of this movement: Indigenous women activists in the Ecuadorian Amazon.