Neoliberalism and shrimp industry in Ecuador

Abstract

Analysis of the effects of the shrimp industry development in the mangrove ecosystem, the socio-environmental conflicts generated and its relationship with neoliberalism and the financial crisis of 1999 in Ecuador. After a review of the importance of the mangrove ecosystem, the stages of the shrimp expansion, its promoters, the mangrove deforestation and the socio-environmental effects caused, I will analyze the shrimp crisis, its parallels with the financial crisis of 1999 and its subsequent recovery. I will show that the shrimp industry expanded in mangrove areas in order to reduce costs, even breaking the law and creating environmental degradation, vulnerability of the costs and loss of natural resources, based on the exploitation and privatization of a public good. This created unemployment, migration and impoverishment to local populations and costs that the State will have to assume. Therefore, it is a process of “accumulation by dispossession” characteristic of neoliberalism.

Keywords

• MANGLAR
• INDUSTRIA CAMARONERA
• NEOLIBERALISMO
• CRISIS
• CONFLICTO SOCIO-AMBIENTAL