Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs have emerged in recent years as the business response to social and environmental criticism of corporate operations. Such programs, touted as development initiatives, are becoming increasingly popular. However, there is still little known about CSR operations at a local level, and even less known about their effects on indigenous populations. In Ecuador, CSR programs are implemented to mitigate many of the social and environmental impacts of oil extraction in Amazonian indigenous communities, yet they often create additional problems. Today CSR programs are mandated by the Ecuadorian state, which raises important questions about state accountability and corporate roles in development efforts. This project investigates the CSR programs of a private multinational oil corporation, Repsol-YPF, in the indigenous Kichwa community of Pompeya in Ecuador's northern Amazon region. The study poses three questions: 1) How do indigenous populations perceive and respond to CSR programs, and how has this response changed over time? 2) What CSR programs does Repsol-YPF implement in indigenous communities, and how are these selected? 3) In what ways does the state facilitate CSR programs? To answer these questions, a multi-scalar ethnographic approach will be employed to examine the social relationships produced by and within CSR programs in the context of environmental governance and rural development. Environmental governance is defined in this project as the way in which social institutions (e.g., rules, norms and customs of CSR programs), produced by relationships between organizations (e.g., the state, corporations, indigenous peoples), facilitate the continued extraction of natural resources. In-depth interviews will be conducted with community members, corporate officers and government representatives at the local, regional and national levels. Findings will demonstrate the role and influence of transnational oil corporations in environmental governance and rural development efforts in Pompeya. The investigators hypothesize that indigenous peoples have a limited role in decision making processes about their own local livelihoods.

The proposed research will have important implications for both policy making and scholarship. Examining the local, place based impacts of a global oil industry can contribute to public policy and development processes in which local communities can more fully participate in those programs that affect their livelihoods. While CSR programs are becoming more prevalent on a global scale, mainstream and academic literature still lacks a clear definition of CSR and its impacts and goals. Employing a case study approach, the investigators will examine the micro-scale processes of environmental governance in an indigenous community to fill these gaps in the literature. By focusing on CSR programs as institutions that reconfigure relations between organizations engaged in environmental governance in the northern Amazon region of Ecuador, this project deepens recent scholarship that challenges the seeming uniformity of institutional practices and discourses. While mindful of the problems with extrapolating conclusions across geographic regions, CSR and oil activities are widespread, affecting many peoples worldwide. As such, this research can be used to inform similar processes occurring in other regions of the world.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
0825763
Program Officer
Antoinette WinklerPrins
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2008-08-15
Budget End
2010-07-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$11,990
Indirect Cost
Name
Syracuse University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Syracuse
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
13244