Oil Extraction and Indigenous Livelihoods in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon

Globally, the extraction of minerals and fossil fuels is increasingly penetrating into isolated regions inhabited by indigenous peoples, potentially undermining their livelihoods and well-being. To provide new insight to this issue, we draw on a unique longitudinal dataset collected in the Ecuadorian Amazon over an 11-year period from 484 indigenous households with varying degrees of exposure to oil extraction. Fixed and random effects regression models of the consequences of oil activities for livelihood outcomes reveal mixed and multidimensional effects. These results challenge common assumptions about these processes and are only partly consistent with hypotheses drawn from the Dutch disease literature.