The Metamorphosis of the Amazon: An Environmental History of Oil Extraction in Ecuador

Description:

This book sheds new light on the complex history of the Ecuadorian rainforest, revealing how oil development and its social and ecological repercussions triggered its metamorphosis. When international oil giants such as Shell and Texaco started to dig for oil in remote rainforest locations, a process was born that eventually altered the fabric of the Amazon forever. Oil infrastructure paved the way for a disastrous industrial and agricultural landscape, polluted by the hazardous waste management of the oil industry. Adopting a unique approach, Maximilian Feichtner does not recount the established narrative of oil companies vs. suffering local communities; he instead centres the rainforest ecosystem itself - its rivers, animals, and climate conditions - and the often neglected actors of this history: the oilmen and their experiences as people affected by a pollution they perpetrated and witnessed.

* Offers intimate insights into the oil industry and the Ecuadorian Amazon through oral histories of the oil workers

* Creates a more nuanced and complex picture of contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon

* Intersects environmental studies, history, and sustainability to create an interdisciplinary approach