Origins, 1978 to 1987: Ambientalistas and Ecologistas Emerge
In 1978 the first environmental organization was created called the Fundación Natura. This non-profit organization was created by a group of university students. The organizations started off as a way to just educate Ecuadorians about the environment. A few months after the founding of Natura they entered a contract with the United States Agency of International Development(USAID). After entering the contract the amount of workers they had went from a few volunteers to many full time employees.
In 1985 another environmental organization came into play. This environmental group, called Accion Ecológica, was run mostly by women who focused on the problems around the extraction of resources and the problems that extraction can cause. One of the movements Accion Ecológica started was the Campaign Amazonía por la Vida, where they wanted to protect the Amazons people as well as the environment against oil extraction.
Fundación Natura and Accion Ecológica both seemed to fight towards bettering the environment as well as the people living in the environment. If I were living during the time of these first two environmental organizations I probably would have supported Accion Ecológica. I would have support AE because for one they were run by almost all women which seems very empowering for women even nowadays to see all women running organizations. I also think that Accion Ecológica was more concerned about the people and seeing what the people wanted for their environment.
In 1987 Ecuador did its first of three debt-for-nature swaps. A debt-for-nature swap will lessen the amount of debt that is due in a developing country in exchange for protecting the nature and putting the saved money into conservation projects. The debt-fro-nature swap that occurred in Ecuador in 1987 the World Wildlife Fund bought one million dollars worth of debt and then lowered this one million dollars to 354 thousand dollars. In exchange for this the donated debt helped fund ongoing nature programs.