Sovereignties: pillars of Sumak Kawsay

The sovereignty of the person includes human rights and fundamental freedoms and the awareness that every individual has the right to control his or her own destiny and body. The sovereignty of communities, peoples and nationalities involves their right to decide on their way of living and managing their territories and includes the right to live as peoples, including free peoples. Finally, the sovereignty of nature consists of being considered a subject of law, not an object of property.

Sovereignty, therefore, becomes a concrete reality and is developed with sumak kawsay. Below, some types of sovereignty are analyzed, with the aim of building an alternative model of life for Yasuní (and the country) (1)

ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY

Economic sovereignty is based on regaining the ability to decide on economic models at the local level and on how to participate in the economy at the national level. It means determining the aspirations of the community, including those of women (gender) and those of children, young people or older people (age). 

The premises for achieving local economic sovereignty are production focused on local and regional food consumption, with access to production factors, local marketing circuits and democratic control of agricultural markets. This guarantees equitable access to food and a
fair remuneration for all those involved in this process.

It is also about production guaranteeing healthy ecosystems, building fertility and diversity and avoiding pollution. In other words, a sovereign and ecological economy. It is not based on the exploitation of natural resources, but on the recovery of harmonious forms of production, with a respectful relationship between human beings and nature and with the valorisation and openness to women's work.

Since oil is an important source of foreign currency in Ecuador, stopping oil extraction means looking for other economic sources. The Yasuní-ITT initiative is a first step, but more thought needs to be given to how to move towards a post-oil economy, building sovereignty from the local level.

ENERGY SOVEREIGNTY

Energy sovereignty raises the issue of access to, control over and decision-making over the sources and uses of energy. It is born from a profound criticism of the dependence on fossil fuels due to the environmental and social impacts that they generate in the world (for example, climate change), as well as in the territories from which this wealth is extracted. Energy sovereignty has as its central proposal to stop new explorations in natural forest areas, indigenous territories or fragile areas.

The proposal is to supply local needs with clean, decentralized and low-impact sources, making use of the local energy potential. This poses a first challenge: to identify the energy needs of the area and to identify how to satisfy them with sources and processes that do not generate entropy. Entropy is a concept from physics that refers to waste in the processes of transformation of matter. It is the energy that cannot be reused and that accumulates in the environment, producing pollution.

Eliminating oil extraction requires complementary measures, as its consumption must also be gradually eliminated. To do this, it is necessary to find alternatives for generating electricity, transport and, in general, recovering other materials free of oil.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

It is the right of peoples to control the agri-food system and its production factors, so that family, peasant, indigenous, agroecologically oriented agriculture, fishing and artisanal harvesting develop autonomously and equitably. In this way, the human right to a permanent supply of healthy, nutritious, sufficient and culturally appropriate food is guaranteed.

To achieve this, it is necessary to recover ancestral and ecological production methods and technologies; generate supportive economic circuits and democratically control markets to facilitate equitable and timely access to food and to fairly remunerate agricultural work.

To guarantee food sovereignty, it is necessary to control the productive factors (ownership of land, water, peasant seeds, energy, and others) and the food production processes by farming and food-producing peoples. In this sense, public policies aimed at small-scale production must be promoted, and in more specific terms, aimed at privileging peasant and agroecological family farming, as well as fishing and artisanal production.

In already degraded areas, it is necessary to restore soils and rebuild conditions for ecosystem recovery.

HEALTH SOVEREIGNTY

The central principle is to recognize that the loss of health is related to diet, environmental degradation, working conditions, changes in lifestyle, the presence of polluting factors such as oil activity, etc.

The three 'S' for healthy societies in sumak kawsay, according to Jaime Breilh, are: sovereignty, sustainability and solidarity. The proposal is to recover health or avoid illness as a consequence of personal, social and environmental imbalance within a context of respect and dialogue.

It is about maintaining or recovering traditional knowledge of communities in order to live in harmony with the environment, eliminating sources of pollution and other destructive processes that cause loss of health.

It is also necessary to recover and strengthen traditional healing practices and forms of prevention, as well as community support and unity for health care and healing.

But this is not enough, because new and unknown diseases have been introduced into local communities that traditional systems cannot cure. To do this, the State must provide the population with well-equipped health centres. These centres should have psychologists, social workers and even human rights promoters, so that health is seen as something more comprehensive and not considered merely as medicalisation. 

IMAGE: Emindio

CULTURAL SOVEREIGNTY

It is based on the principle of interculturality. That is, recognizing that all peoples have their own cultural matrix or root, which includes different languages and knowledge that must coexist and develop within a framework of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence, under equitable power relations.

This is important for the settler populations that come from different parts of Ecuador. These populations have their own cultural legacy and must integrate into traditional cultures, maintaining their own cultural roots.

Cultural sovereignty requires addressing the issues of education in a broad sense that, on the one hand, provides the population with modern tools of excellent quality, and on the other, recovers ancestral cultures that are reflected in their stories, legends, practices, science and traditional technologies. In addition, education must strengthen community organizational forms.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY.

The technological pattern built around oil promotes accumulation and predation, with an immense generation of waste and the global climate crisis. However, despite knowing the problems generated by the expansion of oil frontiers at local and global levels, excessive consumption increases. This is because around oil there are articulated business and power interests that govern the world.

Much of the foundations, knowledge and alternative know-how are in the hands of communities and peoples who, by choice or marginalization, have remained outside the Western technological pattern and use and invent options to facilitate productive work, in addition to consuming local organic products.

It is worth reflecting on the relationship between the sovereignties described above and technological sovereignty. For example, if solar energy is the source of sustainable agriculture, fossil energy (oil and derivatives) is the source of industrial agriculture. Economic sovereignty, then, would be under the influence of technological monopoly networks. New energy, production, consumption, waste management and transportation technologies are required.

Extract from the Document: Sumak Kawsay is oil-free