From the outside, Ecuador looks like a prosperous country. Its top exports include shrimp and oil, and it is the number one producer of bananas in the world. If you walked into a local market, you would be overcome with the variety of foods, colors, and smells. According to Britannica, Ecuador is also among the most diverse countries in the world, being one of nine countries to house the Amazonian Rainforest, as well as two deserts and four mountain ranges. While this country, 400 square miles smaller than the U.S. state of Nevada, seems to face little difficulty, it is the most food insecure and fifth most corrupt country in South America according to the Food Security Index and Transparency Intl. surveys in 2015. The problem lies buried six …show more content…
Since 1822, Ecuador has hosted a battery of presidents and governments, each lasting an average of under 3 years. The elected leaders within Ecuador have faced significant social and economic problems on top of the existing political issues. While Ecuador has always been traditionally agriculturally centered, the discovery of oil in the 1960s caused a massive boom in technology, innovation, and commercialization. The rapid growth, combined with low petroleum prices and environmental damage from El Nino created mass inflation. The value of the sucre, or Ecuadorian dollar, decreased over sixty percent, causing the government to replace it with the U.S. dollar on January 9, 2000. This was only a short term solution, however, as the U.S. dollar and Ecuador’s economy has become more inflated. The average family today lives off of a subsistence farm, growing a majority of their own food and raising some sort of animal including sheep, cows, or chickens. In Hungry Planet, an Ecuadorian family of 10 lived off of about $32 a …show more content…
dollars per day - well below the international poverty line. Ecuador’s lack of strong internal institutions and government has led to poverty and malnourishment. One effective way to solve this issue is for the government to issue a series of laws reinforcing the ideals that other countries or large corporations may not be able to come in and take away Ecuador’s resources. Instead, they should invest in educating their people and creating jobs within the country, rather that outside ‘help’. This may also include raising taxes on imported items, which would allow Ecuadorian locals to sell products at more reasonable prices while forcing companies based in a different country to pay a bit more. Instead of focusing on immediately relieving the debt accruement through loans and deals with foreign governments, Ecuador should pursue investing in local infrastructure. While this may take a few years, and other countries, such as China, may pressure them into deals or payments, it is integral that Ecuadorian officials remain steadfast in the decisions they make or else they face both an economic and a governmental collapse. This will boost jobs within Ecuador, decreasing poverty rates. Finally, by demoting clan-based thinking, in which people are more likely to hire family members, and increasing education, the GDP will be raised, inflation will decrease, and the government itself will become less corrupt. It is integral that while
The Interdependence of plants, animals, and humans is integral in the Amazon Rainforest ecosystem of the tropical rainforest biome. The key features of the Amazon Rainforest is the Amazon River. The Amazon Rainforest goes through Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and many other countries. Colombia has 10%, Brazil has 60%, and Peru has 13%. 80-90 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night is the temperature of the Amazon Rainforest. There are dry and wet seasons. it gets 9 to 10 feet of rain a year. The terrain is in the Amazon Rainforest are rocky mountains, wetlands , plains, valleys, rivers, streams, and highlands. The dirt is poor with very few nutrients and it is very muddy. It is also dense with trees and rotting logs. The thin topsoils, made of decaying vegetable and animal parts, take up all the nutrients. In the Amazon Rainforest there 's the Congo River, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon River.
When I originally found out that my service-learning partner was from Ecuador, I tried to think of my initial opinion of Ecuadorians. Instantly the initial thing I knew about Ecuador was that they were a Spanish-speaking country. However, knowing that a country is a Spanish-speaking country doesn’t tell me anything about the country itself. So I began to research online pictures of Ecuador and began to view different stereotypes about the country. After trying to develop my first opinion about Ecuadorians, I came to believe all Ecuadorians are well-dressed and are good looking. From the pictures of Ecuador, my initial response was Ecuador has really nice landscaping but because of the layout of the Ecuador, I came to believe Ecuador is over populated. Places that are overpopulated usually live in poverty because they have a hard time keeping up economically, and this leads to further issues. As it turns out, my initial thoughts of Ecuador are along the same lines of truth that Ecuadorians actually experience these problems daily.
Since 2003, the United States Trade Representatives have listed Ecuador in the Watch List country in its annual Special Report and some people have started to invest in the gold production to gain money from it. From the resources of the rainforest, to the Island of Galapagos, from the snow-capped mountains to the active volcanoes, Ecuador has proven time and time again, as we see on the discovery channel, it has a plethora natural resources that can improve everyone’s eco system. As of now we know that Ecuador is second only to Peru for the gold growth rate in South America. Now with that being said, this is a great nation that could possibly be one the greatest resources to the United States. This country is growing very fast in every way possible not only in the agriculture but also in the formation of new resources that our country could possibly gain from. There is still a lot of work to do, but if we continue to help and train Ecuador maintain and secure their borders from illegal drugs crossing the Pacific Ocean, we, the United States, as a nation or country could have a safer America with fewer drugs on the streets and have a country with better resources; thus allowing us to be less dependent on those countries that we end up in war with
The country of Ecuador is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean and is located in South America.The important cultural knowledge to work with the Ecuadorian population is that most of the people are indigenous and there is a great lack of medical care and medical/health awareness.The dominant religion in Ecuador is Christianity and they speak Spanish as the primary language although they also speak various other dialects. The 2nd most common language spoken in Ecuador is called Quechua. The population of Ecuador consists of white Ecuadorians and African-Ecuadorians. Ecuadorians are warm and friendly and they hold family values in high regard. Not everyone can afford medical care in Ecuador therefore families work together and pass down natural remedies and cures to their relatives. Lack of education is common in Ecuador especially in villages with lack of infrastructure and schools and therefore it is vital to be able to connect
I have chosen to investigate the commodity chain of bananas from the company Dole and their contributions to spatial justice. This product interests me because I have previously worked in a grocery store and have seen the great rate at which these bananas are sold on a daily basis. I am interested in seeing how the mass consumption of this product affects the different locations attributed to the commodity chain of Dole bananas. I am curious as to what consequences or benefits the countries that house the banana plantations receive as a result of growing bananas, as well as the benefits that Dole receives from sourcing their bananas internationally effects. From what I have read so far, the commodity chain of Dole bananas starts in countries located in Latin America and Caribbean, such as Costa Rica, Columbia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras. For the purposes of this assignment I will be tracing the bananas that are grown and packed at the Bananito Farm located in the community of Bananito, just south of Limon in Costa Rica; a community designed and constructed by Dole for the workers of their largest banana farm in Costa Rica. Once the
Before introducing the different reform policies that the Ecuadorian government established pertaining of the providence, having an understanding about the security situation in Ecuador would help you form your own opinion on the issue. My first research article, Ecuador 2013 Crime and Safety Report: Guayaquil comes from OSAC; the Overseas Advisory Security Council published in 2013. Johanna confirmed the article published in the United States warning U.S. citizens of the security issues was adequate to the issue pertaining
Ecuador is one of the healthiest countries in all of South America and has a considerably higher life expectancy than most of the countries in South America. They also have above average health care than other countries. Medical care is more than 50% cheaper in Ecuador than the United States. It is so cheap that some Americans travel to Ecuador for expensive procedures such as plastic surgery, large dental procedures and more.
As many countries in Latin America, Ecuador was not the exception because of the poor prison conditions. Prisons are filled with prisoners who have to deal with the rudiment conditions. The Prisons weren’t created to hold such large of prisoners but Rafael Correa’s government is trying to solve this problem; facilities are built at a distant location. Being far away made almost impossible for families to
The Amazon Rainforest is also called the Amazon Biome which is the single largest tropical rainforest in the world; but it is still being destroyed like the other rainforest. In the Amazon forest, it is a home of many biodiversity, including native and endangered plants and animals which can be found in the understory layer. The rainforest also contains the largest number of freshwater fish species, unique trees and different fruits by the Amazon River. Amazon is also has many common and exotic birds fly named Toucan. The insect in this rainforest can be huge and harmful. For example, the trap-jaw ant can be ¾ inch long with painful stings and it live with juice, alway sting when the food is threatened. Another example is the owl butterfly,
The phenomenon of corruption in Venezuela is one of the evils that Venezuelan society has seen grow and involves the public and private. Currently, Venezuela is among the top ten most corrupt countries in the world. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss the struggles and issues that Venezuela is facing. My research topic is about governmental corruption in Venezuela and the impact it has on hunger. It’s important to discuss this matter because no one else is, it is important for people to be educated about the perversions of the Venezuelan government. The current situation in Venezuela is as bad as it gets for a country that is not at war. One issue that the country is facing is hunger. Food shortages in Venezuela hit families and
Did you know Ecuador’s natural resources, are not just beneficial to Ecuador itself but also to a lot of other places? With all of their resources they can export a lot of goods to different countries,and benefit their economy. Not just that but they provide the us with some of our oil and a lot of bananas and other fruits. Point taken, Ecuador’s natural resources are very beneficial.
After President Hugo Chávez died, Nicolas Maduro took power of the socialist regime in Venezuela. Maduro’s government has faced one of the biggest economic, politic, and social crises Venezuela has had (Hernández 2016). This crisis has generated a massive food shortage that has affected the whole Venezuelan population. Many scholars have proposed different solutions on how to solve the shortage, but it seems that Maduro’s only intention is to generate political clientelism to his party instead of finding realistic programs to solve the shortage.
Ecuador has been a member of OPEC since 1973, with a break between 1994 and 2007. Its resource nationalism ideology is tied to this notion of oil salvation that seems to portray OPEC as its metaphorical Jesus, if heaven is modernization. But this has not been the case. This is not to say that OPEC disturbed their potential to use petroleum to propel themselves into modernity. OPEC is more of a symptom than a cause. Inherently, in a relatively unstable political region such as South America, there are issues with governmental integrity, as we have already seen with Ecuador’s trade barrier stunts. I want to argue that OPEC is a symptom of the Dutch Disease. Much like the Keystone XL pipeline would fix the United States and Canada on dirty fossil fuels for years to come (Natural Resource Defense Council), OPEC offers developing countries an infrastructure with similar effects. Given that its creation occurred well before today’s urgency of climate change, OPEC embodies the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The easy avenue created by being part of OPEC drew members to invest heavily into their petroleum industries and almost nothing else. As a result we now have several countries hemorrhaging economically, with little option but to turn to OPEC for help. And what will OPEC do? They have already proclaimed inaction is the route to go right now
One of the main features of Ecuador ’s economy is its dependence on only a few key export commodities, most importantly oil and bananas. Oil accounts for approximately 40% of the export economy, while bananas are responsible for about 17%, and Ecuador is the largest producer of bananas in the world. The rest of the economy is mostly based on less important agricultural exports, such as shrimp and flowers, which account for 6% and 4% of exports respectively. Ecuador is almost completely reliant on the success of these few industries, particularly oil, and so has suffered through a cycle of boom and bust economies over the past several decades, since oil was discovered in the 1970s.
Ecuador 's industrial sector, historically oriented to producing for the domestic market, is beginning to look beyond its own borders. Throughout the 1990s, Ecuador made numerous reforms in an effort to make its economy more competitive. These modernization and market-oriented structural reforms continue today and are showing promise.