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The major themes addressed in the book are summarized including how political and economic conditions shaped the sustainable agriculture movement and how the movement developed organizationally. Structural conditions during the first decades of the movement steered organic proponents towards a market-based reform strategy that relied upon private certification systems. Over time this decentralized grassroots movement developed a more formal organizational structure. This brought strategic and ideological differences to the fore, especially when organic advocates turned towards the state for support. “Spreaders” and “tillers” differed on whether it was better to rapidly expand the organic market with the support of state and corporate actors or if it was more important to safeguard strict standards even if that would limit organic growth. Organic movement strategy is examined through the lens of competing environmental sociology theories.

Chapter one opens with a contemporary dilemma in Ecuador: with the help of the “international community” will the nation complete the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, which would keep its “oil in the soil” to protect its biodiversity, indigenous tribes, and limit greenhouse gasses, or will it drill for petroleum and use the proceeds to further the social and economic development of its people? Through this example, the rest of the chapter develops the central concern of the book: how can states and civil society work within the constraints of the global economic structure to develop sustainably? Three possible futures for development are laid out: sustainable development, extractive development, and alternatives to development. The theoretical underpinning of the book, the treadmill of production theory, is explained with regard to the key players in the narrative: the state, nongovernmental organizations, social movement activists, and transnational organizations. The chapter concludes with an overview of the argument and the book.

The concluding chapter summarizes the changes in the Ecuadorian environmental movement from 1978-2015. The movement grew, diversified, struggled and radicalized. The state expanded its conception of development beyond economic goals to include social and environmental goals. The impetus for that shift came from social actors working within Ecuador. Lessons from Ecuador are expanded to a general discussion of how the interplay of transnational funders, civil society and states affect development paths, and specifically what Allan Schnaiberg called the nature-society dialectic. Hypotheses related to environmental sociology, transnational social movements, and the sociology of development are laid out. The book concludes that neoliberalism was not conducive to sustainability. Alternatives to neoliberal development models arose when the state was least constrained by the international political economy. Under both capitalist and socialist leadership, Ecuador struggled with the fundamental contradictions of economic growth–the central driving logic of the treadmill of production. This was evident as the trade-offs among economic growth, social justice, and environmental protection shifted throughout the four periods. Alternatives to traditional development, such as Ecuador’s plan for buen vivir, rewrite the goals for development and offer some hope for an ecological synthesis of the human-nature dynamic.

This chapter examines the sweeping changes that have taken place since President Rafael Correa came to power as part of the socialist “Citizens’ Revolution” to transform the state from a weak agent into a strong and effective actor. In this process, the environmental sector changed. First, international agents, such as USAID, lessened their involvement in Ecuador and others, such as Conservation International, shifted their focus from ecodependents to the state. Second, environmental leaders moved from the non-profit sector into the government. Third, ecodependent groups lost power and many closed due to fiscal concerns. Finally, many of the ecoresisters’ ideas were incorporated into the state, such as constitutional rights for nature and the Yasuní-ITT Initiative. However, as the state seeks to honor its promise to lift its people out of poverty, it has done so through resource extraction. Ecoresisters are now battling against the state rather than the transnational corporations they fought in the past and the state is limiting their civil liberties. This final case chapter looks at the role of various types of civil society groups in altering (or not altering) the state’s choices, and discusses the potential for democratic practices to slow the treadmill of production.