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The Institute of Ecological Studies of the Third World is a foundation born as a response to the need of organizations and communities in Ecuador, and other countries in the region, to defend and create new paradigms of social and economic organization that challenge the terms imposed by capitalist and market development models that respect the human being of all peoples, natural and cultural diversity, and that ensure the health of nature and its ecosystems.
It arises as a need to improve the skills in the defense of nature and its people, by training and deepening the analysis relevant to environmentalism, respecting the knowledge and processes of different cultures and peoples of the so-called Third World.
Faced with this need, Acción Ecológica together with other people concerned about the continuous social and environmental deterioration, local and global, created in 1996 the Institute of Ecological Studies of the Third World. The Institute has legal personality approved by the Ministry of the Environment of Ecuador.
The Institute is a meeting place between ecologists, academics, politicians, social movements and popular sectors, in order to promote an environmentalist thinking from the perspective of political ecology and popular ecology, and contribute to the debate in defense of nature , the peoples, their territories and cultures, and the participation of the societies in the decisions on the local, national and international environment.
Since August 1996, the Institute offers courses and seminars with a trans-disciplinary focus, promotes exchanges of experiences and training to the organized sectors in their initiatives to defend nature, territories and sources of life.
Due to the topicality of the issues it deals with, the quality of its teachers as well as the opportunity it offers to peasant and indigenous, social and environmental organizations to participate in training events, the Institute has been constituted in these years of life , in an important reference both nationally and internationally, of the ecologist reflection from the perspective of the South.
The topics covered in the different courses have strengthened the participation of social organizations and their influence with environmental arguments in different national and international forums related to the defense of nature and life, sustainability, biodiversity, collective rights, environmental and nature and societies threatened by the current development model.
Fostering an environmental culture is a long-term goal. It is a permanent task of reflection and training, research and dissemination. It is to recover the true values of life that liberate them and allow them to act in harmony as human beings and with nature.
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