Lets free oil Social payment for non-extraction of oil
In 2007, Ecuador asked the States to take collective action to compensate for the non-oil extraction, without success. However, the Yasuní-ITT Initiative shows that small citizen donations were, in magnitude, more relevant than state contributions. In 2021, we propose that social payment for non-oil extraction could be considered a collective action that may “embed” society in collective decisions about toxic productions. How can social payment decommodify oil, free it from its commodity fiction? By using money, as a social payment, society manifests the desire to “liberate” oil from its logic of the market and to establish a relationship based on its use-values for the welfare of present and future generations. Thus, the social payment for not extracting oil is a collective action that allows the (de)commodification of oil and generates opportunities for new relationship between the society and oil in countries rich in biodiversity but dependent on extractivism.
