The flying timber: A glocal political ethnography of balsa extractivism and its implications for its main region of supply: the Ecuadorian Amazonia.

Balsa (ochroma pyramidale), is a type of timber that is mostly produced in Ecuadorian Amazonia. In fact, Ecuador is the world’s largest balsa producer 1 and it has been so for decades.

Balsa is not the world’s lightest timber, yet it is the most resistant among the light, and it is used in aero-modelism. Planes’ wings usually have a skeleton made of balsa. Yet, that’s not the only enterprise in which it is used, nor is aero-modelling what inspirred this research project.

It started with an ethnographic observation: when leaving the Amazonian Kichwa community in which I have been conducting research over the past two years, I found out that some of the fluvial and terrestrial passages from and to the Amazonia were blocked by local communities with the aim of not permitting the entry to balsa “mafias”.

I was intrigued and did some research: apparently the demand for balsa has skyrocketed over the past few years, and illegal balsa trade is -indirectly - responsible for some of the Amazon’s illegal deforestation.

The – unlikely – reason is green energy: balsa is the core material used in the construction of wind turbin-blades, and since wind-farms have multiplied impressively all over the globe in the quest for green energy solutions, so has the demand for balsa, which is -ironically – bringing about deforestation in the Amazonia.Through the combination of desk-research on the political economy of global balsa commodity circulation, and ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador, the “other” side of green energy commodity chain- and focusing on balsa extraction processes and the effects it has on local communities’ livelihoods and well being, this project intends to connect the dots, and tell “the big story” through “the small one.” It is planning to explore the relationship between the global quest for green energy and its local counter-effects, through the case of balsa commodification and commercialization at its main region of supply, Pastaza region of the Ecuador.