Sustainability of Territories in the Ecuadorian Amazon

As is general knowledge, the situation of the Amazon Basin has been strongly affected in recent decades. Mass deforestation in order to expand livestock borders, illicit use of timber species and oil exploitation, produced serious environmental impacts. Half of the national territory of Ecuador is part of this Amazonian macro-basin, so these problems have undergone in the area. The Amazonian Ecuador in particular, is a territory where the capacity of the soils and the ecosystems to provide services have been weakening for all the described circumstances. But from our scientific and academic point of view it seems important to contribute to the well-being and good living of the Amazonian population by the implementation of sustainable production systems. The researching perspective must focus to offer objective indicators that can be useful for management, referring to the dynamic balance between society and nature.  In the dimensions addressing the socio environmental aspects, the Soil Quality Indicators have revealed to be very useful. They give information that can influence decision-making and territorial planning at the farm level.  Other data and information can be summarized in graphical representations called Biogram and synthetic indices as the Integrated Index of Sustainable Development. All these are affordable and sustainable and realistic proposals.

As is general knowledge, the situation of the Amazon Basin has been strongly affected in recent decades. Mass deforestation in order to expand livestock borders, illicit use of timber species and oil exploitation, produced serious environmental impacts. Half of the national territory of Ecuador is part of this Amazonian macro-basin, so these problems have undergone in the area. The Amazonian Ecuador in particular, is a territory where the capacity of the soils and the ecosystems to provide services have been weakening for all the described circumstances. But from our scientific and academic point of view it seems important to contribute to the well-being and good living of the Amazonian population by the implementation of sustainable production systems. The researching perspective must focus to offer objective indicators that can be useful for management, referring to the dynamic balance between society and nature. In the dimensions addressing the socio environmental aspects, the Soil Quality Indicators have revealed to be very useful. They give information that can influence decision-making and territorial planning at the farm level. Other data and information can be summarized in graphical representations called Biogram and synthetic indices as the Integrated Index of Sustainable Development. All these are affordable and sustainable and realistic proposals. [1] [2] [1] [3] [4] [5] [3] [3] [6] [7] [6] [3] [3] [8] [9] Encyclopedia 2020 doi: 10.32545/encyclopedia202004.0006.v1 1 One of the main resources is land, which requires rational management through agricultural policies and practices aimed at forming sustainable agricultural systems .
The greater the knowledge of the wealth of resources, cultural diversity, and ecosystems that make up the Amazonian territory, the more the state will be a correct administration . To meet the needs of the current population and improve their quality of life, economic, ecological, and social sustainability are required. Economic sustainability implies taking charge of global costs, such as the reproduction of nature and benefits, including the integral management of ecosystems. Ecological sustainability refers to the use of the natural system in an integral way, within the restrictions and potential of its homeostatic mechanisms. Social sustainability means a social orientation of production that uses and respects the identity of cultures and promotes the broadest participation of society in fundamental development decisions .

Environmental Indicators
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an Environmental Indicator is a variable that has been socially endowed with an added meaning derived from its own scientific configuration, in order to synthetically reflect a social concern, with respect to the environment, and insert it coherently in the decision-making process . Environmental management and investment that is oriented towards the sustainable use, research, conservation, mitigation, and restoration of natural resources involve various topics, such as habits, anthropic modes of production and consumption, demand and use of natural resources, generation and use of solid and liquid waste, use of technologies and types of energy in the production of goods and services, and problems with pollutants that are part of climate change.
In Ecuador, the territorial approach of the current "National Development Plan 2017-2021" has tried to approach the reality of the value of environmental damage and the economy for social and environmental improvement . The plan stipulates that Ecuador will fully assume the protection and guarantee of the rights of nature, responsible management of natural resources, protection of biodiversity and soil, and implementation of responses to climate change, which guarantees the good living of rural communities . However, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the application of sustainable territorial development policies and strategies has not advanced as expected . The appropriation and mismanagement of natural resources is not the same in all communities, nor is the degree of impact due to environmental impacts; hence, ecological-distributive conflicts and environmental injustices arise . These conflicts are valued in different languages. For example, affected communities may request internalization of externalities and monetary compensation, arguing that the natural environment has great ecological, landscape, and sacred value, or that resources are excluded from the market by international provisions that protect indigenous groups and nationalities. The point is that the monetary dimension is the key point in any dialogue or conflict that involves interests of large companies in natural areas of interest .

Sustainability Indicators
Sustainability indicators arise by expanding the role of environmental indicators, integrating the four dimensions associated with the concept of sustainable development .
The economic indicator refers to the physical and objective basis of the process of growth and maintenance of the stock of natural resources incorporated into productive activities, setting criteria for renewable natural resources, for which the utilization rate should be equivalent to that of resource recomposition. For non-renewable natural resources, the utilization rate must be equivalent to the replacement of the resource in the production process based on the time planned for its depletion. [8] [3] [10] [11] [12] [12] [3] [13] [13] [14] Encyclopedia 2020 doi: 10.32545/encyclopedia202004.0006.v1 The environmental indicator is related to the ability of nature to absorb and recompose to anthropogenic aggressions, making use of the above reasoning, where the rates of waste emission as a result of economic activity must equal those of regeneration, which are determined for the resilience of an ecosystem.
The social objective is to improve the quality of life of the population in countries with serious problems of inequality and social exclusion. The basic criteria should be: distributive justice, in the case of distribution of goods and services; and the universalization of coverage for global education, health, housing, and social security policies.
The policy is linked to the process of building citizenship and seeks to incorporate the population into the process of development and decision-making.
From the Ecological Economy , the concepts of weak sustainability and strong sustainability have been defined according to the assessment of ecological damage and resource depletion . The sustainability indicators that are explained below correspond to them.

Monetary Indicators of Territorial Sustainability or Weak Indicators
Monetary indicators of territorial sustainability evaluate the percentage of income and expenses that could be considered true income and loss of assets, respectively, from the sale and acquisition of products that meet the needs of a region, with the aim of reaching agreed monetary valuations of amortization of natural resources and environmental services . They include : The gross domestic product (GDP) green, which indicates economic growth, taking into account environmental consequences; The GDP ecologically corrected, which takes into account the valuation of non-renewable reserves. In the case of an exhaustion of the resource, there is a replacement of the natural capital; The Sustainable Economic Welfare Index (IBES), which corrects conventional measures of private final consumption (expenditure), considering social and environmental factors; The Patrimonial Accounts, which exist in order to include environmental variables in the production matrix.
These indicators do not contemplate some issues, such as irreversible damage to the environmental system and its accumulation, alterations of natural resource reserves, the diversity of units in the environmental system, and arbitrary monetary valuations .

Biophysical Sustainability Indicators or Strong Indicators
Biophysical sustainability indicators are oriented to evaluate the impact of socio-economic activity on the environment. For this type of indicator, it is not easy to compare situations. Their objective is didactic, not research, and the information on how to calculate them is restricted . Some of them are : Ecological backpack, which indicates efficiency in the use of matter and energy per unit of product. Its purpose is to assess whether there is a dematerialization of the economy over time; The ecological footprint, which allows the estimation of the environmental deficit of a given territory, highlighting the impact that a human group has on ecosystems in relation to resource consumption and waste generation. This measure reports the dependence of a community on the functioning (productivity) of ecosystems, regardless of whether it is outside their domain. It allows the monitoring of the impact of human actions, and it should be noted that the agglomeration (cities) demonstrates the dependence on ecosystems and the environment ; The environmental space, which refers to the quantity and availability of renewable and non-renewable natural resources in relation to the levels of contamination allowed without harming future generations' use of natural resources. [ On a global level, the practical utility of these indicators in decision-making is limited. However, at the national, regional, or local level, they serve as instruments that can contribute to environmental planning and management .

Territorial Sustainability Indicators: Participatory Selection
The term "socio-environmental sustainability" refers to a dynamic balance between society and nature, In the Amazon region, this perspective is intended to curb the impacts produced locally by deforestation, as a result of agricultural and livestock practices that expand day by day and influence the ability of soils to offer food security for rural populations . Therefore, the proposed edaphological indicators are adapted to local needs. An example of the evaluation of sustainability using the methodology of participatory selection of indicators in production units according to four dimensions is summarized in Table A1 of the Appendix A. The example corresponds to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon , and includes economic, cultural, and political aspects, since agricultural production also depends on them.
Direct measurements and observations of morphological parameters at the field level are a very useful tool. They allow an understanding of the operation and performance of the soil in the natural environment, and how it is affected by human intervention . At the same time, they allow tracking or [17] [18] have selected the following: the morphology of the soil with observable attributes in the field (in surface or in the profile), the conditions of the environment, the behavior and development of the plants, and the response of the soil to management practices or changes in the use of the earth. The attributes described above include composition, soil structure, soil organization, color, root distribution, porosity, evidence of carbonates and iron, and clay and soil consistency. Other authors also proposed texture as an observable attribute in the field , as the OM content is based on the amount of litter and fresh and decomposing plant debris. This pair of parameters contributes in large proportions to the availability of nutrients and good physical and biological condition. Another main ecosystem service is the carbon storage potential . In addition, it has been corroborated that the scores generated by the visual method in the field maintain a close relationship with those obtained in the laboratory based on quality indicators.

Development Index
For decision-making regarding sustainable territorial development, all types of information, data,  (Figure 1a), each radius (axis) represents a calculation indicator. By methodological definition, the value of each indicator will vary between 0 and 1, with the minimum and maximum performance, respectively. Therefore, the greater the shaded area, the greater the performance of the unit of analysis.  When the shading red, it is less than 0.2, and it indicates a high probability of system collapse. Levels between 0.2 and 0.4 are represented by an orange color, and indicate a critical situation. Yellow shading, corresponding to levels of 0.4 to 0.6, indicates system instability. Levels between 0.6 and 0.8, shown in blue, represent system stability. The green color, for levels of 0.8 to 1, is the optimal system situation .
The methodology, on the one hand, allows for analyzing the evolution of an analysis unit in two moments (different years), and on the other, for comparing the situation of two units for the same moment (different places). One of the advantages of using this methodology is that it adapts to the characteristics of territories based on the needs and peculiarities. From the score of the indicators, information can be obtained on the progress of the proposed objectives (social, economic, environmental, and political). It shows a synthesis of the reality of the territories in a simple but understandable way for the population.

Appendix A
An evaluation of socio-environmental sustainability, and a proposal for a demonstration case selected in the Ecuadorian Amazon , with the indicators applied, are summarized in Table A1. The study concludes that, at the level of production units, each dimension presents critical levels, but with more economic and political limitations. According to the authors, the indicators that should be improved are the number of agroecological practices, crop diversification, productive diversification, management capacity, production level, net income, input costs, labor cost, marketing strategies, marketing strategy savings, [9] [9] [9] [1] Encyclopedia 2020 doi: 10.32545/encyclopedia202004.0006.v1 production financing, institutional support, and state programs related to production units.