Where are the sustainable forestry projects?: A geography of NGO interventions in Ecuador

For the past 25 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have sponsored an increasing number of sustainable development projects in poor rural areas, but the overall pattern of NGO development efforts has remained too difficult to discern. This paper tries to clarify the geographic dimension of NGO led sustainable development efforts through a mapping of NGO sponsored sustainable forestry projects in Ecuador. The mapping and associated analysis reveals considerable unevenness in NGO efforts with people intensive projects clustering near cities and government assisted projects spread more evenly across all rural areas.