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Summary In this article we compare the resource flows of Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru between 1980 and 2000. Our objective is to analyze the structure of social metabolism of extractive countries and the consequences of the neoliberal economic structural reforms on the use of natural resources. In two decades, the domestic extraction of materials increased considerably in the four countries, mainly due to the mining sector in Chile and Peru, biomass and oil in Ecuador, and construction minerals in Mexico. Imports and exports also increased, because of the increasingly deeper integration in international markets, prompted by liberalization policies implemented in the four countries between the late 1970s and the late 1990s. All four countries had a negative physical trade balance for most of the period analyzed, with exports exceeding imports in terms of weight. However, parallel growth of imports reduced the physical deficit in Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Ecuador's physical deficit was the highest and did not decrease during the last two decades. A diversification of exports away from bulk commodities could be observed in Chile and Mexico and to a lesser extent in Peru, whereas in Ecuador the export sector remained mainly based on oil and biomass. More research is needed to explore the environmental and social impacts of the neoliberal economic reforms. Also, the indirect flows associated with direct physical imports and exports deserve to be subjected to further analysis.

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Summary This article characterizes the societal metabolism of the Colombian economy, identifying the main factors of natural resources use, overuse, or exhaustion. The environmental sustainability of a country depends to a large extent on the size of the economy compared to the available resource base. Material flow indicators provide an assessment of size or scale of economies. Direct material flow indicators are used to analyze the ecological dimension of economic activity in the period 1970–2007. Some resource extraction conflicts are briefly described in the light of material flow analysis. Foreign and domestic demand promotes increasing extraction and export of domestic natural resources. This is sometimes related to an irreversible deterioration of the local environment. The concept of “ecologically unequal exchange” with the rest of the world is analyzed in this context. Colombia has a large and growing negative physical trade balance, whereas per capita use of materials is still about half of the industrial countries’ average.

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The purpose of this research was to analyze poverty as a determinant factor of domestic consumption of wood and its effect in deforestation in Ecuador. To achieve this, we have processed data from the population and housing census and from household surveys carried out during the last 35 years, forest cover data and a National Forest Assessment. This work makes two contributions. On the one hand, it studies and quantifies deforestation originated by wood consumption, which has been scantily analyzed in Ecuador. On the other hand, it provides a methodological approach that allows a precise accounting of this information through an innovative model of economies of scale, which assumes diminishing marginal consumptions in households. We study the relationship between fuel wood consumption and the state of household poverty through a multivariate analysis that incorporates socioeconomic and demographic variables. With these elements, we show that the largest share of wood consumption does not result from subsistence consumption, but from commercial and productive consumption. For this reason, domestic fuel wood consumption for cooking barely explains deforestation. We have estimated that, from the 49,497 hectares of annual deforested area in the country, 430.6 hectares of forest are affected by the consumption of this resource.

This research identifies the influencing factors on human well-being in the San Jacinto de Santay community by interpreting subjective satisfaction with life revealed by its inhabitants in a crosssectional study. The dependent variable was explained by age, social relationships, and time available for recreation activities. In addition, ecosystem services perceived as critical were identified: clean air and wild food (mainly artisanal fishing). The analysis of the results, using a Mann-Whitney test and analysis of covariance and redundancy, highlighted sustainable management and the importance of understanding the contributions of the natural environment.

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