Buen Vivir / Sumak Kawsay

In the Quechua language, sumak refers to ideal and beautiful fulfillment, and kawsay means life. Together, they describe a state of plenitude, dignity, balance, and harmony between human beings and the natural world. The concept is rooted in the cosmovision of Quechua and Kichwa peoples of the Andean and Amazonian regions, where community, reciprocity, and relationality with nature form the foundation of social existence. A parallel concept in Aymara, suma qamaña, is translated as vivir bien, "living well." Researchers trace the concept's political and theoretical formalization to the 1990s, when Amazonian Kichwa organizations in Ecuador, including the Pastaza Indigenous Peoples' Organization (OPIP), systematized the principles of sumak kawsay for use in educational initiatives and international cooperation programs.

Ecuador incorporated sumak kawsay into its constitution in 2008 under the presidency of Rafael Correa, declaring that the people have a right to live in an ecologically balanced environment that guarantees the good life. The constitution granted legal rights to nature (Pachamama), a provision without precedent in national constitutions. Bolivia followed in 2009, recognizing buen vivir as a principle to guide state action and subsequently passing the 2011 Law of Mother Nature, the first national legislation in the world to bestow juridical rights on the natural world.

The concept has drawn criticism from multiple directions. Indigenous scholars, including Javier Cuestas-Caza, have argued that the governmental version of buen vivir departed significantly from its indigenous origins, particularly when Ecuador's government pursued extractive economic policies that contradicted the constitutional principles. The concept does not propose a return to a pre-modern past. It proposes a framework in which the measure of a society's success is not the accumulation of production but the quality of relationships between people, communities, and the ecosystems they inhabit.