Esmeraldas has the Ecuadorian main remainders of primary tropical rain forests. During the 1970s-1980s the logging industry spread widely over this area leading to an accelerated deforestation. The Esmeraldas case mirrored the world-wide trend of tropical forests at that time. In response to this situation, from international to national levels new forest management approaches were developed and implemented. Generally speaking, these reforms were modeled on voluntary self-regulation initiatives or on regulation though funding with aid programmes targeted to encourage technical and institutional change. Within this context, the Durini group, an Ecuadorian powerful private wood-processing group, submitted a new business proposal (Ecoforest 2000) to the Global Environment Facility (GEF). It consisted mainly in a plan of plantations and reforestation though the purchase of 3143ha of deforested land in Esmeraldas. As a part of the project, the consortium applied for a US$ 5 million loan from the IFC as well as US$ 2 million grant from the GEF. In light of this situation, Ecuadorian environmental NGOs lobbied the international aid community involved in the process arguing that the project would exclusively benefit the private logging group, increase the risk of colonization of indigenous land and lack sustainability. The GEF rejected the project.

Ecoforest 2000 was a US$12.8 million reforestation project, for which the Durini timber group solicited a US$5 million loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-finance arm of the World Bank, to: (1) purchase 3143 h of land that had been partially used for cattle ranching and agricultural production from farmers and poor colonists; (2) selectively reforest the degraded forest land with native timber species; and (3) cover part of the costs of developing 2975 h of previously established plantations.