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San Jose de Payamino is home to around 60 families with a total of 300 people living the community territorry. The villagers lives primarilly from subsistence farming, hunting, fishing and the collection of forest products. Each family has a ‘finca’ – a farm in the forest where they grow subsistence crops such as manioc, pineapples, papaya, bananas and plantains. More than half of the families also have a house in the community centre, where there is also a school and health centre, the offices of the parish council and a ranger station for the neighbouring Sumaco Napo-Galeras Biosphere Reserve.

The villagers speak a dialect of lowland Kichwa and most are also fluent in Spanish. There is a gasoline driven generator in the community that produces electricity. The Sumaco National Park service has recently completed the building of a Park Station office in the village and the construction of the Junta Parroquial office (local parish) is currently underway.
 

The territory of the Payamino community covers around 16.000 hectares (almost 40.000 acres) of lowland rainforest on the eastern slopes of the Sumaco Volcano. The territory lies within the buffer zone of the Sumaco Napo-Galeras Biosphere Reserve

The territory ranges in altitude from 200 metres above sea level in the lower areas to 1.500 m.a.s.l. as you head north and west towards the Sumaco volcano. The territory is at a transitional zone between the cloud forests of the eastern Andean slopes and lowland Amazonian rainforest, and is home to wildlife from both environments. The Payamino River, the largest watercourse in the territory, meanders to the east towards the Napo River, one of the Amazon’s major tributaries. It is among the cleanest rivers in the area, as many rivers as it has not yet been polluted by oilspills, human waste and erosion from logging and human settlements, unlike many other waterways in the Ecuadorean Amazon.