Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD
Sonoma State University

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection.

Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”
The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Environmental Legal Defense Fund, worked closely over the past year with members of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly on drafting legally enforceable Rights of Nature, which mark a watershed in the trajectory of environmental law.

Ecuador’s leadership on this issue may have a global domino effect. Margil says that her organization is busy fielding calls from interested countries, such as Nepal, which is currently writing its first constitution.

For all of the hope and tangible progress the Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador’s constitution represent, however, there are shortcomings and contradictions with the laws and the political reality on the ground. A fundamental flaw in the constitution also exists due to Correa’s refusal to include a clause mandating free, prior, and informed consent by communities for development project that would affect their local ecosystems.

“I expect them [the multinational extractive industries] to fight it,” says Margil. “Their bread and butter is based on being able to treat countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels. Multinational corporations are dependent on ravaging the planet in order to increase their bottom line.”

The fight for life is not won and over yet!

According to Zorrilla, a major disappointment has been President Rafael Correa’s new mining law.

“The law takes rights-to-nature loopholes and widens them so that giant dirt movers could easily drive through them,” said Zorrilla, who has been working with communities of Ecuador’s Intag region to resist mining and promote sustainable development. “To mention a couple of examples, the law does not prohibit large-scale mining in habitats harboring endangered species, nor the dumping of heavy metals in rivers and streams.”

Indigenous leaders responded by filing a lawsuit before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in March 2009, seeking to overturn the mining law, which they believe is unconstitutional. Article 1 of the “Rights of Nature” clauses states: “Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.”

Regardless of the ongoing struggles to ensure that the true meaning and scope of the constitution is upheld, Dr. Mario Melo, a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law and Human Rights and an adviser to Fundación Pachamama-Ecuador, believes that the nature clauses which reflect the traditions of indigenous peoples could offer a path to an ecologically sustainable future.
“I consider that the recognition of the ‘Rights to Nature’ as a progress on a global scale and one that deserves to be globally broadcast and commented on as a contribution from Ecuador towards the search of new ways of facing the environmental crisis due to climate change.”

The struggles of Ecuadorian social movements and the Ecuadorian government to uphold the “Rights of Nature” and to create a new development model that places human beings as interdependent parts of nature, rather than dominant exploiters of nature, is something we should continue to monitor and learn from.

Ecuadorians Protest New Water Law

“We're crazy for water,” chanted about a thousand campesinos as they marched through the streets of downtown Cuenca in southern Ecuador on September 28, 2009. The march, called for by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), was part of a nation-wide mobilization against a new water law. It included intermittent road blockades throughout the highlands over the course of the day that by all acounts were peaceful.

The protests come exactly one year since Ecuador's 2008 political constitution was passed, which recognizes the right to water, rights for nature and which declared the country a plurinational state. However, indigenous and campesino organizations involved in the protests criticize the government for having digressed from the highly lauded constitution. The constitution passed in a national referendum on September 28, 2008 with 64 percent of the vote.

Criticisms concerning the new water law, which was initially scheduled for first debate in the National Assembly last Saturday, apply to the privatization of water, limits on community participation in water management, prioritization of water access for industrial users and lack of sanctions for water contamination, and more. In anticipation of this week's protests, the debate was postponed for several weeks.

The indigenous communities in Ecuador battle Chevron.

Chevron faces a $27 billion liability for environmental damage.

Representatives of the communities in Ecuador called for the U.S. Department of Justice and Ecuador's Attorney General to jointly investigate Chevron for its apparent role in working with an individual who tried to bribe government officials in Ecuador, said Pablo Fajardo, the lawyer for the Amazonian communities who accuse the company of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest.

"The bottom line is that evidence in the trial shows that Chevron is responsible for wrecking Ecuador's rainforest and destroying the lives of thousands of indigenous peoples," said Steven Donziger, an American lawyer who advises the Amazonian communities in the lawsuit, which is taking place in Ecuador