Ecuador Passes Unique Constitutional Amendment Protecting Nature

El Oro Parakeet. Photo: Fundación Jocotoco

Voters in Ecuador approved a new constitution on Sunday that confers unprecedented legal rights to nature. This is the first constitutional measure of its kind in the world.

Ecuador is among the top five countries in the world for bird biodiversity, with many species found nowhere else on Earth, and contains several the worlds’ biodiversity hotspots including the Galapagos Islands, portions of the Amazon, and the Andes Mountains. Ecuador is the site of a number of projects to conserve rare and endemic bird species that American Bird Conservancy is undertaking with its partner group Fundación Jocotoco.

“By voting in overwhelming numbers to recognize the rights of nature in their constitution, the people of Ecuador are showing the world environmental leadership,” said George Wallace, Vice President for International Programs. “To solve the climate crisis, stem the loss of biodiversity, and assure sustainable development, this is an idea that all nations should consider.”

The newly approved constitution states: “Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights.”

How this language will be translated into everyday life remains unclear. New laws will have to be passed to implement the constitution.

“We can’t achieve anything immediately,” President Rafael Correa told The Washington Post. “We don’t have a minute to lose.”

The constitution could give the government the ability to halt projects that would destroy ecosystems or cause species to go extinct. The measure appears to be in response to a long series of natural resource conflicts with multinational banana growers, and oil and gas extraction companies.