Loja Ecuador
Farmers from a community around the Fierro Urco hill filed a protective action in the city of Loja, Ecuador, against the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, for having granted licenses, environmental registrations and certificates of non-impact on water sources for several mining concessions within the Fierro Urco hill, without having guaranteed the constitutional right to environmental consultation, the protection of water, the rights of Nature and the healthy and ecologically balanced environment of the inhabitants of this area.
The protective action was rejected in two instances. The plaintiffs then filed an extraordinary protective action before the Constitutional Court, which was accepted for processing.
In their petition for protection, the plaintiffs requested that the environmental permits granted to the mining concessions be declared null and void for failing to comply with the right to environmental consultation, and therefore, that all mining activity be suspended. They also requested that the administrative procedures for creating a Protected Area within the Fierro Urco hill be expedited, given its ecological significance, and that its páramos (high-altitude Andean ecosystems) be declared subjects of law, as this area has been recognized as a zone of hydrological importance, the source of four rivers vital to the region.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged Ecuador's failure to comply with its constitutional obligations regarding the conservation of the páramos (Arts. 406 and 73) , as ecosystems that are not very resilient to climate change and are also carbon sinks, by not applying the precautionary principle, as part of its obligations to adapt and guarantee the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment for current and future generations (Arts. 395 and 414) .
- Farmers from the Gualel Community
- Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition.
- State Attorney General's Office.
- Mining companies: Guayacan Gold Company GGC SA (subsidiary of Salazar Resources), Cañabrava Mining SA (subsidiary of SolGold) and GreenRock Resources SA (subsidiary of Cornerstone)
- Ministry of Energy and Mines.
- Legal Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic
The lawsuit stated that the territory known as Fierro Urco is a mountain range also known as the "Water Star of the South." Within its direct area of influence live and coexist peasant and indigenous communities. It is also part of the ancestral territory of the Amboca, Palta, and Saraguro indigenous peoples. The Catamayo, Puyango, Jubones, and Santiago river basins of the Southern Region of Ecuador originate in Fierro Urco. Its predominant ecosystem is páramo (high-altitude grassland), and its flora and fauna remain largely undescribed by science.
Rules:
- Constitution of Ecuador.
- Organic Environmental Code.
- Organic Law of Water Resources, Use and Exploitation of Water.
- Judgments 1149-19-JP and 22-18-IN of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador.
- Advisory Opinion 23/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Beginning:
- Precautionary principle.
- Principle of constitutional supremacy.
- Principle of intergenerational equity.