Ecuador: Study shows Green Constitution Didn’t Stop Expansion of Oil or Mining under Correa’s leadership

Correa ALSO OPENED ECUADOR UP TO MONSANTO FOR TRANSGENIC SEEDS AND CROPS

mongabay.com / Daniela Aguilar – Although a landmark was marked as the rise of the Rights of Nature in the Magna Carta, experts agree that the Green Constitution did not prevent the expansion of the oil border and the establishment of megaminería in the country.

After 10 years in power and with the period of greater political stability in Ecuador’s recent history, Rafael Correa left the presidency in the hands of Lenin Moreno . Positions regarding the management of the outgoing president are found and one of the biggest concerns in the immediate term is the country’s crumbling economy, which closed with a deficit of $ 6 billion in 2016 , according to statistics from the Ministry of Finance. A situation that accentuated the extractivist policies of the regime under the worried gaze of ecologists and indigenous and peasant communities living in the areas of influence of the projects. But there are important aspects in environmental matters that have occurred during the last decade. Perhaps the main one is the inclusion of the Rights of Nature in the new Ecuadorian Constitution that was conceived in Montecristi in 2008 . A set of laws that the same Correa criticized in the later by “excess of garantismo” and that left the rod high to measure the performance of the governments in the care of the nature.

“With the Rights of Nature Ecuador marked a civilizing milestone. That is an incredible advance, although broad segments of Ecuadorian society have not grasped its real significance, “said Alberto Acosta, former president of the Constituent Assembly, in dialogue with Mongabay Latam. “The importance is global,” insists Acosta. “In several parts of the planet this Ecuadorian constitutional mandate is taken as a powerful reference. For example, the attorney who defends the indigenous and nature in the Long Curve of Xingú, in the case of the great Brazilian dam of Belo Monte, refers to the Nature Rights established in the Constitution of Montecristi, “he says.

Acosta agrees with Gloria Chicaiza of the organization Acción Ecológica. He explains that environmental legislation is the horizon to which they are constantly walking. “That allows us to continue exercising the demand for these rights to be landed at the level of public policies,” says Chicaiza.

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But in practice, the Green Constitution is far from honoring its name . “Unfortunately, it has regressed: megaminería, expansion of the oil border, monocultures … and finally the farewell gift of Correa to Monsanto: opening to transgenic seeds and crops, trampling the Constitution of Montecristi,” says the former president of the Constituent Assembly The veto carried out by Rafael Correa to the Law on Agrodiversity, Seeds and Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture, which would allow the entry of genetically modified seeds and crops for research purposes when the Magna Carta expressly forbids it. READ FULL ARTICLE