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Protesta contra la minería de oro

Ecuador: Azuay Says No to Environmental Licence for Dundee Precious Metals

Viviana Herrera

Latin America Program Coordinator

Environmental defenders in Southern Ecuador filed an injunction (medida cautelar) against Canadian-owned Loma Larga project and announced several actions protesting the arbitrary decision of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition (“MAATE”) to grant an environmental licence for exploitation to Dundee Precious Metals. 

Yaku Perez, the lawyer who filed the injunction on behalf of Federation of Campesino and Indigenous Organizations of Azuay (FOA in Spanish), said that the injunction seeks to “immediately revoke the environmental licence, suspend mining activities in Kimsakocha, and order the immediate withdrawal of military and police forces from Kimsakocha.”

The pro-mining Noboa government has been adamant about making Ecuador “the next mining destination,” aggressively promoting the mining potential of the country to investors on the world stage and wanting to speed up industrial mining in ecologically sensitive areas such as the Kimsakocha Páramo (moorland), despite the fact that the mine has been suspended since 2022 due to a provincial court order and three popular consultations: Victoria del Portete (2011), Girón (2019), and Cuenca (2021), where citizens voted overwhelmingly against mining in the area. 

The mining project has received significant pushback for 30 years for its potential impact on the local water supply and fragile ecosystems such as the páramo. Those concerns have been validated by numerous independent scientific environmental reports, including by Terrae in 2022 and Cuenca’s municipal public services body ETAPA in 2024.

“There is clear complicity [between the government and the state], given that the mining company only considers a small area of 2,000 hectares, indicating that the impact will occur when contaminated water flows through our rivers [...] affecting everything in its path. So the people affected are not just one or two communities, but the entire canton of Cuenca," said Rigoberto Guerrero, Deputy Environmental Manager of ETAPA.

Granting of the environmental licence has sparked a new wave of outrage among the affected Indigenous and campesino communities who inhabit the páramo, as well as urban environmental groups such as El Cabildo por el Agua and students at the University of Cuenca. 

A few weeks ago, the Indigenous community of San Pedro de Escaleras and allies publicly denounced a controversial consultation process approval for the project that allegedly obtained 100% of their approval. They argued this consultation process didn’t actually happen, as it was carried out with only a select handful of people, trampling the community’s rights and ignoring their concerns. 

In early June, FOA and the community of Escaleras, along with the Community Water Systems of Tarqui and Victoria del Portete Girón filed a complaint with the ILO against the Ecuadorian government for violating their right to self-determination. 

On July 8, rural and urban communities and organizations participated in an Assembly for Water and the Páramos. The resolution details a series of actions moving forward should the governments not reverse course and revoke the environmental licence. 

It states: “Our identity is deeply linked to water, rivers, and moorlands: they are part of our culture, history, and life. That is why we express our firm decision to enforce the popular mandate that prohibits metal mining in our territories.”

Dundee Precious Metals says of the licence that “This [...] important milestone for Loma Larga [has the] potential to deliver strong returns for our investors and stakeholders.” However, the concerns expressed by the FOA, the Community Water Systems of Tarqui, Victoria del Portete, Girón, and Escaleras, the Cabildo por el Agua and other rural and urban groups sends a strong message to investors that there continues to be no social licence for the Loma Larga mine. The project will continue to receive pushback from a large sector of the population of Azuay just as it has for the past 30 years