Page 5 - Amazon Frontlines News Today

By Alexandra Valencia SINANGOE, Ecuador (Reuters) - Armed with spears, their faces painted, members of the Ai Cofan communitys indigenous guard prepare to patrol the banks of the Aguarico River in Ecuadors Amazon, ready to confiscate equipment and call in the police if they find miners on their ancestral land. We go down (the river) and document all the people who have entered, guard coordinator Nixon Andy, 24, said. When we come across strangers on our territory we speak peacefully, but if ther...

SINANGOE, Ecuador (Reuters) - Armed with spears, their faces painted, members of the A'i Cofan community's indigenous guard prepare to patrol the banks of the Aguarico River in Ecuador's Amazon, ready to confiscate equipment and call in the police if they find miners on their ancestral land.

In Ecuador’s central Napo province, legal and illegal gold mining in rivers is expanding, causing freshwater contamination and conflict among communities living in the Anzu and Jatunyacu river basins, according to recent studies and Indigenous organizations. The findings, signaling a gold rush in the Amazonian province, identify several new mining concessions and their environmental impacts […]

QUITO, Ecuador — Indigenous communities across Ecuador celebrated over the weekend after a historic ruling by the country’s highest court declaring that Indigenous communities have more autonomy over their territory and a much stronger say over extractive projects affecting their lands. “This has been a very big news, very important for the community, for all of […]

By Patricia Armijo Sinangoe, Ecuador, Feb 8 (EFE).- A small indigenous community in Ecuador’s Amazon region that last week won a major court victory granting it authority to block extractive concessions now is trying to secure title to land it says has been plundered for decades. Sinangoe – located in the vast eastern province of …

The ruling, which requires the government to seek consent for new projects, could put the brakes on the president’s plan to increase oil production.

Highlights of coverage around the world on Indigenous issues in 2021

Indigenous communities in Ecuador must choose to sell their land or fend off oil goliaths through small-scale industries like ecotourism.

Before the pandemic, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities were on a roll, winning a series of lawsuits against the state for selling, or trying to sell, their land to oil and mining companies. In the Amazon, two of these trials were of particular importance: the Cofan trial in 2018 that led to 52 mining concessions being cancelled […]

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, indigenous communities are fighting back, like the Waorani tribe defending 500,000 acres of forest from oil extraction and threats of sale by the government.