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Ecuador’s water defenders are taking on global gold mining companies [1]

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Date: 2024-04 

As our van climbs the winding road that leads to the Kimsakocha Andean lagoons in Cuenca, in the southern Ecuadorian province of Azuay, the vegetation changes. The pine trees are becoming scarcer, the graminoids proliferate and the mist takes over the landscape.

At the wheel is Yaku Sacha Pérez Guartambel, a well-known lawyer, politician, and environmental leader from Cuenca who has been fighting for decades to protect water and preserve these places from extractivism. Yaku, as he is known, has been imprisoned several times for his activism against mining and gained notoriety as an Indigenous candidate for the presidency in the 2021 elections, only narrowly losing to now-president Guillermo Lasso in the first round.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/ecuador-water-defenders-gold-mining-river-pollution/

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