Observations to consider for those following the legislative process of Ecuador’s Law for the Strengthening of Protected Areas, specifically regarding the report on the second debate, approved by the Economic, Productive, and Microenterprise Development Commission (July 8, 2025).
Introduction
This analysis examines, article by article, the content of the report for the second debate of the Protected Areas Bill. Although the document has undergone some formal adjustments, it sustains and exacerbates the risks identified in previous versions, such as the functional privatization of protected areas, the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples as stakeholders with rights, the militarization of collective territories, and the imposition of contractual mechanisms that ignore ancestral property and favor territorial dispossession.
This is a law that, rather than protecting natural heritage, reorganizes it under commercial and vertical logics, with legal tools that enable dispossession and the fragmentation of community control. This analysis dismantles these logics from a critical perspective, based on collective, constitutional, and environmental rights.
THE BILL, IN FIVE KEY POINTS
The Protected Areas Bill, presented as a tool to strengthen the environmental and economic sustainability of the national system, conceals a regressive and highly centralized regulatory architecture with technical and environmental language.
Despite mentioning principles of conservation and participation, in reality:
1. It encourages and privileges private investment and management of protected areas through discretionary contracts, legalizing a form of covert privatization;
2. It violates ancestral territorial property rights by failing to define collective territories clearly or to guarantee binding prior consultation; it is based on the logic of state ownership of protected areas and ignores ancestral ownership of territories;
3. It violates the right to self-determination and weakens community sovereignty by proposing revocable mechanisms for temporary use instead of recognizing ownership rights;
4. It allows and encourages the militarization of Indigenous Peoples’ territories, opening the door to the criminalization of communities and community guards;
5. It concentrates regulatory power in the Executive branch, without democratic oversight, binding participation, or transparency.
The proposed law does not recognize the preexistence of peoples and nationalities or their territorial rights. Although it sets forth constitutional principles, it strips them of practical meaning and opens the door to a series of legal ambiguities. We understand that the approach of this bill favors commercial and state interests over the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities. We offer our detailed observations on the new articles and the drafted bill.
Specific Observations
ARTICLE 1 (PURPOSE): A technical framework conceals the law’s economic and privatizing focus. There is no mention or guarantee of participation for Indigenous Peoples and nationalities.
Article 1. Purpose. The purpose of this law is to establish urgent economic measures to guarantee the strengthening and financial sustainability of the National System of Protected Areas, as well as to ensure environmental sustainability, biodiversity conservation, the maintenance of ecological functions, the sustainable management of protected areas, and local development.
There are no major modifications compared to previous drafts. It focuses on the economic sphere, conservation, promoting private investment, and military control of the areas, but without any guarantees of the right to participation and self-determination for Indigenous Peoples and nationalities and other collective subjects.
ARTICLE 2 (SCOPE): The ambiguous wording allows for the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from established exceptions. Without formal territorial recognition, the State can claim ownership over ancestral territories.
Article 2.- Scope.- The law shall apply throughout national territory to all natural and legal persons, public and private. The province of Galapagos and territories inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation are exempted from the provisions of the protected areas management model; those where populations with traditional customary uses, fragile ecosystems, and water recharge zones are settled. The provisions referring to the governing body of the National System of Protected Areas will be applicable to the aforementioned areas.
The difference in comparison to the original text of the bill is the exceptions, such as the one that applies to the Galapagos Islands, which has a specific law. By mentioning “populations that have traditional customary uses, fragile ecosystems, and water recharge zones,” it could be assumed that these are Indigenous Peoples, but this is not specific and leaves the regulation open to interpretation.
Another serious situation is that, by referring to Indigenous territories, a historical and essential problem is not resolved: the state’s obligation to directly and immediately apply the right to legal security of ancestral territories in protected areas, despite international and constitutional obligations, which establish that these territories do not belong to the State, but to the communities that have historically inhabited them coexist with them. Therefore, the State is obligated to demarcate and issue property titles. However, to date, no Indigenous people have formally recognized their territory within the so-called SNAP (National Plan for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples). Instead, the State has imposed power on certain territories, unilaterally “granting use” to ancestral owners to support conservation work, contrary to the historical reality of their territories, and even determining the extent of an ancestral territory. All of this perpetuates the violations of rights and life and the imposition of criteria, restrictions, and violations of the rights of legitimate and legal owners.
Here we find the first ambiguity: What criteria would be used to recognize populations described in the law? Without these criteria, they could easily be excluded from the Law’s exceptions.
ARTICLE 3 (PURPOSE): Although it mentions participatory governance, it does not establish how to guarantee it or how to recognize Indigenous territories. “Natural heritage” remains under state control.
Article 3.- Purpose.- The purpose of this law is to guarantee environmental sustainability, the conservation of biodiversity, and the sustainability of ecosystems that make up Ecuador’s natural heritage, as well as local development, by strengthening the management of protected areas, their protection, recovery, and restoration. The implementation of participatory governance mechanisms must be encouraged, and respect for the rights of nature and the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples and nationalities must be guaranteed.
The article expressly establishes the purpose as the conservation of biodiversity; it ignores and renders invisible the existence and rights of communities and peoples within protected areas. And although this draft mentions Indigenous Peoples for the first time and speaks of seeking “participatory governance” mechanisms, it once again disregards the territorial rights established in the Constitution in Article 57 and developed by the Constitutional Court, based on the logic of the plurinational and intercultural State and the understanding of Indigenous territory as the essential space for physical and spiritual survival and cultural identity, not merely as an element of possession and use. This requires establishing mechanisms that respect the autonomy and governance of their historical territories, not just “participatory governance.” This expression once again subjugates peoples and their histories to the power and decision-making of the State and the current government, and it seriously threatens collective rights.
If the State has not recognized Indigenous territories in protected areas through property titles, how will the implementation of participatory governance mechanisms be guaranteed? The burden is placed on peoples and nationalities to demonstrate ownership of their rights to the State. It is evident, then, that participation mechanisms can remain mere spaces for socialization and not the processes of prior, free, and informed consultation, as they should be.
ARTICLE 4 (INSTITUTIONALITY): The article enables private management despite using language that formally denies privatization. It does not define the composition of the new national agency, concentrating power in the Executive branch.
Art. 4.- Institutional Framework.- Protected areas shall be governed by the directives, guidelines, and sectoral environmental regulations established by the National Environmental Authority. The President of the Republic shall create the National Protected Areas Service as a public, technical, and specialized agency that shall exercise the powers of regulation, control, and sanction of protected areas, under the leadership of the National Environmental Authority. It shall be endowed with administrative, operational, and financial autonomy, with its own legal identity and legal capacity. The management and administration model for protected areas may opt for direct management by the State in accordance with current constitutional and legal regulations; or with private managers through contractual administration mechanisms; associative mechanisms; or other mechanisms permitted by current constitutional and legal regulations. Under no circumstances shall the privatization of protected areas be permitted.
It ratifies what is already established in the Environmental Code: that the Ministry of the Environment has the authority to make decisions within protected areas, that is, it has the final say, and as the environmental authority, the MAATE (Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment, Water and Transportation) can enter into contracts with private parties to optimize their management and administer the territories.
The article is very ambiguous because it doesn’t establish a modality. Although it states that the privatization of protected areas will not be permitted under any circumstances, it is essentially doing so. First, they are proclaiming themselves the owners of the protected areas, ignoring the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and finally, they are allow the authority to delegate its work to private parties. In conclusion, they are privatizing.
Additionally, the composition of the so-called “National System of Protected Areas” remains undefined. It doesn’t specify how or by whom it will be composed, which opens the door to it becoming a centralized body under the control of the Executive Branch. This, coupled with the possibility of delegating management to private entities, implies a covert privatization that could translate into the legalization of territorial dispossession of communities and nationalities, disguised as co-management mechanisms.
ARTICLE 5 (TRUST): The trust lacks community participation mechanisms and may be managed at the discretion of the government. Direct access and concrete benefits for Indigenous Peoples are not guaranteed.
Art. 5.- Trust.- In accordance with current legislation, the competent authority may establish a public trust for the management of the National System of Protected Areas, in accordance with the regulations of the National System of Public Finance. This trust may be funded from the following sources:
1. National or international donations;
2. Loan proceeds;
3. Project returns; and
4. Other income generated within the framework of activities carried out in the management of protected areas and permitted by public law, such as fees, rates, or other legally established mechanisms.
The public trust fund for the management of protected areas is mentioned as a resource-raising tool, but it does not guarantee access or participation for communities within protected areas. It is unclear how they will benefit or participate, or under what conditions they will be able to access funds or projects financed by this instrument. Furthermore, it establishes that the details of its implementation will be defined by regulation, leaving regulation to the discretion of the President of the Republic, without legislative oversight or prior consultation. This centralization entails a high risk of exclusion and political misuse of the trust fund.
A trust fund is a financial fund established for a specific purpose, which in this case would be the conservation of protected areas. The previous draft stipulated a percentage policy, but this latest document does not provide any criteria in this regard and continues to ignore the participation of Indigenous Peoples, who are the guardians of these territories; nor does it establish whether or not they will have access to the trust fund.
ARTICLE 6 (ARMED INTERVENTION): The militarization of protected areas is authorized without clear criteria, which represents a threat to communities defending their territory or exercising autonomous surveillance.
Art. 6.- Intervention of the National Police and the Armed Forces for the Protection of the National System of Protected Areas.- For the management of protected areas where criminal groups are present, the competent authority may request the intervention of the National Police or the Armed Forces in part or all of the protected area, temporarily until the threat is neutralized and normal conditions are restored; this is without prejudice to the management of park rangers. Control in protected areas which are difficult to access will be monitored with surveillance technology.
The National Police, the Armed Forces, and the National Environmental Authority, within the scope of their respective powers, will jointly develop a Comprehensive Security Plan for the National System of Protected Areas, as well as specific intervention protocols. This plan must be updated periodically, at least once a year. The Comprehensive Security Plan and protocols must ensure strict compliance with Section 20 of Article 57 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador; however, in the event of the presence of organized crime or organized armed groups in protected areas, the intervention of the security forces will be necessary to protect the sovereignty and population of these areas.
The article formally opens the possibility of militarizing protected areas by allowing the intervention of the National Police and the Armed Forces. This represents a risk for communities, especially those that oppose the declaration of “public use” zones. This provision can lead to the criminalization of community governance and territorial defense mechanisms and directly affect communities’ Indigenous guards.
The lack of a clear definition of the duration of such military presence/action and of what constitutes a “criminal group” or what criteria will be used to authorize military intervention leaves the door open to arbitrary actions.
The intervention of the Public Force has been maintained in all drafts, and the right to Free, Prior, and Informed consent remains unrecognized. In fact, the person authorizing entry into these territories is a “competent authority,” who does not explain which one it refers to.
It also fails to specify what constitutes a criminal group or what crimes are associated with these criminal groups, which could open the door to the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples under this law. And while it mentions respect for the constitutional obligation of Article 57.20, it does not include the mandatory compliance criterion established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and by the Constitutional Court itself, which states that military activities in collective territories require consultation and/or consent. In other words, it opens the door to the violation of this right, despite the fact that, in theory, though in a completely insufficient manner, respect for the right is mentioned.
ARTICLE 7 (PERMITTED ACTIVITIES): The proposed model ignores traditional community practices and promotes a commercial view of the use of protected areas, opening the door to dispossession.
Art. 7.- Activities in protected areas.- The management and administration model for protected areas, for the use and enjoyment of citizens, must address the following objectives:
1. Preserve and conserve natural resources and provide safe and educational experiences for visitors, and promote sustainable development within protected areas.
2. Preserve the flora, fauna, geological formations, and unique landscapes of protected areas, taking into account the importance of restoring ecosystems and protecting water sources.
3. Provide a natural experience for visitors in interpretation centers, trails, campgrounds, and tourist services, while also promoting safety and seeking to minimize human impact on protected areas.
4. Offer environmental education programs to inform visitors about the natural and cultural history of the protected area, as well as the importance of its conservation.
5. Implement sustainable practices within the protected area, including waste reduction, the use of renewable technologies, and emissions reduction.
6. Promote authoritative scientific research to better understand its ecosystems and how they are affected by climate change and other human influences.
To meet these objectives, projects may be developed focused on:
a) Infrastructure maintenance;
b) Species conservation;
c) Restoration;
d) Guidance;
e) Food;
f) Lodging;
g) Transportation;
h) Construction, improvement, and operation of infrastructure;
i) Monitoring of biodiversity and its ecosystem services.
Projects will be specific, delimited, and non-invasive of protected areas. No project or activity will allow the privatization of protected areas. The areas of protected areas where activities are carried out will be those designated for public use, tourism, and recreation, based on the management plan for each protected area, issued by the competent authority.
For the execution of the projects referred to in this article, the corresponding administrative environmental authorizations must be obtained. For the application of this law, under no circumstances will the implementation of plans and/or programs for the prospecting, exploitation, and commercialization of non-renewable resources located within the territories of protected areas be permitted. In the case of protected areas located within the scope of the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Planning and Development of the Amazon Special Territorial District, the provisions and preferential rights established in the aforementioned law will be complied with, prioritizing the implementation of models where local communities are not only service providers but also co-participants in decision-making.
Under no circumstances will the projects represent ownership of the territory or exclusive use of the resources found there.
Although the article mentions sustainable activities (tourism, guiding, infrastructure, etc.), it does not recognize or integrate the practices of the ancestral communities that inhabit these territories, nor does it acknowledge the impacts that these activities generate on the territories, individuals, and collectives. By establishing that these activities will be carried out in areas that will be “classified” as public use, territorial dispossession is legalized, especially in those places where communities exercise ancestral possession. This state-imposed classification ignores preexisting uses and customs and enables intervention without consent.
All the objectives of protected areas, according to this article, are commercial, economic, and intended to be developed by private companies, demonstrating once again that the purpose of this bill continues to be privatization. None of the objectives outlined for protected areas mention Indigenous Peoples, much less guaranteeing their physical and cultural survival and enabling them to develop their sense of belonging and collective rights.
Although it is said that in no case will plans be approved for the exploitation, commercialization, or prospecting of non-renewable natural resources found in the territories of indigenous communes, communities, peoples, and nationalities, the truth is that the State has not recognized these territories as Indigenous, nor has it limited what the State understands to be the territory of a community, contravening the constitutional principle that it is the same community who, due to historical ties and use, can determine what its territory is, and therefore could displace them to give that territory to itself.
ARTICLE 8 (AGREEMENTS WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLES): The proposed “cooperation agreements” do not recognize territorial ownership, consolidate a hierarchical and revocable relationship, and exclude the right to self-determination.
Art. 8. Cooperation agreements with Indigenous communes, communities, peoples, or nationalities. Without prejudice to the fact that Indigenous communes, communities, peoples, or nationalities may participate in the provisions of the previous article, the competent authority may enter into an agreement with these communities for the temporary use of infrastructure and spaces within the state and decentralized autonomous subsystems located within a protected area, for the provision of certain services.
The article proposes that communities may access “cooperation agreements” for the temporary use of infrastructure or spaces within protected areas. This disregards their territorial rights and reinforces the idea that Indigenous Peoples are mere users or revocable beneficiaries, and not rights holders. By failing to provide legal certainty or binding conditions, this perpetuates the unequal relationship between the State and communities.
This is yet another attempt by the Ministry of the Environment to disregard Indigenous Peoples’ land ownership through titling and instead use temporary, revocable, and conditional agreements, which do not guarantee legal security over the territories. Indigenous Peoples are mentioned, but Afro communities are left out.
PROVISIONS: The draft law contains three general provisions, five transitional provisions, seven amending provisions, and the final provision. Of these, the following is particularly noteworthy:
General Provision THIRD.- For the development of projects located in the territories of indigenous communes, communities, peoples, and nationalities, considering that they do not include exploration, exploitation, and commercialization of non-renewable resources, the provisions of sections 5, 7, 8, and 9 of Article 57 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador must be guaranteed. Similarly, compliance with section 17 of the aforementioned article will be guaranteed prior to the issuance of any regulatory act by the governing body of the National System of Protected Areas related to the subject matter of this law.
The provision mandates something that the proposal itself violates. It speaks of the need to carry out free, prior, and informed consultation processes for any project carried out in Indigenous Peoples’ territories. However, this same project should have gone through a pre-legislative consultation process. It also speaks of respecting the communities’ decisions in the event of a “reasoned refusal,” but who and how is this defined? If the ministry itself is responsible for determining whether the refusal is justified or not, they can also decide what best suits their interests.
This list of constitutional rights entails serious violations of those same rights: it speaks of consultation on projects in territories, however, until now, the State has been the one who has determined what the territory of an indigenous community is, and not based on the actual history of each community. It also establishes that consultation would be applied when these projects are developed in the territories. This seriously violates the international obligation and the constitutional criterion that consultation is mandatory when a decision or project could affect the territory or the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Likewise, the exclusive reference to consultation, limiting it to “any normative act,” restricts the international obligation to consult communities, peoples, and nationalities in a prior, free, and informed manner before issuing a rule or making any decision that affects or may affect collective rights. In other words, despite listing a series of rights, the text itself restricts and limits them, such that they are actually violated by the unconstitutional restriction and limitation.
Many other provisions incorporate issues that have nothing to do with protected areas, such as those related to debt and interest forgiveness in the first general provision, the first transitory provision, the fourth, and the fifth provisions, which refer to the payment of debts of public companies with the transfer of assets.
The amending provisions mandate reforms to the Human Mobility Law, the Tax Reform Law, and the Public Service Law. The Human Mobility Law defines who is considered a tourist, the tax reform refers to the reduction of the VAT rate during holidays, and the Public Service Law apparently corrects the recently approved “Public Integrity Law”—also an urgent economic law—which was questioned for raising the retirement age. The seventh amending provision reads:
SEVENTH.- In the second paragraph of Article 81 of the Organic Law of Public Service, replace the phrase “from the age of sixty-five (65)” with the following phrase: “from the age of sixty (60).”
In this section, the Protected Areas Law contains flaws similar to other urgent economic laws, in which unrelated topics are added to avoid carrying out the proper procedure.
Final Considerations
The final provisions of the bill reveal more clearly the power structure that this law seeks to consolidate: a highly centralized, discretionary system lacking effective democratic oversight. Despite the technical and environmentalist language, what is established is a legal framework that leaves the executive branch exclusively responsible for defining, through regulations, fundamental aspects such as the application of prior consultation, trust management, and the categorization of uses in ancestral territories. This not only calls into question the collective rights and legal security of communities but also creates the risk of authoritarian governance of natural heritage which lacks transparency, guarantees of binding participation, and clear limits for dispossession.
Prior Consultation and Article 57, paragraph 7: A central concern persists throughout the bill: it does not clearly establish the basis on which Articles 57.7 and 17 of the Constitution, which guarantee the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consultation, will be applied. The MAATE has used the existence of “use and management agreements” as an exclusionary criterion, without recognizing ancestral property rights. This implies a high risk that consultation processes will be regulated via regulations, where the Executive reserves the right to continue with projects despite majority opposition, as has occurred in other laws.
Regulations, a final trap: The law establishes that the Executive must issue regulations for its implementation within 45 days. This secondary rule is not subject to legislative oversight or binding participation. Therefore, it becomes a potential tool to consolidate the law’s most regressive provisions: allowing de facto privatization, limiting community participation, restricting access to resources, and dispossessing communities under a cloak of legality. Herein lies the structural trap of this law: an ambiguous legal architecture that places all regulatory power in the hands of the President, without guarantees of collective rights or mechanisms for democratic oversight.
