In a sweeping move to consolidate power, Daniel Noboa’s elimination of Ecuador’s Environment Ministry opens the door to extraction—putting Indigenous territories, biodiversity and the climate at risk
Quito, Ecuador — July 25, 2025 – On Thursday, July 24, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa issued Executive Order 60, eliminating the Ministry of the Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition (MAATE) and transferring its functions to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. This decision effectively dismantles Ecuador’s environmental oversight system, concentrating power in the very institution responsible for promoting oil and mining—industries at the heart of Noboa’s plan to boost foreign investment and drive economic growth.
Executive Order 60 is part of a sweeping government restructuring that reduces Ecuador’s national cabinet from 20 to 14 ministries. Among the institutions eliminated are the Ministry of Women and Human Rights and other key agencies responsible for social protections. These changes represent a profound weakening of public institutions and an extreme rollback of rights—including for Indigenous peoples, whose constitutional guarantees to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, self-determination, ancestral territory, and the protection of Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation are now more vulnerable than ever.
By eliminating Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment, the government is undoing decades of progress and reveals its clear intent to abandon its constitutional and international responsibilities to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the environment. It puts hard-won rights at greater risk: “We have been demanding that the Ministry of the Environment comply with a court order to title our ancestral territory within protected areas—an essential step to ensure legal security for Indigenous lands”, says Justino Piaguaje, a Siekopai leader at the forefront of his people’s battle to reclaim their ancestral homeland. “Now, with the Ministry placed under the authority of extractive interests, we are deeply concerned that compliance will become even more difficult. But we will not stop fighting for the recognition and titling of our territory.”
The scrambling of regulations and the broader dismantling of state institutions expose a deeper pattern: while the most vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous Peoples and nationalities, women, and children suffering from chronic malnutrition, are increasingly exposed, marginalized, and unprotected, economic and political power sectors—including the military and irregular armed groups—are being fortified.
Since taking office for a second term, Noboa’s administration has rapidly pushed forward a series of legal changes aimed at advancing its neoliberal economic and political agenda without restrictions. These changes align with the financial plan supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which, in its second review of Ecuador’s current agreement (published July 18), promotes fiscal and structural reforms to attract private investment in sectors deemed to have “high potential” such as mining, hydrocarbons, and energy.
“Whenever there is talk of development for the State or for all Ecuadorians, we Indigenous Peoples are the most affected, because we continue to live in these territories. We are returning to the rubber era, when outsiders came in and did as they pleased,” says Alicia Salazar, a Siona leader and member of the leadership council of the Indigenous non-profit organization, Ceibo Alliance.
This promotion of extractive industries highlights a historic pattern of the IMF and World Bank, which have espoused double standards regarding compliance with international obligations to protect human rights. International analyses, such as those by the Bretton Woods Project and Dr. Eric Toussaint, spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, have long criticized institutions like the IMF and World Bank for imposing loan policies that erode democratic governance, violate human rights, and damage the environment in debtor countries.
In particular, encouraging private investment in extractivist industries will place ancestral Indigenous territories, biodiversity and the climate at great risk. These territories hold some of the best conserved forests in the country and are protected by constitutional rights that Indigenous communities have fought for over decades. They are also where extractivist industries impose their projects most often. To encourage their destruction in the name of capital market development is a striking departure for a country once lauded as a global pioneer for recognizing Nature as a subject of rights.
“Just two weeks ago, Ecuador faced international backlash for attempting to privatize the management of its protected areas—handing over decision-making power on national heritage to national and foreign corporations, while denying the rights of Indigenous communities, whose ancestral lands were unilaterally designated as protected areas. Now, with the elimination of MAATE, the current Ecuadorian government has made its intentions unmistakably clear: to not only to commodify nature and Indigenous rights but to fully subordinate them to the most aggressive and destructive industries in the country, such as oil and mining,” said Jorge Acero, human rights lawyer at Amazon Frontlines.
The political, economic, and social cost of these measures could be among the most severe in Ecuador’s recent history. They represent an escalation in human rights violations, increased violence, and the forced displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands—all in the interest of industries that claim to drive the country’s economic development.
“In this context, many social organizations, communities, and human rights defenders are invoking their constitutional rights to protest and resist. We are deeply concerned that this government will respond with greater stigmatization, criminalization, and abusive use of criminal law and force. It is critical that the international community—especially the bodies of the Universal and Inter-American human rights systems—remain vigilant and remind all Ecuadorian institutions of their obligations to protect and uphold human rights, exercise due diligence, and ensure the safety of defenders of human rights, communities, and nature,” said María Espinosa, human rights lawyer at Amazon Frontlines.
Press Contact:
Luisana Aguilar
National Press Coordinator, Amazon Frontlines
+593 99 924 0129
luisana@amazonfrontlines.org
