Rights
2008 Constitution recognising rights of nature and buen vivir
Ecuador's 2008 Constitution was the first in the world to grant enforceable rights to nature (derechos de la naturaleza), alongside the Andean concept of sumak kawsay or buen vivir. It creates a Corte Constitucional and a broad set of constitutional guarantees including acción de protección, habeas corpus, habeas data and the acción extraordinaria de protección against judicial decisions.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Unitary state with national constitutional jurisdiction
- Deadline — Acción de protección: no fixed limit but must be brought without undue delay
- Deadline — Acción extraordinaria de protección: 20 days from the final judicial decision
Governing law
- Constitución de la República del Ecuador (2008) (arts. 71-74)
- Ley Orgánica de Garantías Jurisdiccionales y Control Constitucional
In practice
The rights-of-nature provisions are not merely aspirational: Ecuadorian courts have applied them substantively, most prominently in the Los Cedros cloud-forest judgment of 2021 where the Constitutional Court held that mining concessions violated the rights of the ecosystem itself. The acción extraordinaria de protección is also notable because it permits constitutional challenge to final judgments of the ordinary courts.