Inside Climate News: Ecuador Court Says Coastal Marine Ecosystems Have Intrinsic Value—and Legal Rights

This case, decided in December 2024, is major victory for the rights of nature.

As journalist Katie Surma explains, “The Constitutional Court of Ecuador ruled that coastal marine ecosystems have legal rights that must be protected, potentially requiring stricter limits on human activities like industrial fishing.”

As Kurma writes, “Those ecosystems, the court said, have a right to maintain their natural “life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes” and the Ecuadorian government must adopt sufficient protective measures to ensure those “vital processes” persist. 

Hugo Echeverría - Quito-based attorney for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) - explains in the article that the Constitutional Court ruling will “be used as a precedent to challenge an increasing array of human activities affecting Ecuador’s marine life, like aquaculture and oil and gas operations.” 

Read the full article on Inside Climate News here.