Ecuador Eliminates Environment Ministry, Folds What's Left Into Energy & Mining Ministry

Ecuador announced this month that it’s eliminating the Ministry of Environment and folding its responsibilities into the Ministry of Energy and Mines — a move that could prove disastrous for conservation efforts, critics say. President Daniel Noboa announced the mergers of more than a dozen ministries as part of a larger effort to cut back on public spending. But conservationists say the country needs an independent Ministry of Environment to protect fragile forest ecosystems from mining, oil and gas, and other forms of development.

“It’s not a simple institutional reorganization,” the Ecuadorian Coordinator of Organizations for the Defense of Nature and the Environment, a coalition of green groups, said in a statement. “It represents an unprecedented setback in environmental protection and constitutes a direct attack on the rights of nature, the rights of present and future generations, and the constitutional framework of Ecuador.”

The presidential decree, published July 24, builds on an institutional reform plan introduced last year to limit spending and improve “efficiency and effectiveness” in the government — part of a larger effort to revive the national economy.

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Critics say folding the Ministry of Environment into the Ministry of Energy and Mines is a conscious decision by the government to appease international creditors and prioritize GDP growth over nature. It could create serious conflicts of interest in the future as the country tries to rebound economically, they said. “Who will safeguard the rights of nature when they get in the way of mining or oil interests?” YASunidos, an anti-extractives group, said in a statement. “This is not merely an administrative decision — it is a political act that deepens the extractivist model, further endangers the conditions for a dignified life, and blocks the possibility of imagining a future where life, not capital, is the focus.”

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https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/ecuador-axes-environment-ministry-as-officials-scramble-to-revive-economy/