On September 29, the Associated Press reported that Ecuador’s new constitution would “significantly expand leftist President Rafael Correa’s powers.” It wasn’t until the end of a 15-paragraph article that the AP mentioned the new constitution – approved by 65 percent of voters – “guarantees free education through university and social security benefits for stay-at-home mothers.” Also missing from the AP’s report: any mention that Ecuador’s voters had just ratified the world’s first “eco-constitution,” a pioneering document that, for the first time in human history, extends “inalienable rights to nature.”

Not too long ago, Ecuador would have seemed an unlikely nation to become the birthplace of Earth’s first green constitution. To service its massive debt to US creditors, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund forced Ecuador to open its pristine Amazon forests to foreign oil companies. Nearly 30 years of drilling enriched ChevronTexaco, desecrated the northern Amazon, and utterly failed to improve the lives of millions of poor Ecuadoreans. Amazon Watch estimates that Texaco damaged 2.5 million acres of rainforest, left the landscape pitted with 600 toxic waste pits, and polluted the rivers and streams that some 30,000 people rely on. Cancer rates in the area where Texaco operated are 130 percent of the national norm, and childhood leukemia occurs at a rate four times higher than in other parts of Ecuador.

In 1990, the Siona, Secoya, Achuar, Huaorani, and other Indigenous forest-dwellers won title to three million acres of traditional forestland, but the government retained rights to the minerals and oil. In November 1993, Indigenous communities filed a $1 billion environmental lawsuit against Texaco, and Indigenous groups subsequently demanded a 15-year moratorium on drilling, environmental reparations, corporate indemnification, and a share of oil profits.

In 1997, when Ecuador’s pro-US government announced plans to rev up oil exploitation by a third, all eyes turned to the Yasuni Rainforest, home to the country’s largest oil reserve – estimated at 1 billion barrels. The Yasuni is also home to rare jaguars, endangered white-bellied spider monkeys, spectacled bears, and Indigenous tribes protected by international treaty.

In 2007, the new government of President Rafael Correa announced plans to halt oil exploration in the Yasuni, an action Amazon Watch called “a giant first step toward breaking Ecuador’s dependence on oil.” Correa’s proposal marked a shift to making renewable energy the new path for Ecuador’s economic future. The language in the new constitution takes the new policy several steps further.