In an interview published in the Vatican newspaper, Patricia Gualinga, the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon, was asked, “Do nature, animals, and trees have rights comparable to human rights?”
She replied:
The Constitution of Ecuador recognizes that they have rights: not as individuals but as ecosystems. Obviously, we are talking about fragile ecosystems that can be destroyed: therefore, they have rights… legal rights. Our communities, despite feeding off nature, have internal rules that allow us not to transgress beyond what is permitted. The right of other living beings is to continue to reproduce, to survive, and not to be destroyed and exterminated.
“We indigenous peoples have been on the front lines of resistance and defense of these spaces,” she said in response to a question about fossil fuels. “If we can still say that the Amazon exists, it is thanks to the indigenous peoples. This has been our strength, and for this we have suffered consequences: we have been stigmatized, criminalized, persecuted, killed.”
The Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon was founded in 2020, following the Amazon synod.