This is the first of a three-part series on underreported issues involving Canadian mining companies and Indigenous peoples or local communities. Read part one here.

Shrouded in the lush vegetation of the páramo, the Andean tundra landscape, the quiet wetlands and moorlands of Quimsacocha in southern Ecuador are at the center of a dispute. Hortensia Zhagüi, a water defender and leader of the Tarqui community in the country’s Cuenca canton, said members of her community have campaigned against a mining project on these lands for the last three decades.

“All the páramos, everything that is our life, are about to be destroyed,” Zhagüi, who is also a member of the Kimsacocha Women’s School of Agroecology, told Mongabay by phone. “That’s why we’re fighting to defend it. Our principles are formed this way because our parents and ancestors also preserved these beautiful places.”

For 30 years, the protected páramo of Quimsacocha, at an elevation of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), between the cantons of Cuenca and Girón in Azuay province, has faced the imminent threat of underground mining. The Loma Larga mine project, owned by Canada-based Dundee Precious Metals Inc., is still prospecting for gold, silver and copper. It spans 7,960 hectares (19,669 acres) and has plans to extract 3,000 metric tons of metal-containing ore per day, and more than 14 million tons over a 12-year project life.

According to the Loma Larga project’s technical report, the project will provide jobs and training for locals, and will also ensure the protection of water sources and the environment.

Despite this, more than 80% of the Indigenous and local communities in Girón and Cuenca voted against the project and against mining activity in referendums held in 2019 and 2021. In February 2022, some communities even filed a complaint against the environment ministry and the mining company for allegedly violating their right to free, prior and informed consultation.

In July that year, the provincial court ruled in favor of the Federation of Campesino and Indigenous Organizations of Azuay (FOA) and granted protective measures to the páramo. It also ruled that Dundee must suspend mining in Quimsacocha, and that the environment ministry must conduct a biodiversity study and consultation with the communities.

But according to residents, these measures were never properly implemented. Meanwhile, the company moving ahead with its project.

“Our comrades and brothers in the struggle have been fighting for a long time and things are getting worse,” said Zenaida Yasacama, an Indigenous woman activist with the Kichwa people of Pakayaku and vice president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE). “[The court] has taken steps to suspend the project, but practically nothing has happened under this government.”

Dundee, the environment ministry, and the mining ministry didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication. Dundee wrote in a company report in November 2024 that it’s fulfilling the requirements of the 2022 ruling.

“In October 2024, the baseline ecosystem and water studies, as required by the ruling, were submitted to the court by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition,” the report said. “On October 31, 2024, the environmental consultation process was completed, with local communities voting overall in favor of the development of the project.”

Whether the company actually carried out consultation and obtained consent is disputed, with some local leaders calling the process “fraudulent.” Zhagüi told Mongabay there were consultations, but “everyone said no.” In 2024, the environment ministry did attempt to hold a consultation in one community, but it was unwanted, residents told Mongabay. They accused the government of dismissing their rights and self-determination as well as excluding the many other communities in the project’s area of influence.

The state gathered three small groups of farmers from the cantons of San Fernando, Cuenca and Cristal Aguarongos who were in favor of the project, said one resident, and who the ministry considered affected by the project.

Mounting pressure

According to a 2024 report by a public utilities company, the páramos are a recharge zone for the Yanuncay, Tarqui, Tomebamba, Machángara and Norcay rivers that originate there. Around 135,000 people in Cuenca depend on these water sources for consumption, further supporting around 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of agricultural, livestock and dairy production.

Zhagüi told Mongabay that hundreds of families, including Indigenous and campesino communities in Tarqui, depend on the Quimsacocha for water that is sacred to them.

Although Dundee’s risk assessment says no harm is posed by the project to the páramo and the connected groundwater, an independent analysis of the environmental impact study highlights potential risks with its storage of 5.5 million metric tons of mining waste, including the risk of releasing high levels of arsenic and other heavy metal into the environment.

Throughout these years of community resistance, Zhagüi said she’s lost count of how many people have been jailed for protesting against the mine, or threatened and attacked by fellow community members in favor of the project. “We have always fought with the police and the military, our comrades have been imprisoned and sentenced to up to four or five years in prison.”

In 2010, Carlos Pérez, Federico Guzmán and Efraín Arpi were arrested and charged for sabotage and illegal obstruction of roads in connection with a protest. The sabotage charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence.

Despite the legal rulings to suspend mining operations in Quimsacocha, community members say Dundee has implemented arbitrary measures to meet its mining interests. “The Ecuadorian government is never with us and that’s the problem,” Zhagüi said. “It’s been very tough. Many people have given up and others have died [from old age]. They’ve divided communities, divided families.”

What’s at stake?

Community members and experts say that mining in these areas that intersect Quimsacocha National Recreation Area and its three lagoons, which form part of the Macizo del Cajas Biosphere Reserve, could seriously harm the ecosystem and species that inhabit the key areas.

The Andean condor (Vultur gryphus), a species categorized as endangered on Ecuador’s red list, with fewer than 150 individuals in the country, remains at risk of mining contamination in Quimsacocha, where the species forages and nests, according to a 2019 public letter sent to Dundee.

“The condor has its nests there, and with that loud sound and water pollution imposed by mining, it’s going to disappear completely,” Zhagüi told Mongabay.

For women like Gloria Velez, a community member from Girón who has spent years defending the páramos under threat from Loma Larga, the sacred lagoons and water sources of Quimsacocha are not just what feeds and nurtures their farming and food systems. “It’s somewhere we [women] go to recharge ourselves with energy, strength and restore our connection with nature and our lands,” Velez said. “As community members, we feel there are many impacts of mining that are not openly talked about or consulted with us.”

Ernesto Delgado Fernandez, director of the postgraduate program renewable natural resources at the Politécnica Salesiana University in Cuenca, told Mongabay by email that the fungi found in Quimsacocha are filamentous, meaning they’re characterized by long, thread-like structures. These fungi are important because they help decompose organic matter and improve the area’s soil fertility, he said.

“It is important to note that the loss of some fungal species, for example, in Quimsacocha will lead to the increase of others that will become tolerant to the disturbed environment, causing an imbalance in the ecosystem and consequentially the loss of biodiversity,” he told Mongabay. This will have effects beyond the 7,960-hectare (19,669-acre) mining area, Delgado said.

Given that many mining concessions in Ecuador are located in environmentally sensitive areas, Delgado said the mining issue must be observed and addressed from an environmental sustainability perspective.

A recently published study found that the two Quimsacocha lakes harbor a high diversity of phytoplankton, which are bioindicators of water quality and environmental conditions, “highlighting the need to implement conservation and sustainable management measures in these areas.”

Ongoing resistance

Community members who plant native species around Quimsacocha, such as quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), say Dundee workers in páramo areas have planted nonnative pine trees as part of the company’s forestation project, and visit the lagoon areas with nonnative animals, including horses, which graze and defecate in the area.

Canada is one of Ecuador’s largest foreign investors, with C$1.8 billion ($1.3 billion) in mining assets in the country. Both countries recently signed a free-trade agreement that has raised concerns among Indigenous peoples who say it will lead to large-scale oil and mining expansion.

The main point of contention in the agreement is the so-called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In the event of unfavorable local legislation or permit denials, this mechanism would allow Canadian companies to sue Ecuador in a private tribunal rather than in the domestic courts. Yasacama, the Indigenous activist, said this will prevent Ecuador from implementing necessary environmental policies and encourage Canadian mining development in the country, impacting Indigenous peoples and their lands.

“That’s death to us [Indigenous peoples], which deeply worries us,” Yasacama told Mongabay.

Zhagüi, echoing Yasacama, said they are “never going to accept mining projects that poison our water and lands.”

“It wouldn’t be worth accepting for the sake of our future generations,” she said. “Because if we do, how will they live? What good will there be left to live for?”

Banner image: Graphic by Emilie Languedoc/Mongabay with images courtesy of Walking with the Stars Collective and Hortencia Zhagüi.

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Citations:
Delgado-Fernández, E., Nicola, L., Covarrubias, S. A., Girometta, C. E., & Valdez-Tenezaca, A. (2024). Fungal diversity in an undisturbed Andean páramo soil in Quimsacocha (Ecuador). Journal of Fungi, 10(9), 623. doi:10.3390/jof10090623

Delgado-Fernández, E., Cruz, D., Ayavaca, R., Benítez, Á., & Hernández, B. (2025). Microalgal diversity as bioindicators for assessing and sustaining water quality in the high mountain lakes of Quimsacocha, Azuay, Ecuador. Sustainability, 17(4), 1620. doi:10.3390/su17041620

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