In Ecuador, expanding banana plantations threaten a 3,000-hectare biodiversity reserve known as Las Garzas Wetland. Las Garzas – meaning ‘Heron’ in English – is characterised by interconnected aquatic ecosystems, larger bodies of water and streams connected above and below ground. Las Garzas is a diverse and thriving ecosystem, with the wetlands providing a source of water and nutrition to a variety of animal and plant species including turtles and lizards, but is also the source of subsistence and food sovereignty of hundreds of rural families.
Ecuador produces more bananas for export than any other nation and in December 2021, Argentinian company Export Jaime S.A. entered the wetlands to clear and drain the land for more banana production. Local civil society organisations are campaigning against the uncontrolled spread of monocrop banana production systems in Las Garzas, and in January 2022, the Ministry of the Environment agreed with them – but the drainage of the wetlands has continued. According to the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Ecuador,
This is one of the most fertile areas of the country, which is why, for decades, it has been a site of dispute for agro-industrial capital. During this time, the industrial agricultural model has been transforming the agrarian landscape, diversified peasant agriculture has been replaced by contract agriculture or by large extensions of monocultures of cocoa, cane, banana, oil palm, among others.
The uncontrolled expansion of the agricultural frontier has even reached areas of fragile and threatened ecosystems, such as wetlands and other water sources, gradually causing their disappearance or conditioning in their ecological processes, generating negative impacts for both nature and populations. peasant women who interact with them and who, thanks to them, guarantee their right to Food.
To defend Las Garzas, Actionaid France has launched a petition, stating their concern that the vegetation and crops around where the future banana plantation is planned to be are dying, that animals who have lost their habitat have been forced to leave the land and that livestock are struggling to feed themselves, with the consequence that families have been forced to sell their land at low prices – which could ultimately be transformed into more banana monoculture plantations.
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