In 2022, Kichwa-Kañari farmers filed a legal injunction to stop construction of the Loma Larga mine project in the
Ecuadorian Andes. Upheld by a lower court, the ruling was challenged by the Ministry of Environment, Water,
and Energy Transition (MAATE) and Dundee Precious Metals (DPM), a Toronto-based mining company. The
legal batle is the culmination of a decades-long dispute among farmers, environmentalists, the state, and the
mining company, over the future of the Kimsacocha páramo—a watershed that holds gold and copper
deposits.