By Captain Alex Cornelisson, Director of Sea Shepherd
Galapagos
Last week, the National Judicial Authority of Ecuador invited
the conservation sector of Galapagos to attend a meeting to analyze
the need to create a specialized judicial system in Galapagos for
environmental matters. As one of its members and the initiator of
the judicial reform in Galapagos, Sea Shepherd's legal advisor
attended the meeting held in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
The main subject of this meeting was to discuss the creation of
an environmental judiciary in Galapagos. For Sea Shepherd, it was
an important opportunity to explain the need to have a specialized
judge ruling over environmental cases being prosecuted in the
Galapagos Islands.
Since 2010, Sea Shepherd Galapagos has been advocating for the
creation of the first-in-the-world judiciary
specializing in nature rights. In time, this initiative has
received the support of many other conservation activists. This
idea is strongly supported by the Constitution of Ecuador (the
first-in-the-world recognizing rights to nature) and also by a new
law that calls for the actual establishment of such specialized
judiciaries ¨at any time and in compliance with the constitutional
mandate."
After years of work in the Galapagos Islands, Sea Shepherd has
witnessed just how challenging law enforcement can be in areas such
as the Galapagos Marine Reserve. We believe that a specialized
judiciary will be a huge improvement when it comes to addressing
such challenges. We believe that the local judicial system not only
could be, but also should be, an entity that can really make the
difference in effectively enforcing marine environmental law.
For this reason Sea Shepherd congratulates the National Judicial
Authority for having made such an important step towards addressing
environmental issues, not only in Galapagos, but also in other
regions of the country.
