With the third-largest oil reserves in South America, Ecuador is home to fossil fuel resources that foreign companies, and consumers, want to extract. Nina Gualinga, an Indigenous Sarayaku woman, has been at the forefront of the fight to preserve her ancestral homelands and the Yasuni National Park, a biodiversity hotspot, from drilling. In 2012, Indigenous groups won a settlement and apology from the Ecuadorian government, who had permitted drilling without prior consent. Photo credit: Amazon Watch
