"Indigenous Ecuadorians fight back as metal mining eats into Amazon", 24 June 2022

...Since 2019, the Maikiuants, a community of about 50 Shuar families, have been trying to stave off attempts by Canadian mining company Solaris Resources to set up a copper mine just 7 km away in Warints, another Shuar community...

...[T]here’s a growing need for sustainable mining to feed surging demand for minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper that are used to make electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbine systems and batteries...

Tunki said Solaris did get the approval of the Warints community before starting its project, but neither the company nor the Ecuadorian government consulted the other local communities or the PSHA.

Solaris states on its website that it “always places the highest importance in creating and maintaining open, respectful, proactive and productive relations” with all the communities where it operates.

After initially agreeing to an interview, the company did not respond to several followup emails...

Since development began in the mid-2000s on the sprawling Mirador copper, gold and silver mine, owned by the Ecuadorian-Chinese company Ecuacorriente, human rights groups have denounced the project for forcibly evicting more than 30 Shuar families from the community of San Marcos...

People who bathe in the local river emerge with rashes and lesions on their skin, he said, and his small crops of yucca, plantain and other fruits don’t produce as much as they did before the mine opened...

Neither Ecuacorriente nor Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines responded to several interview requests...