Minister resigns with rules on Galápagos still pending

Ecuadorians this month saw a new environment minister take office—María de Lourdes Luque, an academic with a social sciences and environmental-management background who has worked at nonprofits including Ecuador’s Nature Foundation. She replaces Rodolfo Rendón, who resigned after 15 months. Rendón said he had only planned to stay for a year, but the move was a surprise because he had yet to finish work on tourism, fuel-transport and fishing regulations for the Galápagos Islands. The regulations, which have yet to be made public, have been eagerly anticipated since a tanker ran aground off the Galápagos in January, spilling most of its 240,000-gallon cargo of fuel. (See “Regulators scramble following Jessica spill”—EcoAméricas, Feb. ’01). Noting that the minister had promised the... [Log in to read more]

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