[1] As late as 2012, according to the United Nations, Ecuador received less foreign direct investment per person than any other country in Latin America.
In 1985 Ecuador's Congress passed a new law to encourage foreign exploration and investment that simplified regulation and offered higher financial incentives and lower taxation for investors, while also establishing the Ecuadorian Institute of Minerals (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Minería—Inemin) under the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
In the absence of any state enforcement, many communities located near the extraction site have taken a different approach towards opposing mining by creating a group of Indigenous guardians.
In 2017, members of the A'i Cofán of Sinangoe began to police their ancestral land near the Colombian border in the northern Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos to suspend mining concessions.
[6][7] Soon after the 2013 law had passed, it was reported that several indigenous groups in opposition of large-scale mining planned to take their cases to the international courts later in the year.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) "also filed a suit before the constitutional court asking for a law to carry out prelegislative consultation for people that could be affected by mining."
[10] The project is owned and operated by Ecuacorriente S.A. (ECSA), a subsidiary of the state-owned Chinese company CRCC-Tongguan Investment Co. Ltd, which comprises Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings Co. Ltd. and China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd.[11] The San Carlos Panantza mine is a large copper mine located in the south of Ecuador in Zamora-Chinchipe Province.