| Location: | Prov. del Azuay - Ecuador |
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| Team: | Mining company’s social and environmental technicians and scientists of the Universities of Cuenca. |
| Challenge: | Involve communities from the project’s influence zone with environmental monitoring. This needed to be carried out with a solid scientific base and emphasis in the hydrologic monitoring. |
| Role: | Ongoing coordination of universities and communities for the development of field work. We facilitated the participation of the inhabitants (individuals and institutions) of the area in field work and periodic monitoring. |
| Approach: |
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| To involve the community, we focused on building trust by providing a guarantee of truthfulness and scientific rigor of the environmental studies conducted for the mining project, and by communicating the results of these studies in understandable language. Once the community understood the benefits of conducting these studies, we involved them in both the studies and field work, making them social seers spreading information within their families and communities to expand the population’s support for the development of the project. |
| As a result, we achieved the building of one of the biggest hydroclimatic monitoring networks for paramo areas in the world. This was done under cooperation agreements between the mining company, the universities and communities. |