The Ecuadorian
Civil Associations, non-profit organizations of public purpose,
dedicated to environmental matters or non-government environmentalist
organizations that we subscribe this declaration established in the II
National Ecuadorian Congress for Environmental Matters.

Considering that:

Our presence and activities are based legally on the right to the free
civic association for licit purposes, included in the article 19,
number 13 of the Political Constitution of the State, in the
dispositions of the Title XXIX of the Ecuadorian Civil Code and in the
acknowledgment to the juridical figure of our organizations granted by
the corresponding public entities: It is necessary to impel the
transparency in the administration of all the sectors of the society,
in return to the trust placed on us by the society. Besides from our
commitment of respecting the Ecuadorian laws, it is necessary to create
a mechanism that allows us to self-regulate and manage in an
unmistakable way our activities before the society.

We agree:

Consign in a Code of Ethics the group of regulations that we have been
applying in the development of our activities. This Code is
contemplated in the following terms:

1. The ONGs environmentalists have purposes and specific missions
related to the environment. However, the search of such objectives will
be carried out in the perspective of the social solidarity, thereby, we
commit ourselves to promote the justice, the equality and the
participating democracy; to preserve the cultural integrity and the
quality of people's life, looking for harmonizing the economic growth
and the respect for the nature for the attainment of sustainable
development in our country.

2. We affirm the necessity to respect the diversity of point of views,
of strategies and of organization models, sustained in the democracy
principles and plurality.

3. Each organization is independent and autonomous to define its
statutes, regulations, resolutions and the structure of the
organization, and the functioning in accordance with the establishment
by the Ecuadorian laws. The State, in accordance with the
constitutional principles and the laws that guarantee the right to be
associated, should respect this autonomy, without diminishing the
possibility to establish ways of cooperation and coordination.

4. In situations of difficulties for the application of
statutes and regulations or in the event of internal institutional
conflicts, the ONGs environmentalists commits to develop mediation
dispositions to the non-government internal community starting with the
respect of the autonomy of each organization. (See item 12).

5. We reaffirm the requirement that the Environmentalist
Organizations should have the widest autonomy and not influenced by
external pressures or international interests. The diverse way of
cooperation that exist among the ONGs in the international ambit,
should be an occasion to reassert our own points of view from an
Ecuadorian perspective.

6. We consider necessary to promote the cooperation and the
mutual support between the different environmentalist organizations and
other organizations, guiding us to strengthen the incorporation of an
environmental perspective in all the sectors of the economic and social
activities.

7. The environmentalist organizations affirm our full
autonomy to establish cooperation agreements with the organizations and
we assume in these relationships the commitment of respecting the
organizational dynamics, the orientations that these organizations
have, their cultural specificity and, therefore, we commit not to
intervene in their processes of making decisions.

8. The environmentalist organizations generate and have
access to information on the environmental and social situation of the
country. We place this information for the use of the citizens and, for
that, we compromise to manage it with absolute transparency,
responsibility and truthfulness and to impel mechanisms that allow
their usage more efficiently. Equally, we commit to respect the
discreet nature that the social actors assign to certain information.

9. The ONGs environmentalists that subscribe to this
document commit to regulate our accounting activities in accordance
with the generally agreed accounting principles, and to maintain an
internal control system that guarantees the good usage of the resources
assigned to our administration.

10. Additionally we agree that, at the same time as the
amount of the resources that we administer are reasonable, we could
submit our accounting and financial activity to the inspection of an
independent external audit.

11. The environmentalist organizations agree to submit their
activity and the observance of this Code of Ethics for evaluation, to
those sectors of the society, whose mechanisms allows them in the
participation of such evaluation practice.

12. Whoever subscribes to the present Code consider that the Ecuadorian
Committee for the Defense of the Nature and The Environment (CEDENMA)
as a supra-organization and as an institution that represents the
group, it is the instance in charge of initiating the full validity of
these principles, and we compromise to impel that the other forums and
networks of ONGs adhere to this initiative.

Set in Quito, on April 27, 1995.