Ecuador, officially called the Republic of Ecuador, is a sovereign country located in the northwestern region of South America. It limits to the north with Colombia, to the west with the Pacific Ocean and to the south and to the east with Peru. The Pacific Ocean bathes the western coast and separates it from the Galapagos Islands located a thousand kilometers to the west. The continental territory is furrowed from north to south by a volcanic section of the Cordillera de los Andes, to whose western and eastern flanks respectively the Gulf of Guayaquil and a wooded plain, and the Amazon.

Ecuador has an area of ​​283,561 km2, which makes it the fourth smallest country in South America, and has a population of over 16 million inhabitants, making it the eighth most populous country in Latin America. It is the most densely populated country in South America12 and the fifth on the continent. It is the country with the highest concentration of rivers per square kilometer in the world, 13 the one with the highest diversity per square kilometer on the planet14 15 and one of the countries with the highest biodiversity, 16 with a large number of animal and plant species. These antecedents lead the country to write the first Constitution in the world, which looks after the rights of nature.