Nicaragua Drafting Law to Exploit Protected Natural Resources

The Ortega regime in Nicaragua is drafting a law that would allow the exploitation of natural resources in the country’s protected areas. The legislation would also give the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Marena) the power to arbitrarily decide which areas are considered protected and which are not.

On April 24, 2025, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sent the proposed “Law on Environmental Conservation Areas and Sustainable Development” to the National Assembly. The bill would amend Article 116 of Law 217 or General Law of the Environment and Natural Resources, which currently prohibits the “exploration and exploitation of renewable and non-renewable natural resources located in protected areas.”

The Ortega-backed initiative would allow the “use of natural resources located in environmental conservation and sustainable development areas” and would establish that such activities must be “aligned with environmental management, planning criteria, economic growth, as well as the defense and restoration of the rights of Nicaraguan families.”

The new law will also permit “the rational use of geothermal, geological, mineral and hydrocarbon resources, among others” and “wildlife hunting and subsistence fishing.”

Under current law, Article 116 of Law 217 only allows the exploitation of geothermal, hydrological, and wind resources, considering them to be of national interest for electricity generation. Additionally, “hunting flora and fauna within protected areas was linked to the activities of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities,” according to the now-shuttered Fundación del Río.

“The initiative seeks to legalize the extraction of protected natural resources in Nicaragua, in line with the neo-extractivist policy imposed by the regime since 2007, which has facilitated the looting, plundering and destruction of Mother Earth,” denounced the Foundation through a statement.

Marena’s functions expanded

The proposed law would also repeal the Protected Areas Regulation of Nicaragua, published in 2007, which had established Marena’s (the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources) responsibilities within the National System of Protected Areas.

Under the new law, Marena would gain new powers, including the ability to “define and set the boundaries of environmental conservation and sustainable development areas.”

Amaru Ruiz, president of the Fundación del Río, argued that the regime is interested in reducing the surface area of protected areas “to establish sustainable development zones and allow mining and geological extraction activities”.

The dictatorship is also interested in promoting “other economic activities, such as aquaculture,” which, according to the environmentalist, would lead to “greater vulnerability of protected areas.”

In the communiqué, the Foundation warned that Marena also “becomes judge and party to determine environmental crimes within protected areas”.

“Before, any infraction or any environmental crime that happened within protected areas was reported to the police and the police would inform Marena and joint inspections were carried out to determine if there were administrative sanctions or if there were criminal sanctions. Now, the only one that will handle the crimes or administrative sanctions will be Marena,” Ruiz emphasized.

In the legislative project, according to the environmentalist, “there is no mention of how the Environmental Attorney General’s Office will function, because when there are sanctions or infractions, both administrative and criminal, it is the Attorney General’s Office that establishes the formal accusation before the judicial system (…) This could mean that there will only be administrative sanctions, that is, only fines, and no judicial process.

In 2024, the dictatorship eliminated the Nicaraguan Institute of Forestry (Inafor) and transferred the functions of environmental surveillance and protection to Marena.

Environmental deterioration

The 66-page bill will presumably be approved in the last days of April 2025 by the National Assembly, dominated by deputies of the ruling FSLN.

“The country would be exposed to increased environmental deterioration of protected areas and thus to their total destruction,” Ruiz lamented.

The River Foundation, forfeited in 2018, detailed other far-reaching changes to the initiative:

• Economic activity will be allowed within the protected areas.
• The construction of infrastructure for hydrocarbon storage will be allowed.
• The construction of hydraulic infrastructure within protected areas will be allowed.
• The work of indigenous and Afro-descendant forest rangers is not recognized.
• The “comanejo”, a protected area management model that delegated the administration of protected areas to different actors, is eliminated.

Ortega and Murillo stated, in the bill’s explanatory memorandum, that their interest is “the conservation, protection, restoration and improvement of the environment and the natural resources that integrate it with sustainable development”.

The dictators affirmed that the approval of this initiative “will not have any additional economic or budgetary impact on the Ministry”.

Ruiz warned that this initiative will bring a series of regulations, norms and ministerial resolutions to complement it.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if this general preamble established by the law is further deepened, increasing the level of extractive permissibility in other legal instruments that follow,” commented the environmentalist.