April 13 – Teacher's Day in Ecuador

nPosted on April 13, 2019

Key Points

nEcuador – the South American nation whose name means “equator,” a nation which lies on the equator (no surprise!), one of only two South American nations that don’t border on Brazil.

Ecuador celebrates teachers on the birthday of one of the nation’s outstanding authors: Juan Montalvo was born on this date in 1832.

nHere are some special things about Ecuador:

It’s one of the 18 “megadiverse” countries in the world. There are many different kinds of habitats in Ecuador, including high-altitude mountains and low-lying rainforests, the far-flung Galápagos Islands and the productive coastlands. So it’s no surprise that the plants and animals are varied as well…

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nWhat is a surprise, perhaps, is that Ecuador has a constitution that specifically gives “nature,” or the ecosystem, legal rights. It’s the first nation in the world to acknowledge the Rights of Nature.

nUNESCO World Heritage Sites are places that have cultural, historical, or scientific importance. They are legally protected for all of humanity by international treaties. At this point, there are more than 1,000 World Heritage Sites…but when the first conference was held in 1978 to choose the first few sites, the very first one was Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, and the very second one was Ecuador’s capital city, Quito.

nAll these years later, Ecuador only has five World Heritage Sites, a number dwarfed by world leaders Italy (54) and China (53). But it’s amazing that the very first two sites were located in the teeny nation of Ecuador!