A spotlight turns onto Chevron lawsuit in Ecuador
Over the past week, a spotlight has turned onto an ongoing lawsuit against U.S. oil company Chevron-Texaco before a court in Ecuador. The Washington Post, NPR and 60 Minutes have all run stories on the case against Chevron (who bought Texaco in 2001 and inherited the lawsuit) and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a hearing last week on "Indigenous Communities, Environmental Degradation and International Human Rights Standards," where oil contamination in Ecuador, in addition to Nigeria and West Papua, was a major topic of discussion. The lawsuit was originally filed by indigenous and campesino Ecuadorians in a New York District Court in 1993 but, according to NPR, "Chevron argued that the case be moved to Ecuador, saying that Ecuadorian courts were impartial and professional." In 2003, proceedings began in Ecuador, in the small Amazonian city of Lago Agrio, (the town was founded by Texaco in the 1970s when oil production began in the region, named after the town of Sour Lake, Texas, where Texaco got its start). Today, Chevron is arguing that Ecuador's judicial system is "corrupt and politicized," according to Silvia Garrigo, Chevron's manager of global issues and policy. This change of posture seems to coincide with the impression that Chevron appears likely to lose the case in Ecuador. Especially after the court-appointed environmental expert, Richard Cabrera, sided with the plaintiffs in his report. Cabrera has assessed damages at up to $27.3 billion, "dwarfing the $3.9 billion awarded against ExxonMobil for the 1989 spill in Alaska," according to Juan Forero of the Washington Post. Yet according to Chevron, "in the thousands of soil and water samples that we have taken in the Amazon, there has been no detection of any type of toxin that is not naturally occurring in the environment, and that is dangerous to human health or the environment." Silvia Garrigo continues to explain this to 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley by comparing the oil that remains in the water and the soil of Ecuador's Amazon to the makeup on her face, saying that "I have make up on, and there's naturally occurring oil on my face. Doesn't mean that I'm going to get sick from it." While the final verdict on whether or not Chevron is guilty of spilling and dumping millions of gallons of oil and production wastes into the Ecuadorian Amazon is dependent on the decision of the Lago Agrio based judge, Juan Nuñez, the hearing last week made the point that regardless of who is culpable, a humanitarian and environmental emergency is taking place in the Ecuadorian Amazon and affecting the thousands of people who live there - causing cancer, skin rashes, and other health problems, as well as killing off native species and harming the traditional livelihoods of many indigenous communities whose ancestral lands have been overtaken by oil companies and the towns built up around the oil industry. As pointed out during the first panel of the hearing last week, there are various human rights instruments, including the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, under which the rights of communities affected by oil pollution should be upheld. The witnesses noted that even the most basic rights, such as the right to shelter, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health, are being violated by oil contamination. However, how to address this violation of rights is a difficult question to answer. Potential measures that could be taken, all brought up at the hearing, included more regulation and monitoring on the part of the transnational corporation's home state or country, ratification of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the U.S., and increased aid to affected communities, such as those in the Ecuadorian Amazon, to address its immediate and emergency humanitarian needs. CIP staff traveled to Ecuador last November, where they witnessed much of the environmental degradation and health problems caused by the incredibly large amounts of oil contamination that remains in communities surrounding Lago Agrio, Ecuador. Regardless of who is at fault, a humanitarian emergency exists there and steps must be taken to help those in need. Photos from our trip can be found on Flickr here and here.