CHEVRON’S “AMAZON CHERNOBYL”

Friday, 12 February 2021, 11:30am EST
The historic $9.5 billion pollution judgment won by Amazon communities in Ecuador against Chevron was the result of a substantive legal battle that has attracted the attention of legal scholars, Nobel Laureates, human rights organizations, and climate activists throughout the world. The case was brought by an international team of lawyers and community leaders led by Steven Donziger who faced off against 60 Chevron law firms and more than 2,000 lawyers retained by the company. Considered by many to be a key corporate accountability case in the world, the judgment was won in 2011 after courts in Ecuador - where Chevron insisted the trial be held - found the company deliberately and systematically discharged billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands when it operated in Ecuador under the Texaco brand from 1964 to 1992. The dumping led to an epidemic of cancer and other oil-related health problems that has decimated Indigenous cultures; experts call the disaster the “Amazon Chernobyl”. The legal case raises critically important issues related to global warming, indigenous rights, international judgment enforcement, Free Speech, private investor arbitration, attorney ethics, and how corporations often used SLAPP harassment lawsuits to target human rights lawyers and campaigners with intimidation and threats with the goal of obtaining impunity for their wrongdoing.

Chevron’s “Amazon Chernobyl” Disaster in Ecuador: Lessons from the Frontlines | Global Justice Program
https://globaljustice.yale.edu/news/chevrons-amazon-chernobyl-disaster-ecuador-lessons-frontlines