The decision by a federal judge, came on the heels of a ruling in an Ecuadorean appeals court last Tuesday, that confirmed that Chevron have to pay the $18 billion damages award.
All in all, it was a terrible week for the oil giant that once famously promised to “fight this until Hell freezes over-and then we’ll fight it out on the ice”; in what could be the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.
Some context: back in the ‘70s Texaco was the biggest oil producer in the Ecuadorean amazon, the problem was that the company took the toxic produced water that results as a byproduct from drilling oil well, and simply dumped it into vast pits, in what’s been called a “rainforest Chernobyl.”
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The legal battle between Ecuador (the suit was launched on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian plaintiffs) and Chevron –which took over the lawsuit after it bought Texaco- has been dragging on since 1993. On February 14, 2011, after 18 years of campaigning, an Ecuadorian court found the company liable for $18 billion in damages to the Amazon.
The fight between Ecuador and Chevron has become a landmark cause of the green movement around the world, as it would mark “the first time that a small developing country has had power over a multinational American company”, according to Steven Donziger, lead lawyer for Ecuador.
The case got even more notoriety in 2008, after Ecuador became the first country in the world to grant “inalienable rights” to nature in its Constitution. The law included provisions for humans “to sue on behalf of an ecosystem.”
Since then, Bolivia has passed a similar legislation called the Law of Mother Earth, that grants nature the same rights and protections as humans, while Turkey is considering doing the same, Peru has recently approved Indigenous laws with a similar approach, and even the United Nations is considering the adoption of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.
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Which brings us back to the legal battle between Chevron and Ecuador. The battle has stopped being only between a multinational company that behaved irresponsibly towards the environment of a little Third World country. It has become a symbol of the permanent fight between Men and Nature, Progress, Capitalism on one hand, and the Planet on the other. It is now part of a major shift of paradigm towards the environment and the way we interact with it, that is taking place right now; led by countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and even Mexico, and that’s why it has become so important the final result of Chevron Vs Ecuador.
If, at the end, Chevron wins, it will be a huge blow to these international efforts towards giving rights to Nature. As someone put it in an internet forum, pointing to the controversial decision of the US Supreme Court that allowed companies, along many other things, to make undisclosed contributions to electoral campaigns: “if a company can have the rights of a person, why not the Planet?”
See also:
- Bolivia Set to Pass Historic 'Law of Mother Earth' Which Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans
- Peru Approves Indigenous Law as Wikileaks Exposes US Concerns
- Following Examples Set by Ecuador and Bolivia, Turkey is Considering Ecological Constitution
- Canada Withdraws from Kyoto, while Mexico Insists on Green Fund
- Is Progress a Right?
