Washington, DC – A new report entitled Chevron’s Global Destruction: Ecocide, Genocide, and Corruption was released today amid a firestorm of criticism directed toward the multinational corporation. The report’s author, Nan M. Greer, Ph.D., documents how Chevron, the world’s number one producer in greenhouse gas emissions among all investor-owned oil companies, “violates domestic and international laws with impunity” country by country.
In addition, Greer dedicates part of the report to exposing Chevron’s “severe abuse of Indigenous people, as well as the massive destruction of local environments while forcing the world into a crisis from fossil-fuel induced climate change.”
Legally, the report asserts that Chevron has “annihilated critical biodiversity hotspots around the world.” The corporate giant has amassed more than $50 billion in judgments and settlement debts that the company refuses to pay.
“When Chevron loses these cases for large amounts, their approach is never to accept defeat and do the right thing, but to undermine the process and attack the very people who beat them in court,” said Paul Paz y Miño, Associate Director of Amazon Watch.
There are countless examples of this tactic – none perhaps closer to home than that of Steven Donziger, the Manhattan-based attorney who was a key lawyer on the team that won the world’s largest pollution lawsuit against Chevron for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste onto Ecuadoran Indigenous ancestral territory in the Amazon.
“Here’s a human rights attorney who helps win the largest judgment ever against Chevron, who has now been criminalized by the company. Despite the United Nations calling for his immediate release, has spent over 800 days living under house arrest in his New York apartment for a bogus contempt ruling issued by a judge with direct ties to Chevron. It just further demonstrates Chevron’s impunity, abuse of the U.S. legal system, and lack of respect for the law,” stated Paz y Miño.
“On this day, we celebrate the incredible contributions of Indigenous people to the world. However, vicious attacks against Indigenous have occurred at the hands of Chevron, where more than 60% of public company incidents record human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples. The corporation has created a legacy of genocide, death, loss of ancestral land, torture, forced labor, rape, and violence against women,” said Greer.
When Indigenous communities in Ecuador attempted to hold Chevron responsible for one of the most massive oil spills in history, the company threatened the victims with “a lifetime of litigation (Chevron, 2007).” This is despite Chevron admitting having deliberately dumped the waste into the environment as a cost-saving measure over the course of decades.
Evidence readily available to the public provides a shocking picture of a multinational refusing to comply with social, environmental, and taxpaying responsibilities — a corporation that litigates until it silences those that seek justice, refusing legal compliance at all costs, an approach repeated in country after country.
Key findings in the report:
- 71% demonstrate grave violations of rights to land, life, and safety;
- 65% involved severe human rights abuses, including torture, forced labor/slavery, rape, murder, and genocide-such as the case of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline
- Chevron has directed vicious lawsuits against lawyers defending victim communities in the U.S., Ecuador, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cambodia, and China (the case of Steven Donziger being the most well-known);
- Widespread accounts detail the destruction of marginalized people’s homes, resources, and livelihoods in Nigeria, U.S., Thailand, Cameroon, Chad, Angola, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Poland, Indonesia, Canada, Azerbaijan, Romania, China, E. Timor/Myanmar, and Ghana;
- Acts of violence reported include torture, forced labor-slavery, rape, murder, and terrorism in Nigeria, Angola, Poland, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Romania, Burma, China, Chad, Cameroon, E. Timor/Myanmar, Thailand, and Ghana;
- Chevron has failed to pay taxes to countries that collapse economically as a result in Sudan, Angola, Chad, Cameroon, and Native American nations;
- Chevron has violated the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) in Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Iran, Cambodia, Indonesia, Angola, Argentina, and Liberia;
- Chevron has refused to comply with mandated cleanup in Thailand, U.S., Argentina, Nigeria, Ecuador, Venezuela, Poland, Azerbaijan, Romania, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, China, E. Timor/Myanmar, and Ghana;
Chevron stands alone in the fossil fuel industry with an astounding failure to make reparations and address grievances. Some of the most violent cases have gone unnoticed due to the locations of the cases in the global south and their impact on Indigenous and marginalized women who are on the front lines of Chevron’s pollution and abuse, such as in the cases of Nigeria and Ecuador.
Chevron refuses to adhere to local country and international laws, violating legal business practices in 15 international cases examined. One such case was against the United Nations litigated in 2007, and others include illegal payments, bribes, and violations of U.S. sanctions, as in the cases of both Iran and Iraq.
As a growing global community calls for accountability from the industry most responsible for the climate crisis, Chevron’s acts of destruction and legal abuse send a clear signal that climate justice will remain out of reach if one of the world’s most egregious corporate criminals and gross polluters escapes justice. This report lays bare the extent of Chevron’s lack of respect for local communities and the environment where it operates, but the very systems of justice designed to defend the rights of those peoples.
