Eye on the Amazon

March 8, 2011 – After more than seventeen years of intense legal battle, last month, Chevron, the second largest oil company in the United States, was found guilty in Ecuadorian courts for massive environmental contamination of the Amazon and was ordered to pay upwards of $9 billion in damages. This morning I was on KQED's Forum radio program discussing this topic. On the program with me was a spokesperson from Chevron, Kent Robertson, and a business reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, David Baker.

March 4, 2011 – As Peru systematically opens up its Amazon to oil and gas drilling, Amazon Watch is standing with many Indigenous communities as they proclaim, "not in our territory!" But in cases where oil operations do proceed in these fragile rainforests, the question emerges how can the affected communities themselves monitor the environmental, social, and human rights impacts?

February 22, 2011 – Multinational corporations like Chevron are experts at maintaining a veneer of gentility and levelheaded reason. They have to be, of course; when you wreak as much havoc as Chevron does on lives, communities and ecosystems around the world, the only way not to invite universal public disgust and condemnation is to make sure the people who are your public face aren't ever the ones doing your dirty work.

February 16, 2011 – On Monday, after 17 years of intense legal battle, Chevron, the second largest oil company in the United States, was found guilty by Ecuadorian courts for massive environmental contamination of the Amazon and was ordered to pay a fine of $9 billion in damages. This represents the largest judgment ever against a U.S company for environmental contamination and marks the first time that Indigenous and farmer communities have successfully won a judgment in foreign courts against an American company for environmental crimes abroad.

February 11, 2011 – If you are one of over 600,00 people who signed the global petition to stop the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon, you should know that your signature didn't get lost in cyberspace somewhere. It was delivered to the Brazilian government on Tuesday afternoon here in Brasilia by a delegation of Indigenous and community leaders from the Xingu River basin.

February 9, 2011 – It is hard to know what to make of such a patently absurd and egregious insult as this; Big Oil suing the victims of their contamination. Chevron is pouring ghastly sums of money into a scorched-earth legal and public relations strategy designed, essentially, to destroy the hopes of the plaintiffs.