The UCT Environmental Humanities Initiative and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town are honoured to host the Ambassador of Ecuador, His Excellency Jose Valencia, who will speak on Ecuador’s experience of dealing with  Chevron's extractive activities in Ecuador, on Wednesday 6th August, at 13h00 to 14h30 in Humanities LT3 on Upper Campus at UCT.  


Title: "The Chevron Case: An Environmental Crisis and Its Victims".

 

"From 1964-1990, the U.S. company drilled and operated 356 oil wells (in Ecuador), as part of this process, they dug 1,000 pits, without any type of protective coating.  In these pits, they disposed of all kinds of waste - mainly oil, drilling mud and toxic water, which caused immeasurable environmental damage and deteriorated the quality of life of the citizens of the local communities where these actions took place.   In total, they poured approximately 80,000 tons of toxic waste in the Amazon jungle, contaminating freshwater sources that are vital to the local population.  The extent of damage is enormous.  As of today, it remains the largest toxic spill in history, anywhere on the planet.  Just to give you an idea of how big it is, this is a spill 87 times greater than the BP- British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Texaco, now Chevron, did everything in their power, between 1993 (the year citizens of the Amazon communities presented their first demand in the United States), and the year 2001, to achieve that the trial be moved from New York to Ecuador.  At that time, the company explained that Ecuadorian Courts were suitable for judging the case and pledged to abide by the decision that the courts would take.  Surely, they did not expect to lose.  In fact, they had won in the past several trials in Ecuador.  But this time was different. In 2011, after nine years of work, the Ecuadorian court in Lago Agrio ordered the company Chevron -Texaco to pay 9.6 billion dollars to the affected, and to apologize.


What has Chevron done since? Have they sought ways to compensate the people they hurt and repair the damage they have caused?  No.  Instead, Chevron has sued the State of Ecuador three times before international arbitration tribunals.  The reason is simple: Chevron will not to accept -or rather, Chevron cannot conceive of their having lost the lawsuit against humble citizens who were affected by their bad practices."

 

As one of the first countries to sign the Rights of Nature into their constitution, Ecuador has been at the forefront of a global movement to reimagine democracy as intimately tied to ecological well-being and stewardship.  The talk will focus on the actions of multinational oil companies, the damage wrought and the legal recourse that states and multinationals are seeking.  At a time when the fracking of the Karoo is a controversial and urgent topic in South Africa, the insights from Ecuador’s experience are timely and relevant to debates on environmental regulation, the relationship between governments and multinationals, environmental philosophy, decoloniality, energy politics and environmental law.