EnvJustice

Full original interview available at Democracy Now!

Interview by Amy Goodman.

10 years ago, Ecuador’s Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people. The oil giant had been recklessly drilling oil for decades that destroyed 1,700 square miles of land in the Ecuadorian Amazon, but the company has refused to pay for the damage or clean up the land. Instead, Chevron has spent the past decade pursuing an unprecedented legal battle to avoid assuming the Court’s payments and the responsibility to clean the land.

Chevron is trying to undermine environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped bring the landmark case. In this interview, Donziger is on house arrest, where he has been for almost 600 days, and he talks about how Chevron’s legal attacks are meant to silence critics and stop other lawsuits against the company for environmental damage.

You can also find in the Atlas the case of Chevron-Texaco oil extraction and legal case in Ecuador.