Williamsburg Regional Library

Waiting for justice in Ecuador's Amazon rain forest: Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donziger

videorecording

Waiting for justice in Ecuador's Amazon rain forest: Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donziger

1035154288

Originally produced by The Green Interview in 2014

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This episode of The Green Interview features Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donziger, two lawyers whose relentless pursuit of one of the world's biggest and meanest corporations has made "Chevron-Toxico" a landmark case in environmental law. The story is set in Lago Agrio, the centre of the oil industry in eastern Ecuador and the epicenter of one of the biggest ecological crimes of all time: the massive contamination of perhaps two million hectares of the Amazon rain forest at the hands of Texaco, which is now part of Chevron. Pablo Fajardo grew up there in extreme poverty and with the help of the Catholic Church, put himself through law school. His very first case as a lawyer was the one known throughout South America as "Chevron-Toxico," a 9.5 billion action on behalf of thousands of indigenous people. Fajardo and his colleagues, including the U.S-based lawyer Steven Donziger, who had been on the case since 1993, won, but Chevron skipped the country. So Fajardo's team is asking the courts of Argentina, Brazil and Canada to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment. The Canadian courts have said they'll hear the case, but Chevron is appealing

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