SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

The Cofan indigenous community in Ecuador is suing the Chevron oil company for $12bn for polluting their homes in the Amazon rain forest.

The Cofan’s leader, Emergildo Criollo, claims that when Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, came to the village in 1972, they told the natives rubbing crude on their arms would relieve aches and pains. He blames the death of his three-year-old son on oil contamination. “He went swimming, then began vomiting blood,” he said

Social and environmental damage

The Cofan Indians for the past 15 years, have witnessed the destruction of their community both socially and environmentally. The Cofan stated that over 200 leaking pits are on their lands and this has been causing a number of serious and deadly diseases.

One member of the tribe Celcila Quenama said that she lost a daughter to the pollution and that “many children have died of strange new diseases since the oil drilling began.”

Another villager with a leaking pit on his land complained of sores on his arms and that his stomach was eating him from the inside out. Faced with these serious health problems and the damage to their land, water and air they decided to take action against the company who started it all, Chevron.

In response to the filing of the Cofan law suit Chevron lawyer Jaime Varela said “It’s the largest fraud in history,”. Chevron-Texaco, he says, cleaned up all its contaminated oil pits when it abandoned the country nearly 15 years ago except those pits it left in the hands of Ecuador’s own state oil company.

When asked about the Indian children dying of cancer another lawyer Rodrigo Perez responded, “And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, they have to prove it was caused by crude or by petroleum industry and second they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible.”

Cofan backed by Alberto Acosta

When the President of Ecuador’s new constitutional assembly was asked for his opinions on the case he said “Chevron is responsible for environmental and social destruction in the Amazon. That is why they are on trail”. When a reported asked “But what if every small nation on the planet sued big U.S. oil companies for the damage they created years ago, wouldn’t that bring the oil industry to a stand still?” to which Acosta replied: “ What we should be asking is not whether we are creating chaos for the oil industry, but whether the oil industry is creating chaos in the world?”

Taking action to tackle climate change

As the Cofan begin what will indeed be a long and difficult case against an oil giant, the question raised by Acosta rings loud and clear. For too long the powerful oil companies have been creating social and environmental chaos throughout many communities worldwide. Fossil fuel is the main cause of climate change and the industry is also one of the worst for its acts against social and environmental justice.

By filing this law suit the Cofan community has highlighted the impacts that drilling and burning can have on those forced to live on the fence line of this dirty industry. Raising awareness of such issues, can help us to recognise the need to move out of the fossil fuel age and into a cleaner greener more equal future. A future where the rights and needs of local communities count.