Resolution
WHEREAS, In 1993, U.S. human rights attorney, Steven Donziger, became part of the legal team for 30,000 indigenous peoples and affected campesinos in the Ecuadorian Amazon seeking justice from the environmental damage and ongoing health crisis caused by oil company Texaco, for deliberately polluting the Amazon Rainforest; and,
WHEREAS, From 1964 to 1990, Texaco dumped over 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, spilled more than 17 million gallons of crude oil and left hundreds of open pits with hazardous waste on the forest floor; and,
WHEREAS, In 2000, Chevron purchased Texaco along with everything that came with it -including liability for the destruction Texaco had caused in Ecuador's Amazon region; and,
WHEREAS, The Cofan people, among other indigenous groups and rural communities that call the Amazon home, have suffered intense environmental and health ramifications from "Chevron's cost of doing business," including lack of potable water, displacement from ancestral lands, irreparable loss of culture, and severe health impacts, including heightened mortality rates due to birth defects and the widespread incidence of cancer; and,
WHEREAS, In 2011, after nearly two decades of litigation in Ecuador—where Chevron executives had accepted jurisdiction—Chevron was found guilty and ordered to pay $19 billion in damages for cleanup, a decision Chevron appealed to the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, which upheld the trial court judgment but eliminated a punitive damages penalty, lowering Chevron's final clean-up liability to $9.5 billion; and,
WHEREAS, Despite knowing that the money from the judgment would be used for environmental repair, not individual indemnifications, Chevron—one ofthe world's largest corporations with over $260 billion in assets—sold its assets in Ecuador and fled the country; and,
WHEREAS, In the US, Chevron began a counter-offensive strategy, threatening human rights lawyers and the indigenous plaintiffs with a "lifetime of litigatio...
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