Diego Borja "Missing" posters outside of the courthouse in San Francisco.

Diego Borja must come clean — that was the decision that came down yesterday from Judge Edward Chen in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Borja, a self proclaimed “dirty tricks” operative for Chevron, has been on the run from a subpoena filed by the Ecuadorean government and the Indigenous and campesino plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador. The subpoena would compel Borja to reveal key information about how Chevron “cooked” the evidence in the trial.

“We think we have the ring leader of the dirty tricks,” was how the plaintiffs’ lawyer described Borja. The judge ordered Borja’s deposition to take place within the next 30 days.

On Monday, the court in Ecuador found Chevron guilty of deliberately polluting the Amazon rainforest and ordered the oil giant to pay $8.6 billion in damages. The decision is a blow to the company and marks a major milestone for corporate accountability. But the struggle is far from over, as Chevron has vowed to not pay up.

Both sides are appealing the decision (the plaintiffs want the judge to consider other categories of damages) and Borja’s information is still key to both the case in Ecuador (as it goes through appeal) and Chevron’s attempts in the U.S. to block the Indigenous and campesino residents from enforcing the Ecuadorean court’s decision and collecting the clean up funds from Chevron.

The Government of Ecuador’s interest in Borja is to procure key information to help in their international arbitration proceeding in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.  In 2009, Chevron filed a petition claiming that by allowing the trial to move forward, the Ecuadorean government is in violation of the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, given Chevron and the government signed an agreement in 1998 that supposedly cleared the oil giant of its liability. That agreement followed what Chevron purports to have been a clean-up of the region, but which has been unveiled as a sham remediation, involving little more than sprinkling top soil on top of toxic oil waste pits. Two Chevron employees, along with key Ecuadorean government officials, are currently under criminal investigation in Ecuador for their involvement in that fraudulent agreement.

At the center of all of this is Diego Borja. Borja is a long-time Chevron contractor who, in a series of recorded conversations with a childhood friend, revealed he has incriminating evidence against Chevron. Borja has stated that Chevron hired him to create four companies connected to a laboratory to test oil contamination samples from the affected region in Ecuador, and that he was hired to give the impression the labs were “independent,” when in fact they “belonged” to Chevron. Borja’s wife, Sarah Portillo, also a former Chevron employee, represented a U.S. lab that Chevron — described as “independent” — to test its contamination samples. She too might be ordered to testify soon.

When it was revealed that Borja is sitting on information that would incriminate  Chevron, the oil major whisked him out of Ecuador and set him up with a $6,000-a-month rental house outside Chevron’s headquarters in California, while paying him a $10,000-a-month salary. Yesterday Borja’s lawyers revealed he has been hiding in Texas.

Given the judge’s orders — Borja may be rethinking his famous words: “Crime does pay.”

Members of the indigenous Kichwa community of Rumipamba with Chevron's oil pollution

Oh, the irony. Chevron filing a racketeering lawsuit against the impoverished Indigenous and campesino Amazon residents who are suing the oil giant in Ecuador for plundering their rainforest land over several decades of reckless oil drilling would be all too fitting for the satiric geniuses at the Daily Show — if it weren’t nauseatingly insulting.

But we don’t have to wait for the Daily Show to report on the matter to see how folks in Ecuador reacted to the news that Chevron is now suing them. Check out the clips below.

The first is from Lidia Alejandra, who lives in the Indigenous Kichwa community of Rumipamba. Lidia makes an emotional plea for Chevron to “stop harassing the plaintiffs” and even invites Chevron executives to drink the contaminated water.

And check out Maria Reascos, also a plaintiff, from the settler community of Pimampiro, where there are about a dozen oil wells and crude oil waste pits formerly operated by Texaco (now Chevron).

Here’s the transcript of Lidia’s video:

We are some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, from the community of Rumipamba, via El Auca, on kilometer 58, Dayuma Parish.

We live here in a very, very contaminated area – the air, the land, the water. We in the community are all suffering, affected by this contamination that Texaco left. We want to clean up the oil, but there’s a huge mound of oil, mixed with the soil.  Since many years have passed, the oil has been buried for more than twenty years with mud and branches. We are suffering with many illnesses – the women ,the men, the children. This is why we’ve been fighting for seventeen years, this is why we’re asking Texaco to surrender. They’re the ones who are guilty of all of this. We are asking them to stop harassing the plaintiffs.  We have proof, for the seventeen years that Texaco left their contamination here, we have enough proof. They should come here and we can prove it. We can give the executives a glass of water and see if they’ll drink it, the way we have to live, drinking this contaminated water.

Previously the rivers were very clear, they were very clean. And now you can see that they left the water totally contaminated. We have to look in remote areas to try to find some drinking water, water for our homes. We don’t have taps, we don’t have water tanks, or a water system.  And so we have been struggling; for more than 20 years we’re in this situation.  They in the United States, with their great water bottles, they drink freely. And now they tell us we’re lying. It’s not a lie.

This lawsuit they have filed I completely reject it as a plaintiff. There are indeed affected people living here in the Amazon, in the Oriente of Ecuador.

And here’s the transcript of Maria’s video:

My name is Maria Reascos, we are in the pre-cooperative of Pimampiro, here in La Joya de los Sachas.

I am one of the people who have filed a lawsuit against Chevron, which has caused us great harm. We want them to come and remediate all they did, all the damage they caused to our Amazon.  So much contamination, from that comes a lot of illness, our losses that we’ve endured for so long, for so many years. And we wan them to come and clean up what they’ve damaged here in the Amazon.

They had the practice of dumping crude on the roads so they could travel, transit and avoid kicking up dust.  They would dump it into the rivers, we’ve lost those too, we lost all our crops near the rivers.. We had a practice of washing, but there was no way because we would go to the rivers to wash. We just couldn’t. The clothing would be stained. There was no article of clothing that would not be stained with crude.

They are in the wrong.  After they exploited us for so many years, having taken so many riches, as they say, from here. For them to now harass us. It is a disgrace what they are doing against us. We are demanding what is rightfully ours. They can say whatever they want, we are not afraid. We are ready to continue, come what may, we will continue, because they’re not going to pressure us with their lies. Those are their lies. They are attacking us.

Our hope is to at least have clean water, to drink clean water since we don’t have that quality of water because of the contamination that they left behind.

Yes, I had an uncle who passed away from cancer. Just up here there is a lady who also has cancer. We are people with limited means, who don’t have the means to heal ourselves, to go good hospitals, there is none of those here, you have to travel to Quito. The lady who lives up there, she has to travel to Quito. Can you imagine? She has to pay for everything herself and she has cancer.  She’s fighting against cancer.

But how can they be the victims? How? We are the victims, we are the victims, not them. They just came here to drill, to extract everything they needed, and then left us with all the damages.

Victor Tanguila, one of the two dozen plaintiffs who gathered to repudiate Chevron's forgery claims and -- once again -- sign his support for a lawsuit against Chevron to demand clean up of Ecuador.

If you’ve been following the dramatic turns of the historic class action environmental lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador, then you’re aware of Chevron’s aggressive public relations and legal campaign to derail the case. Their latest antic, though, is as morally reprehensible as any I’ve seen.

Chevron is claiming that some of the plaintiffs’ signatures on the document authorizing the class action lawsuit against the company were forged. What’s more, they hired a so-called “expert” to prove it — and then attempted to present this “evidence” to the court in Ecuador to declare the lawsuit null and void.

Seriously, Chevron? Let’s take a step back for a moment and review some of the facts:

You knowingly dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the middle of pristine Amazon rainforest, endangering the health and livelihoods of thousands of people. For the Indigenous residents, you’ve also threatened their very cultural survival. Then, when these people stand up for themselves and demand you clean up your mess, you perform a sham remediation that amounts to little more than a sprinkling of top soil on your oily mess, get some corrupt government officials to sign off on it (who are now, along with two of your scheming employees, facing a criminal indictment in Ecuador), and call it a day.

So, not getting proper redress from you, these people turn around and file a lawsuit in the U.S., where your company is based. You fight tooth and nail to have the case moved to Ecuador, because you thought you’d win the case. As it turns out, however, because of the mountains of scientific evidence proving your guilt — much of which was collected by you, by the way — you realize you will likely lose the case.

Meanwhile, during the eighteen years that the lawsuit has now been ongoing, people have died of oil-attributed cancers, women have miscarried, children have been born with developmental disabilities…

And now, adding insult to injury, you claim the very victims you have harmed — the very heroes who have endured so much for so long — have lied and faked their fight for justice?!?

Pablo Fajardo, the lead attorney on the case, said a wise thing some years back — he said it’s easier to tell the truth than to fabricate a web of lies. This is certainly advice you could have used, Chevron. Your web of lies is unraveling, and this desperate forgeries scandal you’ve concocted is evidence of that.

To prove that Chevron’s latest made-up controversy is completely bogus, some of the same people whose signatures Chevron claims were forged gathered yesterday at Lago 20, one of the hundreds of toxic oil waste pits abandoned by Chevron (then Texaco), to once again give their consent and — in front of a notary public, video cameras, and press — sign their names.

The company’s response?  James Craig, one of Chevron’s human rights hitmen, called the event a “media circus.” Classy.

The case for justice in Ecuador is in its final stage.  We’re counting down to a verdict. Last month Ecuadorean judge Nicolas Zambrano declared a close to the evidentiary phase of the trial, paving the way for both sides to present closing arguments and a final ruling in this historic case to finally be issued.

The people of Ecuador need our support, now more than ever. They are standing strong because they recognize that justice in Ecuador will not only benefit them, but will have a rippling effect in the way multinational corporations are held accountable for their crimes. Their fight is our fight.

But the Aguarico now holds a very different meaning for the Cofán and for Emergildo Criollo, a leader in the Cofán community. Emergildo is the father of four children and grandfather of thirteen. Two decades ago, he lost two sons after they bathed in and drank the contaminated water of the Aguarico. (Read Emergildo’s story.)

Emergildo taking us across the Aguarico to Cofán Dureno

Our friend Emergildo has travelled to the United States and our home state of California many times to face Chevron executives and urge the company to clean up its billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest (watch Emergildo’s video message to Chevron CEO John Watson). Today we travelled to Emergildo’s home, the small Indigenous community of Cofán Dureno.

Dureno is home to some eight hundred Cofán. The island is a mere thirty-seven square miles, a small fraction of the Cofán’s traditional territory. To reach Dureno, we boarded a motorized wooden canoe and crossed the Aguarico.

The Cofán — just like the Siona, Secoya, Quichua, Huoarani and Tetete peoples — once lived traditionally, in harmony with their environment. The forest was their pharmacy, their market, and their place of spiritual renewal and worship. But all this changed when Chevron (then Texaco) began oil-drilling operations in this once pristine rainforest in 1972. The detonation of explosives during seismic testing, the introduction of heavy drilling machinery, and the construction of miles of roads destroyed thousands of square miles of forests, medicinal plants, and food supplies.

Meanwhile, oil production jobs provided a reason for the mass migration of colonos, who strained the natural resources and forced local peoples off their traditional lands. Women became targets of sexual crimes. And the Aguarico, like many other waterways, was poisoned.

When Chevron drilled for oil in this region, the company had no regard for local life and took no preventative or protective measures. During the course of three decades of drilling, Chevron deliberately and knowingly dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the Aguarico and other waterways. Emergildo remembers how sheets of crude oil would blanket the Aguarico, how he would be ankle-deep in oil when walking along the riverbed. He also remembers how company workers outright lied about the dangers of crude oil exposure.

We met Emergildo’s grandchildren and some of the Cofán women and elders while in Dureno. Many of the women make beaded jewelry that they sell in the adjacent oil town of Lago Agrio. Lago Agrio (Sour Lake) is the boomtown that sprang up around Texaco’s first oil well in the region. It was Texaco that gave the town its name. (Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.)

Chevron/Texaco may have packed up its bags and left the region in 1992, but its toxic legacy is palpable. Thousands of people still lack potable water, and thousands have been stricken with oil-related cancers and other illnesses. More than 900 open-air oil waste pits built by Texaco have been abandoned and continue to leach life-threatening toxins into the environment. We’ll visit some of these waste pits tomorrow.

As we boarded the canoe for our return trip, we waved back to Emergildo’s grandchildren. Emergildo already lost two sons, but the thirty thousand Indigenous peoples and small farmers who have been impacted by Chevron’s contamination and who undauntedly continue to fight for justice are working to ensure this generation will have a brighter and cleaner future. And we won’t let up on Chevron until that happens.

House Members Express “Concern” About Oil Giant’s Effort to Use Trade Policy to Deny Due Process in Environmental Lawsuit

WASHINGTON–Chevron has been dealt a major setback in the Congress as more than two dozen representatives, led by Rep. Linda Sanchez and including powerful senior members, have signed a letter urging that the United States Trade Representative reject efforts by the oil giant to cancel Ecuador’s trade preferences. Chevron has pressured the USTR and Congress for years to revoke or curtail Ecuador’s preferences in retaliation for a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadorian citizens alleging that Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest over a period of more than 20 years.

Separately, a one-year extension of the trade preferences for Ecuador were approved in the House on Dec. 14 on a voice vote – the fourth consecutive year Chevron’s lobbying effort against Ecuador appears to have failed. The Senate is expected to formally approve the measure by the end of the year.

The letter to the USTR, sent December 15, expresses concern about Chevron’s efforts to influence a private litigation which originally was filed in 1993 in U.S. federal court by several Ecuadorian indigenous tribes and farmer communities, but was sent to Ecuador at Chevron’s request in 2002.

“We urge you to reject Chevron’s request and reaffirm that U.S. trade agreements will not be used as leverage to interfere in private claims progressing through Ecuador’s legal process,” the representatives wrote in the letter.

Among the 26 Members taking this strong stand with Rep. Sanchez were: the Chief Democratic Deputy Whip and Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Trade Subcommittee, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL); the Chairman of the Human Rights Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA); eight Members of the Ways & Means Committee, including the chairman of its Oversight Subcommittee, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA); and eight members of the Appropriations Committee, three of whom also oversee State Department matters and Foreign Operations. Judiciary and Rules Committee Members also were among those lending their support.

Other members signing the letter were Reps.: Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), James McGovern (D-MA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Danny Davis (D-IL), Sam Farr (D-CA), Steve Israel (D-NY), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Brian Higgins (D-NY), Phil Hare (D-IL), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Michael Michaud (D-ME), Jim McDermott (D-MA), James Moran (D-VA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Mike Quigley (D-IL), John Olver (D-MA), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Betty Sutton (D-OH), and Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-CA).

Chevron is charged in the lawsuit with dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways and abandoning more than 900 unlined waste pits when it operated a large oil concession in Ecuador’s Amazon from 1964 to 1990. A team of independent, court-appointed experts has estimated that at least 1,401 individuals have died from cancer related to exposure to the contamination and determined that damages could reach as high as $27.3 billion, according to a 4,000-page report turned over to the court last year.

The members of Congress write: “We do not prejudge the outcome of the case, nor do we take a position on the litigation. We do believe, however, that tens of thousands of indigenous residents of Ecuador who have brought this case deserve their day in court. We further believe that the USTR should not interfere in an ongoing judicial matter, particularly when this case involves environmental, health, and human rights issues that have a regional, and even global, importance.”

Even though Chevron filed 14 expert affidavits in U.S. federal court praising Ecuador’s court system to get the case transferred, once the evidence in the Ecuador trial pointed to the company’s culpability it began a lobbying campaign in Washington to have Ecuador’s preferences canceled. Chevron’s lobbyists have made misleading assertions to the Congress that the company was granted a release from claims after a limited environmental clean-up in the mid-1990s, even though the release does not apply to the private claims in the lawsuit and the clean-up itself was fraudulent, according to the plaintiffs.

The ultimate goal of Chevron’s Washington lobbying campaign was to pressure Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, to interfere in his country’s judiciary and quash the case as a way to maintain more than 300,000 jobs in Ecuador that are dependent on the preferences, according to Steven Donziger, an American legal advisor to the plaintiffs in the legal case.

“Chevron was trying to pressure Ecuador’s President to violate his own Constitution and interfere in a private litigation to benefit the company in its battle with indigenous groups decimated by Chevron’s pollution,” said Donziger.

Chevron’s lobbying campaign has sparked strong reactions across Capitol Hill and in the media.

On November 17, in testimony before the trade subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Sanchez called Chevron’s lobbying “extortion” and said, “Apparently, if it can’t get the outcome it wants from the Ecuadorian court system, Chevron will use the US government to deny trade benefits until Ecuador cries uncle.”

A recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times editorial blasted Chevron, noting that “If … Chevron has its way, Congress will instead punish Ecuador because its government refuses to halt a private lawsuit against the oil giant…. to force a favorable outcome in a private claim would justly generate international outrage.”

In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama and Sen. Patrick Leahy wrote a similar letter to the USTR asking it to reject Chevron’s petition, which it did.

Experts believe the Ecuador contamination – which covers an area the size of Rhode Island — is the worst oil-related disaster on earth and would take at least two decades to properly clean. A final judgment in the case is expected next year.

Published in the Huffington Post

by Han Shan

Chevron is piling on the lobbyists and PR firms in an extraordinary effort to evade responsibility for its massive toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

But in a recent article for Politico, Kenneth Vogel, who tracks the confluence of money, politics and influence for the influential Washington news outlet, writes that the oil company’s increasingly combative approach is backfiring, “drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York’s attorney general, members of Congress and even Barack Obama when he was a senator.”

Facing the possibility of a $27 billion judgment in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron is employing an increasingly aggressive kitchen sink strategy, with a major lobbying effort in Washington, and a multifaceted PR campaign in the U.S. and Ecuador that produced a phony news report and promoted a contrived bribery scandal to smear the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

In DC, Chevron has been lobbying Congress and the U.S. Trade Representative to threaten Ecuador’s trade preferences under the Andean Trade Preferences Act in order to pressure Ecuador into intervening in the private lawsuit. In a shocking admission, Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson explained, “If we were able to call a timeout and make the lawsuit disappear, then this entire issue disappears.”

Among Chevron’s cabal of high-powered lobbyists are Mickey Kantor and Carla Hills, former U.S. Trade Representatives who are lobbying their former agency, Wayne Berman, Managing Director of Government Relations for Ogilvy Worldwide and former National Finance Co-Chair of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, former Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador Peter Romero, Mac McLarty, President Clinton’s former Chief of staff, and Brian Pomper, former staff director for Senator Max Baucus.

Last week, U.S. Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) excoriated Chevron’s tactics in testimony before the House Ways & Means Trade Subcommittee. She testified that the company is engaging in “a lobbying effort that looks like little more than extortion.” Interviewed for the Politico.com article, she accused Chevron of “trying to leverage our trade policy in order to get a lawsuit dismissed that is currently pending before the Ecuadorean court. It is a way of trying to undermine the rule of law, and I just find that completely abhorrent. It’s shocking.”

Chevron is the largest corporation in Representative Sanchez’s home state of California, and she is currently circulating the first of three letters to colleagues about what she describes as Chevron’s “very heavy-handed” and “misguided” approach to the case.

But as Politico.com noted, she’s hardly the first or most influential government official to speak up on the issue. In February 2006, Barack Obama joined fellow Senator Patrick Leahy in writing a letter to then-U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.

They write:

“Chevron is reportedly lobbying Members of Congress and your office to use the leverage of the Andean Free Trade Agreement to pressure Ecuador to dismiss the case. A Chevron spokesman expressed the company’s “present opposition to the inclusion of Ecuador in the Andean Free Trade Agreement until the government of Ecuador honors its existing contractual obligations and respects and upholds the rule of law with respect to our interests.”

The letter goes on to say:

“We are writing to seek your assurances that the U.S. Trade Representative will not allow negotiations Over the Andean Free Trade Agreement to interfere with a case involving Chevron that is under consideration by the Ecuadorian judiciary, particularly one involving environmental, health and human rights issues that have regional, importance. While we are not prejudging the outcome of the case, we do believe the 30,000 indigenous residents of Ecuador deserve their day in court.”

According to opensecrets.org, Chevron has spent $77,199,296 on lobbying the federal government from 1999-2009. While this is a staggering amount of money, it appears to be an excellent investment for a company that made about $24 billion in profits last year. According to the California Secretary of State, its California state lobbying expenditures add up to nearly $12 million since 1999, not counting the $35 million it spent to help defeat Proposition 87, a 2006 state ballot initiative that would have increased taxes on California oil producers in order to fund research and development of renewable and clean energy.

Chevron’s “Human Energy” ad campaign seeks to portray the oil giant as a friendly, environmentally-conscious neighbor in California, and wherever the company operates. But behind the slogans and smiling faces is a behemoth that is aggressively throwing its considerable weight around in Sacramento and Washington, seeking to undermine the rule of law and deny the indigenous residents of Ecuador “their day in court.”

We need to build a people power campaign that will mobilize our representatives — like the courageous Linda Sanchez — to push back against the influence of the Big Oil lobby. In solidarity with the rainforest communities of Ecuador, and all communities where Chevron and its allies seek to put profit ahead of people and the planet, we must say “no more.”

For more on Chevron’s ‘Chernobyl in the Amazon’ and the Clean Up Ecuador Campaign, visit www.ChevronToxico.com

Published in the Huffington Post

By Trudie Styler                                                                                                                                                                                     Actress, director, producer, and humanitarian

The following post was originally delivered at the UN General Assembly’s meeting on climate change on Thursday, November 19th.

It has been 20 years since Sting and I first visited Brazil, and met some of the people for whom the Amazon rainforest is home. On that trip we saw for ourselves the sickening destruction that was taking place. One of the world’s most precious resources simply being cleared out of the way, used up, wasted.

We met people who lived in the forest, who’d lost their land, their way of life, their families. We met a Kayapo tribesman called Raoni, who asked us to help him deliver a message to the world. Raoni’s message was this, as he spoke of the burning of the rainforest:

“There is a lot of smoke. My people are very sick. But whatever happens in my forest today will affect all of you, in your lands, tomorrow.” Well, as we all know, “tomorrow” is already here.

Over 20 years the work of the Rainforest Foundation has spread from Brazil to 18 countries, on three continents. The Foundations based in the UK, the U.S. and Norway work in partnership with more than 100 local organizations in all major rainforest areas.

We’ve protected over 115,000 sq km of forest, as well as an area bigger than Switzerland for the Kayapo nation.

Projects now underway aim to save nearly one million square kilometers of rainforest — that’s the size of the United Kingdom, Ireland and France.

Alongside our remit to conserve the environment, we support hundreds of thousands of forest peoples in their mission to protect their own rights to their land, livelihoods and culture. But against the relentless tide of land-grabbing, logging and forest-clearing by multinational corporations, none of this is enough.

One of the great tragedies of the ancient world was the burning of the great library of Alexandria. Countless volumes of accumulated knowledge were destroyed, and the wisdom of centuries was turned into smoke that cast a cloud, it is said, over the whole planet.

Today we face a tragedy even greater. The people of the Amazon have no writing.

Their library is the forest. Their university is the forest. Their church is the forest.

Every day we are burning down the library that has taken thousands of years to grow. Every day we are burning down the natural laboratory that could hold a cure for AIDS, a cure for cancer. We are burning down the kitchen that tomorrow could feed the world.

There is an area of the Ecuadorean rainforest I’ve been visiting for the last few years, which was once a paradise on earth. In the 1960s, however, Texaco — later bought by Chevron — started prospecting for oil there. The drilling practices employed by Texaco and inherited by Chevron had been outlawed in the U.S. since the 1930s. But it was cheaper to take shortcuts.

That region is now described by independent assessors as one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the world.

Chevron have admitted to dumping 18 and a half billion gallons of toxic waste directly into the rivers and onto the ground — that’s 30 times more than the pure crude spilled in the Exxon-Valdez disaster.

One thousand unfenced and untreated dumpsites still leak toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the rivers and streams, 16 years after the company pulled out of the region in 1992. As a result, the water contains 280 times more hydrocarbons than is permitted here in the U.S.

On my visits to the region, I have spoken to mothers who know that the water they give their children to drink is poisoned but they’ve simply had no choice. I met Maria Garafolo, a 38-year-old mother, who has cancer of the uterus. Her 18-year-old daughter, Sylvia, has cancer of the liver. They showed me the stream where they collect their water. It stinks of petroleum. Nothing grows there. The animals they rear to sell at market die in the toxic environment. It’s no surprise to me that Maria and Sylvia are also extremely ill. A spokesperson for Chevron counters that these diseases are due to poor personal hygiene and sanitation. That’s as cruelly cynical as it is preposterous.

And so in 2007, the Rainforest Foundation joined hands with Unicef Ecuador and the local Amazon Defense Fund, to provide rainwater collection and filtration tanks for the families affected by the oil production damage. Now, for the first time in 35 years, mothers can be sure that the water their children drink is free from toxic chemicals. This band-aid solution will have to do until Chevron accepts its responsibility to the people whose lands and lives they have devastated.

What has happened in Ecuador is not an isolated incident. On the contrary. It is a microcosm of how the world works.

Whichever area of the Amazon I’ve visited since the late 80s, it is always the same tragic tale. Sometimes it’s about oil, sometimes it’s gold, or cattle-ranching. But whatever it’s about, it’s always about corporate profit. And nobody is holding these big businesses accountable.

In the 20 years Sting and I have been involved in rainforest issues, not once has there been meaningful government consultation with indigenous forest people about the development of their ancestral lands. The UN’s declaration of their rights has not been bound by governments. In fact this week Sting will be adding his voice to the chorus of indigenous Amazon people in protest against the lack of information shared about the Belo Monte dam in the Xingu river in Brazil.

It is time for all governments and industry leaders to work together with indigenous rainforest peoples to preserve this vital natural resource.

Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the earth’s land surface. Now they only cover 6 percent. Once they have been decimated to the tipping point, there will be no way back. We will face such extreme weather conditions that our planet will no longer support human life.

In March of this year a group of climate scientists met in Copenhagen, and agreed that the climate situation was actually much worse than we’d thought. It is now believed that there needs to be a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, rising to over 90% by 2030.

We are now hearing that global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees by the end of this century. Do we want to be the generation that destroyed ourselves? What will it take for us to stop hiding from these terrible truths?

There is a way out of this mess. But we have to face the truth, and we have to embrace change. We can’t leave it to the next government, and the next generation.

It’s time to take the responsibility — not by 2020, not by 2050 — but NOW, to cut carbon emissions decisively and urgently.

Deforestation accounts for around 20% of the world’s carbon emissions.

Simply halting deforestation would be the single fastest and cheapest way to make a significant reduction. So why aren’t we doing it?

Land is exploited, human rights are abused and precious resources are plundered, because we have allowed mahogany sideboards and cheap beef burgers to hold more intrinsic value than human life.

It seems that forests are worth nothing until they’ve been turned into toilet paper.

Land is worth nothing until it is producing something that can be sold on the world markets. We have allowed the dollar, the pound and the petrol in our tanks to rule the world.

We have recently proved that we lack the wisdom to look after the global economy.

Never mind the global economy, it’s the globe itself that’s in danger. We are now at a turning-point in our short human history. As the world’s financial systems begin to settle, we have a unique opportunity to shift our focus, to change our priorities.

We don’t have to make a choice between the economy and the environment.

A transition to a clean economic system — one that values vital natural systems, one that understands the cost of pollution and waste — will open up huge opportunities.

The shift is inevitable. Countries can’t stop it. They can only slow it down. And as they do, they will be left behind.

As a species, we have overcome far greater obstacles. We’ve landed men on the moon. We’ve developed weapons capable of destroying whole countries.

The challenge you will face at Copenhagen is far less daunting. But the implications of failure are literally immeasurable.

Twenty years ago, the world did not heed Raoni’s message. Now that we know he was right, will we heed it now?

I want to end with a very personal appeal to each and every one of you. The very fact that you are in this room today means that you are powerful. When billions of poor people think about the global elite holding the collective fate of the planet in their hands, they are thinking of you.

The United Nations was created to bring order and responsibility to our world.

It is a magnificent testament to much that is good in humankind. You are the inheritors of that tradition. You are the keepers of that sacred flame. I am asking you — no, I am begging you — to live up to your responsibilities. Don’t settle for warm words and fine-sounding declarations. Don’t accept clever compromises.

As we go forward to Copenhagen, the signs are not good. In the face of the greatest crisis our world has faced for generations, too many powerful people are behaving with shocking irresponsibility. Instead of meeting the challenge of climate change, they are sidelining it in favor of short-term priorities. Instead of building a sustainable global economy, they are ignoring it in favor of short-term growth.

Instead of telling their citizens the truth, they are obscuring it in favor of comforting lies about painless solutions.

Yesterday Rainforest Action Network’s executive director Mike Brune sent a letter to Chevron’s incoming CEO John Watson and made him an offer.  Come with us to Ecuador.  To our knowledge no senior Chevron official has toured Texaco’s former oil installations in Ecuador’s rainforest.  [Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001, and with it, legal responsibility for the company’s massive oil contamination].

The offer is a genuine invitation to Mr. Watson to see for himself how his company’s actions continue to harm thousands of people.  We ask ourselves: How can John Watson deny what he hasn’t seen?

He knows that there is a pending lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuadorian court brought by affected communities for estimated damages as high as $27 billion. He also knows that the ruling is expected sometime next spring.

And Chevron has actually vowed publicly: “we’re not paying and we’re going to fight this for years if not decades into the future.”

It would be a big step for John Watson and Chevron to accept responsibility. We recognize that.

But we also recognize that Chevron doesn’t like to be burdened by the facts.

The fact is that families in Ecuador are poisoning themselves every time they drink oil-tainted water from the river – because they have no other source of potable water. The fact is that children are born with neurological disorders, women are having miscarriages and people are dying of cancer at rates previously unseen in the region.

And the fact is that the longer Chevron cooks up alleged corruption scandals, the more they produce pseudo news reports casting themselves as the victim of a corrupt political system in Ecuador, and the more counter lawsuits they file, the longer the people in Ecuador hurt.

So our offer to Mr. Watson to come to Ecuador is also an opportunity – an opportunity to use his new leadership role and resolve this crisis once and for all.

Mr. Watson – how will you respond?