The Norwegian Government has been given a second chance to put its money where its ethical mouth is.  Earlier this week, a coalition of scientists, environmentalists, and Nigerian community representatives petitioned Norway’s Government Pension Fund to divest from Royal Dutch Petroleum, claiming that the company is violating the Fund’s Ethical Guidelines by causing severe environmental damage through oil spills in the Niger Delta.  Norway should accept the complaint and divest, or risk undermining its public commitment to responsible investment and breaching its own Ethical Guidelines. Read more »

Today, thousands of Peruvians are now participating in a "Grand National March for the Right to Water and Life." Many of the marchers are setting off from the lagoons of Cajamarca, or from the Amazonian jungle, or from the Southern Andes, marching hundreds of miles to arrive in the capital, Lima during the second week of February. The march seeks to broadly respond to a public policy in Peru of valuing a particular model of economic development over the health and wellbeing of communities adversely affected by that "development" — particularly when large resource-extraction projects threaten a community’s water supply. Read more »

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about an Ecuadorean appeals court upholding an $18 billion dollar judgment against Chevron for massive oil pollution in the Amazon rainforest. The Court rejected Chevron’s arguments that the judgment was procured by fraud. Today, a decision by a federal appeals court in New York makes it more likely that this judgment can be enforced. 

Last year, fearing that it was going to lose in Ecuador, Chevron sued the plaintiffs in New York seeking a court order that would prevent the plaintiffs from trying to enforce any Ecuadorean judgment outside of Ecuador. Since Chevron no longer does business there, the judgment could not be enforced inside Ecuador. Read more »

This guest post was contributed by Emily Ponder, a legal intern in our US office. Emily is a first-year law student at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Everyone knows that oil is a dirty business, but tar sands oil may be the dirtiest. That is why environmentalists, indigenous groups, and small-town Nebraska famers alike are celebrating President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline Jan. 18.

The tar sand oil extraction process and its transport poses serious health and environmental hazards, and the Keystone XL pipeline would have made 2,000 miles of land—and communities—vulnerable to its destructive risks. Read more »

When an Ecuadorean appeals court in Sucumbíos upheld an $18 billion judgment against Chevron earlier this month, I happened to be passing through Lago Agrio—the famed location of the oil contamination at issue in the case. As we took the highway out of town, we followed the path of the oil-pipeline that snakes its way southwest, towards Quito. “The government does more to protect the pipeline than it does to protect drivers,” my guide informed me as we headed east. Read more »

In November 2010, Rick and I blogged about the Oklahoma constitutional amendment that would ban state courts from considering foreign law, especially Sharia (Islamic law), as well as international law. As Rick noted at the time, the amendment was very likely unconstitutional.

This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Oklahoma and is generally a fairly conservative court, confirmed that the amendment is unconstitutional. The court's opinion determined that the plaintiff, a Muslim (and U.S. citizen) living in Oklahoma, was stigmatized by the amendment, and that it therefore violated the Constitution's prohibition on religious discrimination. Read more »

Ecuadorean villagers harmed by Chevron's pollution of a formerly pristine corner of the Amazon rainforest have been seeking legal redress against the company for almost two decades. Yesterday, they moved a whole lot closer to finally achieving justice, as an Ecuadorean appeals court upheld a judgement of 18 billion US dollars against Chevron.

Chevron stands accused of pollution on a truly massive scale. The victims, indigenous peoples and farmers, originally tried to challenge that pollution in Chevron's home forum, the United States, but after years of litigation, a federal court in New York accepted Chevron's argument that the case should be heard in Ecuador. So the plaintiffs filed suit in Ecuador.

And they won. Last spring, an Ecuadorean trial judge found that Chevron is liable for 18 billion US dollars in damages.  Read more »

In the past two weeks we at ERI have submitted amicus briefs in three cases before the Ninth Circuit and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, weighing in on a legal doctrine known as “foreign affairs preemption.”  While these briefs will likely receive less attention than the two Supreme Court amicus briefs that ERI will be submitting later this week in the Kiobel and Mohamad cases, they raise key arguments with respect to the ability to use state law claims to respond to human rights abuses occurring abroad. Read more »

In honor of Human Rights Day, an anonymous donor has generously offered EarthRights International a creative “matching” donation: we’ll receive $1 for every Facebook Fan (“Like”) we receive through the end of the week, up to $5000!

Update: We made it!

We reached our goal of 5000 Likes and earned $5000. Thank you to everyone!

What can we do with $5000?

If we reach our goal of 5,000 Facebook fans, we’ll receive a donation of $5,000! That’s about what it costs to put one of our EarthRights School students through a full year of our training programs in Thailand!

We need your help!

Please spread this message far and wide amongst your networks.
First, Like our page and we'll receive $1:

Then share our page on your Wall so your friends can take part:

By sharing it widely, you can make a much larger impact! Read more »

Today is International Anti-Corruption Day, so it seems like a great moment to think about what we can all do to assist in the fight against global corruption, which makes products more expensive and less reliable for consumers, increases business costs, and undermines governance in resource-rich countries, exacting an estimated cost of one trillion dollars annually.  As I’ll explain below, one thing we can do is contact Democratic Senators who are planning to propose legislation that could radically undermine U.S. anti-corruption efforts.

There have been lots of positive developments in the fight against global corruption, including: Read more »