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I'm leaving this morning for an exciting week in Houston, Texas, where community leaders and watchdog groups from around the world will expose and confront the oil giant Chevron, at its own shareholder meeting, on its global record of environmental harms and human suffering. Activities were kicked off last week by The True Cost of Chevron network, with the launch of the second annual The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report. ERI is proud to be part of this powerful and emerging civil society coalition, and we look forward to challenging the company on key issues this week.

I will be joined in Houston by Naing Htoo, our Program Coordinator in Asia, and Lindsey Ingraham, an ERI intern and recent George Washington Law School graduate, and we will be taking part in a number of activities throughout the week, highlighted by a trip inside the Chevron annual meeting to speak directly to the company's CEO and Board of Directors on the harms they continue to cause. We will also be holding public events in Houston to expose the true cost of Chevron's operations on the communities where it operates, including press conferences and a panel discussion. Later in the week, the coalition will keep the momentum going by coming together for a strategy retreat to drive this important movement forward.

We'll be blogging from Houston throughout the week, so please check back for more updates!

Last week, I posted an article on The Huffington Post explaining ERI’s documentation that Total and Chevron lied to their shareholders about their ability to practice complete revenue transparency in Burma (Myanmar). The companies, partners in the Yadana gas pipeline in Burma, have privately told inquiring shareholders that they’re contractually restricted from publishing what they pay to that country's dictatorship, and that their contracts with the ruling military regime are strictly confidential. Neither claim is true. ERI recently published the companies’ contracts with Burma's state-owned oil company – they’re public documents, available for the world to see – and nothing in the contracts would prevent revenue transparency.

In some ways, this fiscal brand of deceit around the companies’ notorious pipeline in Burma is novel. Their principal lies with regard to their presence in Burma have usually come in the form of exaggerated claims about their positive development impacts in the country, or in outright denials of responsibility for violent abuses committed on their watch, abuses like forced labor, killings, and torture. Never mind that the companies paid out large settlements to Burmese plaintiffs who sued Chevron’s predecessor Unocal in the US, and Total in France, for complicity in forced labor and other human rights violations along the pipeline.   

But perhaps one of Total’s more unabashed lies was when the company publicly claimed on its website, for seven years, that it had successfully “eradicated” forced labor in its “pipeline corridor” in Burma, and that the U.N.’s International Labour Organization (ILO) certified the claim. In 2009, we published nearly 200 pages of original research documenting this claim as patently untrue. Not only did Total fail to eradicate forced labor around its pipeline, but the ILO never claimed they did; the ILO actually went on record explicitly disavowing the claim.

Two years ago, I joined thousands of people in west London to protest the construction of a third runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow airport.  The proposed expansion would have almost doubled air traffic into Heathrow, causing increased air and noise pollution, climate change, and devastating impacts to local communities. I was thrilled to turn on my computer last week and read that the new UK government has scrapped the project! This is a huge victory for the people, the planet, and all of the organizers and activists that made it happen.

While I certainly can’t take credit for this victory, I can’t help feeling connected to it because of the one day that I raised my voice.  I just happened to be in London for a conference when a friend and fellow activist invited me to join the protest.  It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in May, and we met up with friends from Platform UK, Greenpeace and other organizations helping to challenge this project which—like so many that we at EarthRights deal with—was both impractical and unnecessary. Because of the widespread impacts to both communities and the environment, the protest was filled with diversity. Residents spoke of their homes that would be lost; environmentalists implored the government to expand rail access; spiritual leaders spoke of our common duty to protect the earth; and teachers and children from local schools described the disruptions to their learning from overhead planes. It’s the same story we hear at EarthRights all too often -- everyone, from every walk of life, had something to lose if the private interests won and moved forward with the expansion.

I’m glad that they didn’t.  I’ll always remember how I felt that perfect spring day, in the middle of a village field as bands and children played, and thousands of us organized our bodies to form a huge NO, which passing aircraft could certainly see.  I remember seeing photos of that NO in the newspapers the next day, and looking for myself and my friends on the left side of the letter O.  While there were too many people for me to pick myself out, I knew I was there. Yes, I was one person, taking action for one day, on one event.  But it was part of a sustained, well organized campaign—a campaign that I have followed since then, and a campaign that I can feel proud to say that we won.  Onward!

When ERI represents victims of earth rights abuses in litigation, our goal is to seek an appropriate remedy for the harms they have suffered, and each case contributes to a general climate of accountability that deters similar abuses in the future.  But litigation often has other benefits, as well; it allows all of the facts to come out, which helps the victims to tell their story and lifts the veil on corporate secrecy.  As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously remarked, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."  Sometimes the documents that are released through litigation provide insight into aspects of projects that are not even related to the claims in the case, but are important questions of public interest.  ERI's recent initiative on transparency in the oil and gas sector in Burma provides one example of how this has happened.

ERI's case Doe v. Unocal, which proceeded through one phase of trial before reaching a landmark settlement in 2005, challenged abuses arising out of a natural gas pipeline project in Southern Burma.  In many countries, the contracts underlying such a project would be public or subject to freedom of information disclosure.  After all, these are contracts with public entities to develop public resources. For example, BP's recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico arises out of a block known as MC252, which was awarded by the U.S. government in 2008 in Lease 206; public information about the lease sale can be found online and shows, among other things, that BP bid over $34 million for the block, with a fixed royalty rate of 18 3/4%.

Last week, Achuar leaders traveled from deep in the Peruvian Amazon to Calgary, Canada to attend Talisman Energy’s Annual General Shareholder Meeting and demand that the company cease all oil development on their territory, immediately withdraw from their Amazonian homeland, and respect the collective rights of the Achuar people. The Achuar know first-hand the damaging effects of oil development on their land and their communities, which is why they are resisting Talisman’s attempts to further exploit their land. 

The Achuar are just one of the many indigenous communities living in the northern Peruvian Amazon whose livelihoods and lands are threatened by oil development.  Since 1971, when US-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) arrived on Achuar territory to develop a concession known as Block 1AB, indigenous communities have witnessed the darker side of development, including environmental destruction, lead and cadmium poisoning, oil spills, and loss of livelihood. Oxy's legacy is the subject of on-going litigation brought by EarthRights International on behalf of the Achuar against Oxy in U.S. Federal Court.

The threat posed by oil development to indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon has only become more serious as the government continues to encourage investment in oil and natural gas projects. Last year, the Peruvian government passed legislative decrees to open up the Amazon to increased oil, natural gas, mining, logging and hydropower development, ultimately leading to countrywide strikes by Amazonian communities, and a violent clash between police and protestors on a blocked highway in Bagua Province, resulting in deaths on both sides and leaving hundreds of protestors injured. 

Unlike Oxy, Talisman Energy is still in the early stages of drilling new exploration wells on Achuar Territory, and it's not too late to stop it. This is not the kind of development indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon want, which is why the Achuar communities are doing everything they can to keep Talisman Energy off their land.

Last week, we held a press conference in Bangkok to announce the release of an initiative to pressure the oil companies Total, Chevron, and PTTEP to publish the last 18 years of taxes, bonuses, royalties and other payments they’ve made to the Burmese military junta. These companies operate the controversial Yadana natural gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand, in partnership with the Burmese military junta.

You cannot always predict the future, and on the day of the press conference, the leaders of Thailand’s red shirt movement addressed throngs of protesters just outside the front door of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT). We were unsure whether we would even be able to hold our event — rumors swirled that the protesters would disrupt the SkyTrain and other events at the FCCT were cancelled — but despite the massive political uprising unfolding just outside the building, a number of journalists and media outlets recognized the importance of transparency in Burma, attended our event, asked poignant questions, and wrote some excellent stories.

(VIDEO) Press Conference, 27 April 2010

This summer, two participants in the Mekong Legal Network (MLN) will travel to Washington, DC to attend the Summer Program in Environmental Law at American University’s Washington College of Law (WCL). The lawyers are Nitaya Wangpaiboon, who defends human rights in Chiang Mai, and Jingjing Zhang, a top environmental lawyer in China. With help from WCL's Prof. David Hunter, the Director of the Summer Program, MLN has secured scholarships for their course of study.

The WCL Summer Program in Environmental Law focuses on important, timely international issues such as Climate Change Litigation, International Business and the Environment, Environmental Compliance & Enforcement, and International Law of Biodiversity. In addition, the Mekong lawyers will spend a week in ERI’s Washington office, learning about U.S. and International NGO operations and meeting with ERI’s allies. They will finish their US Summer Tour with one week of legal English training at WCL’s Summer Legal English Institute, and will enjoy the 4th of July in the U.S. Capital.

In addition, MLN is helping our Lao colleague, Manolinh Thepkhamvong, gain a scholarship to join WCL’s Master of Law program in International Environmental Law. Manolinh is the only known public interest lawyer of the 100 lawyers in the Lao Bar Association, and earning an LLM would provide a significant boost to public interest and environmental law -- and the promotion of the rule of law -- in the Lao PDR.

Colombian paramilitaries. A company can be sued for aiding and collaborating with Colombian paramilitaries to kill civilians during the Colombian civil war, according to an Alabama district court’s recent decision.  On Friday, Judge R. David Proctor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued an opinion in Jane Doe v. Drummond Corp., No. 09-CV-01041-RDP (N.D. Ala. Apr. 30, 2010) [pdf], allowing lawsuits to proceed alleging that the Drummond Corporation is responsible for the murder of Colombians by the AUC – a prominent paramilitary group – whom they hired to act as security and to pacify the area around Drummond’s mine and rail lines. Although this is not an ERI case, the decision could have important ramifications for ERI’s case against Chiquita.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled a hearing in the appeal of Bowoto v. Chevron, ERI's case involving abuses against Nigerian protestors, for June 14, 2010, in San Francisco.  In 1998, ethnic Ilaje villagers held a protest on Chevron's Parabe platform, an offshore oil facility in the Niger Delta.  The Ilajes were protesting the environmental and economic devastation that oil activities had visited upon their communities.  (A detailed account of their grievances is found in The Marginalisation of the Ilajes, which the Ilajes submitted to the local government shortly before their protest.)  A day after acknowledging that the Ilajes were "unarmed" and the situation was "calm," Chevron called in Nigerian military forces to evict the protestors, flying armed soldiers to the platform in Chevron helicopters.  The soldiers shot several protestors, killing two and wounding at least two others, and detained and tortured at least ten others.

In 2008, a jury found that Chevron was not liable for the shootings and torture, but ERI and our co-counsel believe there were several important errors in the trial.  We filed the appeal last year, and in June three judges of the Ninth Circuit will hear our arguments.  In recognition of the importance of the case, the Ninth Circuit has allotted a total of 40 minutes for the argument--twice as long as in most cases.

I am very excited, with this post, to officially launch the new EarthRights International blog, which we quietly soft-launched last week with the publication of a handful of posts written over the last few months. Beginning today you can expect regular weekly posts from our diverse staff, representing each of our programs: our EarthRights Schools, which train activists in Burma and throughout the Mekong region and support the work of hundreds of members in our growing alumni network; our legal team, which litigates in US courts on behalf of people around the world whose earth rights have been violated by governments and transnational corporations; and our campaigners, who document human rights and environmental abuses, pressure corporations to change their behavior, and advocate for better earth rights protections at every level, from the local to the international. You'll also periodically hear from Ka Hsaw Wa and me, as well as our program support staff, on organizational developments and general earth rights issues.