A former farmer from Ecuador went from battling oil companies in the Amazon to rubbing elbows Saturday with the world’s musical elite, a journey he hopes will bring attention to his environmental lawsuit.
Pablo Fajardo, 34, is the lead attorney in a $6 billion claim against Chevron Corp., which he claims failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic wastewater from oil development in Ecuador’s Amazon River region.
His activism earned him a guest pass to the Live Earth concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, where he was escorted around by Trudie Styler, the wife of a musician he had not heard of until recently: Sting.
“It is a little strange. I never thought I’d be at a place like this,” said Fajardo, speaking in Spanish translated by an American lawyer, Steven Donzinger, who also has been working on the case.
During his short trip to the states — Fajardo arrived Friday and leaves Tuesday — he is also expected to meet former Vice President Al Gore, who helped bring about the Live Earth concerts.
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The Live Earth concerts are designed to draw attention to climate change. The 24-hour musical extravaganza has featured more than 100 musicians, including Kanye West, Madonna, The Police and Bon Jovi.
Fajardo hoped that the concerts, held at venues worldwide including London, Tokyo and Sydney, Australia, would allow more people to learn about the environmental problems connected with oil drilling in Ecuador.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs charge that Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of oil wastewater into the rain forest and failed to properly clean it up. They also allege that cancer rates are elevated in the area because of the contamination.
San Roman, Calif.-based Chevron has said that Texaco Petroleum Corp., which ended its Ecuadorean operations in 1992, followed all local environmental laws in a $40 million cleanup that began in 1995. The company also says there is no proof that oil contamination caused the cancers.
Texaco spent three decades extracting oil in Ecuador’s jungle. The company was acquired by Chevron in 2001.
After trying for years to have their case heard in a U.S. federal court, the plaintiffs shifted their legal battle to a makeshift courtroom in an Ecuadorean jungle town called Lago Agrio.