Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP)

, with support from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and published as part of the 

 journalistic partnership bringing together 13 media outlets from eight countries to probe how the carbon offset market is working in Latin America. It is republished here with their permission.

 You can also read the original article in Spanish here.

From September 2022 to May 2024, Chevron's Colombian subsidiary bought 3 million carbon credits from an Indigenous community in the Colombian Amazon. Those credits allowed the oil company to offset part of its environmental footprint in Colombia. It used a market mechanism known as REDD+, which puts a value on the conservation efforts of the Cotuhé Putumayo Indigenous reservation, and thus reduced the amount of carbon tax it had to pay to the Colombian government given that its 

. Each credit used is equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide—one of the greenhouse gases driving climate change—that in theory no longer rises into the atmosphere as a result of the tribe’s conservation effort.

It would be good news, save for the fact that members of the Indigenous community hosting the project claim not to know anything about it. Six leaders from the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers reservation, located at the top of the small foothills in the extreme south of Colombia, told the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) that they know nothing about the documents, activities or money raked in by an initiative called 'Preserving the Life of the World, Mowíchina arü Maü, Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers' supposedly being implemented within their communal land.

This is the second time Chevron has used the environmental efforts of an Indigenous community that claims to be unaware of the project in question to offset its emissions in Colombia. Between October 2022 and June 2024, the oil giant purchased and used 1.1 million carbon credits from the Pachamama Cumbal project amid the Andean high mountain tundras and cloud forests of an Indigenous reservation in southwestern Colombia. Complaints soon arose among the Pasto Indigenous inhabitants of the Greater Cumbal reservation. They claimed to be unaware of the project’s existence, as 

by CLIP revealed in June 2023. A group of them took the project to court. Both 

 sided with the Pasto, ruling that their fundamental rights had been violated.

 that it was confident that the project had "permits and approvals from the corresponding Indigenous government authority and also (...) the corresponding socialization processes.” The oil company claimed to have a robust due diligence process to ensure high-quality offsets and promised that "our offsets have a degree of compliance accepted by the governments in the regions where we operate."

Both projects, the one in Cumbal and the one in the Amazon, were developed by the same Mexican company, Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V., assessed by the same auditing firm, Deutsche Certification Body S.A.S., and authorized to enter the carbon market by the same certifying standard, ColCX. While the relationship between developers and auditors should be independent and impartial, CLIP uncovered that Global Consulting's CEO was a founding partner of Deutsche Certification Body. In other words, the company where she now works hired her former firm to audit her project, creating a potential conflict of interest for both companies.

Despite these companies’ track records, Chevron Petroleum Company—a subsidiary of Chevron Global Energy Inc. in Colombia and owner of 460 Texaco-brand gasoline stations in the country—once again bought credits from a project in which they were involved. At least 1.3 million credits bought by Chevron from the Amazon-based project were used after judges halted the Cumbal project. 

This is the main finding of this new investigation by the 

, with support from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and published in partnership with 

 journalistic partnership, which brings together 13 media outlets from eight countries to probe how the carbon offset market is working in Latin America.

Chevron used almost one million of these credits from the Amazon after the entity that oversees all auditors in Colombia suspended Deutsche Certification Body's accreditation. In total, the oil giant bought 1.8 million credits after journalistic revelations made the issues with Global Consulting’s Andean initiative clear. The oil company 

 that at no time did the project in the Amazon report any problems and that Global Consulting told it that the Indigenous authorities denied that there was a conflict in the reservation, although it clarified that it now no longer has any commercial relationship with the developer.

These findings raise serious questions about the due diligence standards at one of the 

 in the world. They show that, even though the REDD+ mechanism promised to be an innovative financial solution linking companies seeking to pay to offset their carbon footprint with local communities caring for strategic forests to mitigate the global climate crisis, in some cases these communities are not benefiting from such arrangements.

A 100-year project in the Amazonian trapeze

In September 2022, the Colombian certifying standard ColCX approved the REDD+ project Conservando la Vida del Mundo, 'Mowíchina arü Maü, Ríos Cotuhé y Putumayo, 

 as "an initiative of the indigenous Tikuna inhabitants of the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers reservation, represented by the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo (CIMTAR), their governance body" over a period of 100 years.

The center of the project—which translates to 'life of the goddess of the Cotuhé and Putumayo rivers' in the Tikuna or Poguta language—is an Indigenous territory of 245,000 hectares (the size of Luxembourg) in the Colombian Amazon, stretching from the country's border with Peru almost to its border with Brazil. It is named after the two rivers that flow through the land: the Cotuhé that flows north from Amacayacu National Park to meet the mighty Putumayo or Içá, a tributary of the Amazon river, right before the town of Tarapacá. Around 2024 people live in the 12 Indigenous villages there, mostly of the Tikuna ethnic group, but also from the Okaina, Bora and Uitoto. The tropical rainforest there is in a good state of conservation, even though 

have been detected in the two rivers in recent years. The majority of the reservation’s villages have a fair to critical level of access to public services like electric power, sewage, waste treatment and drinking water, according to the 

Indigenous Human Well-Being Indicators (IBHI) matrix

 developed by the state-run Amazonian Scientific Research Institute in collaboration with the communities.

The Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo Association (CIMTAR), the Indigenous authority that has historically governed the reservation, 

appears in the ColCX registry as the project owner

, while Mexican company Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V. is listed as its developer. Several Indigenous leaders from the reservation, however, state that they know little about the initiative, which should be bringing them income to cover their basic needs and support their work caring for the rainforest. 

"Zero on all counts: zero information, zero participation, zero benefits. We have no documents, we don't know what was sold, and we do not know what it was invested in," Pepe Cham García, a Tikuna Indigenous leader and CIMTAR's current legal representative, said.

“People have no knowledge of whether or not progress was made, and that generates concern. We don't know if there was any disbursement, nothing concrete. No information came from those responsible,” said José Herlinton Pérez, a former Puerto Nuevo village leader.

The fact that two leaders of this community say that they have not been given information or participation in the project means that the project might be in breach of several of the 

social and environmental safeguards designed for REDD+ projects

 in Colombia. They include obligations to be transparent in its information, to obtain the community's free, prior and informed consent, to ensure the full and effective participation of its beneficiaries, and to be accountable to them for its economic results.

The Indigenous inhabitants of Cotuhé Putumayo do not know more because certifying standard ColCX has not published the project design document (PDD, in the sector's jargon) that supports any initiative. Neither has ColCX published the project’s auditing report, which would have preceded its approval and authorization to sell credits in the voluntary carbon market. Something similar happened in the Cumbal case in the Andes.

We have asked ColCX for access to the project's documents since December 2022, as part of an exercise mapping carbon credit projects and market actors. Unlike its competitors, the US-based Verra and the Colombian Cercarbono and BioCarbon Registry (formerly ProClima), ColCX is the only certification standard operating in Colombia that 

does not make such documents public for all its projects

Response from the certifier—whose parent company Canal Clima is part of Valorem, the holding company belonging to the Santo Domingos, one of the richest and most powerful families in Colombia—has been negative each time.

In January 2023, ColCX technical manager Catalina Fandiño told CLIP by email that "the design document for each project is confidential and is the property of the community and/or developer," adding that she would request them from the developer. Two months later, she followed up saying that "we didn’t obtain approval to share the requested information." In April 2024, after a new request, CEO Mario Cuasquén 

 due to "a confidentiality clause that obliges parties to refrain from disclosing more information." In September 2024, Cuasquén explained that the Cumbal case had triggered a process of self-criticism within the Santo Domingo group, resulting in major changes to their internal policy that now does allow publication of these documents. However, he warned that this new policy doesn’t apply to Global Consulting's initiatives because of the aforementioned confidentiality clause in the developer’s documents.

The Indigenous people of CIMTAR, who theoretically own the project, have had no better luck accessing this information.

Soon after assuming the legal representation of CIMTAR, Pepe Cham decided to write to those responsible for the initiative. On October 25, 2022, he sent a letter to ColCX introducing himself and requesting information about the project given that, in his words, "it claims to be located in our territory.”

"Neither I as legal representative nor the other members of CIMTAR's Executive Committee have any knowledge of the content, conditions and agreements that support this project and we have had no contact with the company Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A de C.V.", he told them, as seen in e-mails that Cham provided to us. Two weeks later, ColCX CEO Mario Cuasquén replied that from their perspective as a certifying standard, the project "has been duly executed, under the protection of contract No. 008-2019 celebrated between Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V. and the Asociación Cabildo Indígena Mayor de Tarapacá CIMTAR.”

in which Global Consulting CEO Barbara Lara told ColCX that "all activities related to the design, implementation and execution of the project that Global Consulting has carried out to date have been authorized by (...) CIMTAR and covered under Contract No. 008 of 2019 signed between Global Consulting and the Resguardo Cotuhé Putumayo - CIMTAR". She said that Cham's predecessor as legal representative, Marcelino Sánchez Noé, signed that contract and then, on March 21, 2022, sent a letter authorizing the start of the project.

said that they had learned of the change of legal representative in the reservation, but argued that she knew that Sánchez had filed an appeal against the Ministry of the Interior resolution that confirmed said change. The company, she said, would refrain from intervening until that situation was resolved. "Global has decided to remain impartial and to wait for the appeal (...) to be resolved by the office of the Deputy Minister, since until that happens, it will not be able to share information with Mr. Pepe Cham García related to the project," Lara wrote.

Two months later, one day before 2022 ended, Vice Minister Lilia Solano 

of the Ministry of the Interior and ratified Pepe Cham as CIMTAR's legal representative. Though the Indigenous leader was officially recognized by the Colombian State, he received no response from Global Consulting to his request.

Another year and a half later, in mid 2024, Pepe Cham initiated a new round of letter writing seeking information about the carbon credit project active on the community’s land.

an information request sent to Global Consulting 

on August 9, Cham once again underscored that "the community and its current leaders do not have full knowledge of the project and its conditions, a situation that affects both parties considering the aforementioned safeguards." He noted that his predecessor Marcelino Sánchez also did not have such information.

"It is CIMTAR community’s right, in accordance with national and international norms, to possess information and full knowledge of this process," he added, requesting documents referring to "the objective, duration, area, implementation conditions, financing conditions and administrative conditions" of the initiative. He also requested documents proving a socialization had taken place with the reservation's inhabitants and "especially (...) information on the economic benefits left by the project and how they have been distributed in the CIMTAR community, specifying amounts, people benefited, projects benefited, as well as the method, time and place of the disbursement of resources.”

More than six months later Cham says he has not received a response from the Mexican company.

, stressing the same points. On September 3, Mario Cuasquén 

, although he did not do so in substance. He argued that the public information request could not proceed, and again told CIMTAR's legal representative that he was not authorized to provide the requested information "in view of the confidentiality clause of the contractual agreements in force" and explained that he wasn't familiar with part of the data requested, especially the financial details. He closed by saying that "the project (...) can be consulted publicly on the ColCX website", despite the fact that the website does not include basic documents such as the PDD or the auditing report.

Frustrated by this lack of response, Cham sought help from three public entities. The Ministry of the Environment, which oversees the carbon market, 

that it "hadn’t received any response from Global Consulting", while the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees ethnic minorities’ rights, and the Ombudsperson's Office did not respond.

We have been requesting an interview with Barbara Lara of Global Consulting since March 2025, but have not received a response.

On March 18, 2025, Marcelino Sanchez, the Indigenous leader who signed the contract underpinning the project, sent us an e-mail introducing himself as the legal representative of the Greater Tarapacá Indigenous Council-CIMTAR and attaching a letter whose content we refrain from disclosing at his express request, in which he demanded that we not report on this subject.

Three days later, Sanchez sent a new e-mail, copying Barbara Lara of Global Consulting, attaching said letter, and highlighting his 15-year trajectory as an indigenous leader. "Right now our priority is the formalization of our Indigenous Territorial Entity and subsequent liquidation of the Association," he wrote in the email's body. Up until the date of publication, Marcelino Sanchez has not responded to interview requests or specific questions about the carbon credit project.

The title Sánchez used in his communications underscores one of the case's complexities: there are currently two governance bodies that coexist in Cotuhé Putumayo. On the one hand, there is the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo led by Pepe Cham since January 2022 (as recognized by the Interior Ministry in April 2022) and on the other, the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Council led by Marcelino Sánchez since March 2022.

This is so because the reservation is in the process of 

of becoming an Indigenous territorial entity (ETI) with political-administrative functions. This was a promise of Colombia's 1991 Constitution, which declared the country multiethnic, but has only been implemented in parts. In 2018, the administration of Juan Manuel Santos issu

laying down a pathway for Indigenous lands located in the non-municipalized areas of Amazonas, Guainía and Vaupés to be incorporated into the national ordinance with a category similar to that of municipalities. From that moment on, the Indigenous territories began to create and formalize their Indigenous councils, which are the form of local government assigned to them by the Constitution (similar to a mayor and city council in the U.S. context). While this transition takes place and one replaces the other as the internal governing body, which will eventually administer and execute public funds directly, the two coexist.

According to the cabildo leaders, the reservation agreed in 2019 that they would create the Indigenous council but that it would only assume the cabildo’s duties once the new territorial planning figure was already fully functioning. “Everyone knows that the association will remain until the final moment in which we become an Indigenous territorial entity,” says Rafael Ahuanary, another local Indigenous leader.

To make things even more confusing, both governing bodies in the reservation—the cabildo and the council—use the same acronym, CIMTAR.

ColCX declined to discuss the project, claiming to have received a "request for non-disclosure of information" on March 18. According to the certifying standard, this communication instructed them that "as the body of representation and authority in our community, the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Council is the only body empowered to make decisions on the disclosure and management of information related to our indigenous reservation", which is why ColCX claims it decided that "it must refrain from providing written or verbal information about the project". Finally, the certifier invited us to consult the 

on its platform, which continues to include neither the PDD nor the audit report for the project.

Even though ColCX accepted the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Council’s request for non-disclosure of information, at no point does the certifier’s platform mention it. Instead it publicly lists the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo (CIMTAR) as both project "owner" and the "governance body" of the Indigenous reservation. The 

also states that it is the Indigenous Cabildo that "acts on behalf of the community of the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers reservation".

We asked ColCX with which of the two bodies - cabildo or council - it interacts with, on what grounds it was taking sides with one of them and why has it not responded to Pepe Cham's months-old requests for access to the project documents, but the certifier didn’t respond. It also didn't answer who sent the letter asking it not to discuss the REDD+ initiative.

Beyond who is right about which governing body is in charge, one fundamental question remains: Why don’t the inhabitants of the Cotuhé Putumayo reservation have access to detailed information about the carbon credit project on their land?

How could a REDD+ project unknown to the Indigenous group implementing it be approved and then allowed to sell credits in the voluntary carbon market?

 by revenue end up buying the environmental results of an indigenous community without those producing them receiving anything in return?

The answer to these questions seems to have, just as it did in Cumbal, two prongs: a tangle of potential conflicts of interest on the one hand and a lack of due diligence on the other.

In the carbon credit value chain, a project only reaches the stage of certification and credit issuance after an assessment carried out by an external auditor, a third party hired by the developer but with an obligation to remain independent and impartial from it. Although the Cotuhé Putumayo auditing report is still not publicly available and certifying standard ColCX refuses to publish it, there is already an underlying problem: the multiple links between the developer and the auditor call into question this distance.

The clearest and perhaps most problematic link is that Bárbara Lara Escoto, Global Consulting's CEO, was a founding partner and 

of Deutsche Certification Body, according to company documents filed in the chamber of commerce, something CLIP’s 

on the Cumbal case showed. In other words, the Mexican firm hired its manager's former business partners to evaluate their project.

There are also links in the opposite direction. Oscar Gaspar Negrete, the CEO and 

of Deutsche Certification Body as of June 2022 and also the person who signed the 

 for the Cotuhé Putumayo project, appears in two Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V. company documents available in Mexico's Public Registry of Commerce. In one document, dated 2016, 

as a commissioner of its supervisory body, a role that is usually chosen by shareholders. In another document, dated 2019, 

as "representative and/or delegate of the shareholders’ assembly".

Gaspar Negrete was not only a business partner of Barbara Lara in the Colombian auditing firm, but was also linked to the Mexican company that she manages today and that developed the project with CIMTAR. Both facts suggest that the companies might have a double conflict of interest, given that an auditor of carbon projects must "remain impartial with respect to the activity validated or verified, as well as free of bias and conflicts of interest," according to one of the international ISO standards that regulate their work and apply in Colombia.

Neither Deutsche Certification Body nor Global Consulting have responded to interview requests since March 2025.

In October 2023, two months after an appeals judge ruled against the Pachamama project, the auditor Deutsche Certification Body 

. The Colombian National Accreditation Body (ONAC) decided to withdraw the accreditation the company had held since 2021 to assess greenhouse gas reduction projects, including REDD+ projects like Cotuhé Putumayo. A month later, ONAC's appeals committee confirmed and made that decision final. This means that the company can continue auditing projects in Colombia but, in ONAC's words, "it is no longer authorized to issue reports or certificates under the accredited status, nor use the accredited symbol, nor make reference to the accredited status".

The reasons for the auditor’s sanction are less clear. ONAC denied our request for access to the dossier supporting the decision, 

that "we can only share information that has been officially published," due to international standards and confidentiality clauses signed with its accredited companies. Its decision came five months after CLIP’s investigation detailing Deutsche Certification Body and Global Consulting’s possible conflicts of interest.

There are other points of concern for the Indigenous leaders of Cotuhé Putumayo. First, they don't understand how the project ended up being developed by Global Consulting given that, according to the six leaders’ account, there was an initial socialization meeting in the village of Puerto Huila around 2019 in which a possible project was discussed with a different company called Taita Samay S.A.S. One leader recalls that Taita Samay appeared as leading the proposal with Global Consulting as a support to prepare project documents and carry out social work. They say they still don’t know when or with which company the contract underpinning the project was signed.

In any case, all six leaders insist that a contract wasn’t signed during that first meeting, but that its purpose had been outlining a route towards an eventual project. “We reached an agreement to begin working, a plan on how to move forward. There was a commitment to meet again to advance on that planned path of work, but that never happened,” says Jhovanny Carvajal, leader of the village of Puerto Huila who attended that meeting. 

“To this day we’ve all wondered what’s going on, because there is no clear and truthful information about the situation,” agrees Antonio Supelano, a leader of the Ventura village who was also present that day.

: Bárbara Lara Escoto, Global Consulting’s 

of Taita Samay (whose name means 'father's rest' in Quechua) since 2019.

The six Indigenous leaders are also unaware of when Global Consulting's project entered the carbon market. Three years later, in November 2022, they even met in the village of Buenos Aires with a different carbon market company called Allcot to explore the possibility of doing a project together. They didn't get past that first meeting because at that point they became aware of the existence of the other initiative. "We detected it there, we asked for information, we didn't get it and we saw that it was risky to begin a project," Allcot's technical director Mercedes García Madero said. Even if CIMTAR's leaders ignored the other active project’s existence and hadn't even seen its documents, the risk of starting another project in the same place was that they would all end up 

selling the same environmental result twice

, something known in the carbon market as double counting.

To make things even more complex, one of the villages that is part of the reservation, the Tikuna or Magutá who live along the Pupuña stream on the border with Peru, are considered an Indigenous people in a state of initial contact and therefore require additional protection given their vulnerability. The reservation is also adjacent to the area where the Yuri-Passe, two of the I

 still existing in the Amazon rainforest, live. In November 2024, Colombia’s Interior Ministry 

in the vicinity of the Pure River National Park and a buffer zone next to it to protect them. The existence of the Yuri-Passe was established by neighboring Indigenous communities and by the research of the late expert Roberto Franco in 

As in the case of the initiative carried out behind the backs of the Indigenous communities in the Andean forests and paramos of Nariño, the best client of the project in Cotuhé and Putumayo has been the U.S. oil company Chevron.

Between September 2022 and May 2024, Chevron Petroleum Company—the main Colombian subsidiary of Chevron Global Energy Inc.—used 2.98 million credits from the project to reduce its carbon tax burden in Colombia, according to public records on the 

of the certifier ColCX. A second subsidiary, called CI Chevron Export S.A.S., used another 21,427 credits. Other companies that also used Cotuhé Putumayo credits include gasoline distributor Zeuss S.A.S. (387,000), Alberto Ochoa y Cia S.A.S. (2730) and OZ EDS S.A.S. (500).

A significant part of those credits were used by Chevron after the problems involving the developer Global Consulting and the auditor Deutsche Certification Body the Nariño project became known. Since the Pachamama Cumbal initiative was 

 in July 2023, the oil company used 1.3 Cotuhé Putumayo million credits; credits generated by a project that the Indigenous people of CIMTAR say they know nothing about. Since ONAC withdrew Deutsche Certification Body's accreditation, Chevron has used one million Cotuhé Putumayo credits.

Chevron confirmed that it purchased credits from the Cotuhé Putumayo project from Global Consulting, with whom, in its words, “at the time we had a commercial agreement.” It added that “today Chevron Colombia has no contractual relationship with the developer of that project nor does it exchange credits of the mentioned projects or other projects”. (

According to the oil giant, “Global Consulting at no time reported social or environmental problems in the Cotuhé and Putumayo reservation, nor in any other project [and] its reports highlighted that all legal and regulatory parameters were complied with.” The company added that the developer “recently let us know that the Indigenous authorities of the reservation have denied social conflicts caused by this project.” It did not answer which authorities stated this or who asked them. Nor did it say how much it paid for the Cotuhé Putumayo credits, or list the projects from which it has bought credits over the past five years.

Regarding the legal problems of Global Consulting’s project in Nariño, Chevron said that “it was aware of the legal situation surrounding the Pachamama Cumbal project, which is why, once the legal action filed by some members of the reservation became known, we asked our supplier to suspend the exchange and withdrawal of certificates from that project.” It did not answer why it used 1.5 million credits from another project developed, audited and certified by the same companies involved in the Cumbal project after the rulings against it. The oil company also failed to mention that, as 

 revealed, it exchanged almost 289,000 Pachamama Cumbal credits after the court-ordered suspension (something it attributed at the time to the fact that its “supplier acquired without prior notice credits of said project for Chevron Colombia, which were not adverted in a timely way in our internal processes and mistakenly ended up being part of the offsetting for said period.”).

Chevron did not respond to questions about what due diligence procedures it conducts to assess the quality of the carbon credits it purchases or who makes decisions on such purchases within the company.

When asked if the Cumbal problems generated any self-criticism, the company said that “after analyzing the journalistic information surrounding the project in Nariño, we put in place a strategy to improve internal procedures and safeguards” and “we initiated a review to ensure the viability of the projects in which we invest, which includes the participation of international stakeholders of the corporation to assess future projects.” It did not detail these procedures.

The sum of peculiarities - a project unknown to its beneficiaries, documents that are not public, undeclared links between developer and auditor, a certifier that refuses information to the community and a buyer who doesn’t know the project reality on the ground - have sown serious doubts about the legitimacy of this environmental initiative.

For these reasons, on April 24, Pepe Cham filed a legal action on behalf of the cabildo requesting protection of their fundamental right to petition that, in his opinion, has been violated by Global Consulting. Cham wrote in the legal writ that “by having total control of the information related to the project development and denying effective access to it to the CIMTAR Association by refraining from responding to information requests,” the development company “evidences its dominant position as well as the defenselessness and subordination in which CIMTAR is left, being denied access to information and contractual documentation where the Association itself is supposed to be a party and regarding a REDD+ project that is allegedly being carried out in its territory.”

On May 8, Judge Henry Geovanny Ramírez sided with Cham, 

 Global Consulting and its Colombian subsidiary SPV Business S.A.S. to “issue a substantive, clear, concrete and consistent response to the plaintiff’s request” within two working days of the judicial notification. According to the judge, Global Consulting “is not justified (...) in refusing to respond” to CIMTAR’s information requests.

Four days later, Global Consulting denied the CIMTAR cabildo’s request for information, arguing that a response may be negative as long as it explains the reasons for it. In 

, Barbara Lara stated that the requested information “qualifies as a trade secret” and that “it has a commercial value derived from its confidentiality.” Lara also argued that the contract was signed not with the cabildo but with the reservation, through the council represented by Marcelino Sánchez, and that therefore “there is no legal or contractual basis to accede to the request” by Pepe Cham.

Even so, Cotuhé Putumayo leaders are confident that the income generated by the the project’s carbon credits will reach their reservation, to fund needs such as health or education for its inhabitants. “We’re looking for a good way out, for the collective benefit,” says Jhovanny Carvajal. “If everything had been well planned and organized, we wouldn't have so many shortages,” says José Herlinton Pérez.

As Indigenous leader Pepe Cham told the Ministry of Environment in another 

, "this is a REDD+ project that belongs to us and of which we are the owners, but for which we do not have any information or a single contractual document.”

In Colombia, Chevron has a habit of buying carbon credits from projects made behind indigenous people’s backs.

 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Damages, the Law Focused podcast from Drilled. We have a new season coming June 3rd, all about the energy transfer versus Greenpeace case and the Countersuit in Europe where Greenpeace has invoked the eus anti SLAPP statute to sue energy transfer for harassment. It is a complicated and fascinating story and I cannot wait for you to hear it. In the meantime, I wanted to bring you an update on climate cases in the us, especially given some of the recent efforts by the Trump administration to quash some of them. To help me out with that, I've got Kathy Mulvey with the Union of Concern Scientists here today.

Kathy is the accountability campaign director at UCS, which just released a report called Decades of Deception that pulls together in one place, all the primary documents out there showing what the fossil fuel [00:01:00] industry knew about climate change, when it knew it, and what they did with that information.

You might think you already know this story, I thought I did, but I learned a few things and I hope you will too.

 I've read the report super interesting and I have a bunch of questions for you, but I wanna start with the question I expect to get from people, which is okay, what's new? What's new that we didn't already know in this report? What do you wanna point people to on that front?

 Yeah, so what's new is really that, we've put these documents together in a coherent narrative. So, you know, these are primary sources about what major fossil fuel corporations knew when about the harms that their products would cause to climate [00:02:00] and our society and what they did in spite of what they knew.

So, you know, it's the physical and natural science basis both how the companies were aware of and even conducting some of that internally. Also the basis of climate attribution science as that field has been developing. It's also the historical track of disinformation over the decades from the outright climate science denial to how that has become greenwashing, distraction, delay and even efforts to intimidate climate advocates. So, you know, one part of the story that is still developing relates to a hacking scheme that targeted some staff members [00:03:00] at my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and several other public interest organizations working to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in climate change.

 Yeah. , I'm gonna ask you about more details about that whole unfolding story in a minute too, because it's fascinating. But first , I'm curious about, well, to your point just a minute ago as I was reading this, I was like, actually I think this is the first I've seen of a report that does combine all of these things in one place. And then am wondering about the timing, what drove the desire to release this now?

 You know, I've been working with the Union of Concerned Scientists now for almost 10 years, and one of the first projects that I undertook, actually the first project I undertook was the 2015 Climate Deception dossiers in collaboration with my former colleague Seth [00:04:00] Schulman who had years before that authored the publication Smoke Mirrors and Hot Air that shows how the fossil fuel industry has employed many of the same strategies and tactics, even some of the same front groups and scientists as the tobacco industry. And so, there are a few factors here. The advances in US climate accountability litigation against major fossil fuel corporations over climate deception and damages. And, much of that really relies on evidence of disinformation and deception campaigns and many of the documents that are referenced here in the report. And now of course the threat that the Trump administration and a fossil fuel friendly [00:05:00] congress pose to efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable and to the advances , the hard fought advances to bend the global warming emissions curve down and accelerate the the clean energy transition really mean that the, the timing is important. We need this evidence to be easily accessible and the story to be told in a way that people, policymakers, litigators, shareholders, and investors can really access it.

 Yeah. Okay. I know this is a big question and we could probably spend an hour talking just about this, but I'm hoping you can give folks a little bit of a summary of where we're at right now with the threats from Trump you know, which states have been sued to try to stop these cases or super polluter laws from going [00:06:00] forward.

And to the extent that we know so far, what has the result of that been? Have there been, you know, cases thrown out? How is the litigation responding to this, this attempt to really quash these cases?

 Yeah. So, we know that during his campaign Trump both expressed opposition to efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry liable for climate change and also sought to, raise a billion dollars from the fossil fuel industry.

And we've seen the fossil fuel industry have access to the Trump administration and Congress. And there have been multiple moves and one relates to the state level efforts to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable.

So, president Trump issued an executive order that attacked [00:07:00] states rights to hold fossil fuel companies accountable through legislation and. Litigation you know, among other efforts that states are pursuing for environmental justice. That was one part of that.

And we have already seen the Department of Justice take. Action by suing preemptively, actually Hawaii and Michigan before they filed climate accountability litigation. And, you know, Hawaii went ahead and filed its lawsuits, so was not intimidated by that action. The administration also sued vermont and New York State over their climate Superfund laws that is laws designed to make fossil fuel polluters pay for their role in climate harms. And so, that's one way that we are already seeing this administration take [00:08:00] action.

We know these cases are advancing in state courts around the country where they were filed. And as you've covered, you know, the fossil fuel industry has sought for up to eight years in, in some of the cases to, to use procedural maneuvers to keep them from getting into the courtroom and being heard on their merits. And this kind of effort through a friendly administration to throw a wrench in the advance of those cases really indicates what a threat that litigation poses to the fossil fuel industry.

So that's one big part of of how we've seen the Trump administration taking the side of the fossil fuel industry. And, I should say the backdrop to all of this is that all of us are experiencing climate impacts in our day-to-day lives, right?

And we're increasingly aware of the [00:09:00] preventable harms that have been worsened by this industry's deception campaign. So, you know, another thing to talk specifically about in terms of the interventions on the side of the fossil fuel industry is the Securities and Exchange Commission last year issued a final rule on on corporate climate disclosure. And this was, after many years, and it was significantly watered down from what it could have been, but it would compel publicly traded companies to assess and report on how climate change will affect their bottom lines and by extension investors and the public. And part of the story that that we're telling in decades of deceit is how industry groups that are heavily influenced by the fossil fuel industry [00:10:00] like the US Chamber of Commerce have, sought to, to water down that rule and then sued to block its implementation.

And the Securities Exchange Commission under Trump has indicated that it won't defend those rules. So that vital information for shareholders and investors to have is now not on getting access to that information through the SEC is not on the timeline that it could have been.

 I wanna ask you too about how this all kind of fits into the global context because, you know, these are global companies. This evidence is potentially useful outside of the country as well. Do you have any thoughts on whether these companies that are getting a huge helping hand by the US government could end up being held accountable somewhere else?

 Yeah, that's a really good point that, the companies that we're looking at in this report, [00:11:00] so ExxonMobil, Shell in particular but they, the members of the American Petroleum Institute are global in scope. And so, , the evidence of the deliberate campaign of disinformation, dating back as far as 50 years, and, in terms of the renowned scientists, Dr. Edward Teller briefing executives at an American Petroleum Institute event in 1959. You know, and then, and then looking forward to the early 1980s I mean this is a really critical point where major fossil fuel companies had really amassed a remarkably detailed understanding of the potentially catastrophic effects of their products for people on the planet.

And it's worth noting that according to , the data set of the. Carbon [00:12:00] majors that's hosted by Influence Map 122. Oil, gas, coal and cement companies are responsible for 75% of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions since 1981. So, you know, in terms of the consequences of the deception and disinformation and delayed action in the US and globally those kinds of numbers are enormously significant.

 Okay. I wanna have you walk us through this hacking story.

There've been a couple of bits of reporting on this that have come out as we learn more. But if you could just sort of summarize it for people, what happened here and what do we know so far?

 Yeah. So, this information has been coming into the [00:13:00] public. Into the public domain for a few years now. Right? So we know that between 2015 and 2018 hackers attempted to infiltrate the email accounts of. Key staff members at the Union of Concerned Scientists and several other nonprofits.

And, through a report published by the Citizen Lab in 2020, we learned about that spear phishing campaign. And actually one person has pleaded guilty in connection with that campaign, right? A Israeli. Private investigator named Abam Azari and the US Government's sentencing memo for him in 2023 said that published articles about documents that were stolen and [00:14:00] and leaked through the hack really appeared to be designed to undermine the integrity of work by State Attorneys General to hold ExxonMobil accountable and also to attack the, the credibility of some of the individual targets of the hacking scheme. So, that information has been out there for a little bit of of time. Just this year new evidence has come to light through US government filings and and through further investigative journalism. And those court documents related to an attempt to extradite Amit for who's another accused mill middleman in this operation. They, this suggests that the US government has evidence that the criminal scheme was indirectly paid for [00:15:00] by ExxonMobil.

And that one of ExxonMobil's then lobbying firms the Washington DC based DCI group provided a list of targets to a middleman linked to the hackers and allegedly sent the fruits of the hacking to the oil and gas company. So, you know, this is the this is unprecedented, I think, in terms of fossil fuel accountability.

I know from work on the tobacco industry decades ago that the tobacco companies conducted surveillance and sought to infiltrate. Not only public health and public interest organizations, but the World Health Organization, its itself. So, the latest development was at the end of April, the UK court did order the extradition or agreed with the, the [00:16:00] order to extradite it for lit to the us. He does have the possibility of appeal and, we expect that he may, you may seek to appeal that decision but these revelations and the latest step in the process have really been an important step toward accountability and toward getting to the bottom of this hacking scheme.

You know, who hired and paid for these hackers.

 I worked on a story recently where we were looking at. How chemical companies do this too. I feel like it's become really common, this whole like, corporate surveillance thing, right? For me, I've looked at it so often that on this most recent story, it was the other reporter that I was working with and I were kind of like, eh, but , is this even new because this they all do this and like whatever.

And then we kind of caught ourselves and we're like, no, no, it's still [00:17:00] actually really genuinely messed up that companies do this. And I think that really, most people don't realize that they do it. In, in this particular case, we found a database that this company was keeping on, people, they considered to be their enemies, which included academic researchers, journalists, activists a whole bunch of different people.

And they had really scary details like details of someone's divorce and details of an illness and someone's family and things like that, that are really, really genuinely creepy. And you know, if, if companies have the budget to be hiring israeli surveillance organizations

 to do this kind of thing. The sort of information they can get to and the way that that can be weaponized is really, really scary.

 Yeah. It, it, it really is. Right? And so for, you know, for staff at, at nonprofit organizations who are doing the work to carry out their public interest missions [00:18:00] for an organization like us who, we're working with scientists who are doing the, the natural and social science work to compare the science and the scientific understanding inside the corporations with what was what was happening with the intergovernmental panel on climate change at the same time. For example, for people doing this work for the benefit of society to be attacked, to have their motivations misrepresented to be falsely accused of, of conspiring could have a, a chilling effect on, on work that really urgently needs to be done in a world where we're, we're dealing with the impacts of a climate crisis every day.

So it is, it is incredibly significant. And yeah, although pictures of this puzzle had been out there [00:19:00] for some time. I mean, ExxonMobil once had a, a website that was called understanding the Exxon Knew controversy that featured some of the stolen materials. To, for the first time have public court evidence that links ExxonMobil and one of its then lobbying firms to the, the hacking conspiracy is is significant.

I should say that both ExxonMobil and DCI group deny any involvement in the hacking scheme and have maintained that they had nothing to do with it.

 That's very interesting. Is there a universe in which , in one of these cases, either in the US or maybe outside the US that stuff could be compelled?

 I, I think it's definitely worth. Calling for it. I think especially because, what we've understood [00:20:00] again from the filings and this related investigative journalism is that, the DC based lobbying group, and I quote, "acted on behalf of one of the world's largest oil and gas corporations centered in Irving, Texas in relation to ongoing climate change litigation being brought against it."

So the time that this hacking operation began, ExxonMobil was headquartered in Irving, Texas. They've since moved their headquarters to Houston. And this is just, this is so significant because this is 10 years ago before there was, as investigations by State Attorneys General we're just getting started, right?

And so if that is indeed a motivation behind a hacking scheme [00:21:00] then what we see are climate accountability, litigation claims that are, , are now advancing that really focus on the deception and disinformation. As the center of consumer protection and alleged fraud complaints. And then you know, ExxonMobil actually using. Information that was obtained through a hacking operation and pub, and made public through a hacking operation to perpetuate and expand the disinformation right. By misrepresenting what the accountability work is about. So it is, connected to very much the efforts to hold the fossil fuel corporations accountable through litigation and legal action.

 It's such a weird and creepy story and look like irrespective of your thoughts on [00:22:00] climate and oil companies the idea that it's just been normalized for corporations to do intensive surveillance on citizens.

Is pretty scary and gross, and I don't think most people think it's good, you know?

 I don't think so either. That's another thing that's interesting about this, right? Is that I mean this hacking operation was, was massive, right? There were 128 targets provided that were related to the work to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change. But there was a whole range of other targets and it's really a criminal hacking operation without any, any political or scientific dimensions to it. And so that's where it was.

It was especially interesting. One might say [00:23:00] cynical that the, the defense memo. By for let's attorneys where they were attempting to prevent the extradition claimed that he was actually being persecuted for his political views on, on climate change.

 For having political views that were similar to ExxonMobil's.

 So interesting because part of their legal argument too, right? Is that

 like a political belief and therefore a First Amendment issue? Yeah. Wow.

 But you know, here's a guy who really if the allegations are true, he was in it for the money. He was a hacker for hire or a middleman

 right. It's not like he had some long history as a political pundit. You know what I mean?

 And the, the DC based lobbying group according to the filings, paid for lit firms, a total of $16 million between 2013 and 2018. [00:24:00] So that's a, that's a lucrative operation.

 In the past decade or so litigation has been this point of optimism for people that there's this tool that we can use, as governments continue to fail to be aggressive enough or implement these policies to reduce emissions.

Do you still feel like that's the case? Do you think that despite all these efforts to try to stop these, particular cases in the US that litigation still provides a hopeful path forward?

 Yeah, absolutely. The US cases are proceeding toward consideration on their merits. And that should be an opportunity for these state claims that are around consumer protection and and public nuisance, for example. You know, have the opportunity to [00:25:00] be.

Heard in, in court, so the, the evidence that we've compiled here in this report, documentation and primary sources that have been made public through a range of investigations by, by Congress, by investigative journalism , this evidence could be really important in informing cases that are happening in other jurisdictions and on other, other types of claims to hold the fossil fuel corporations accountable for their role in climate change. So a absolutely, there are numerous cases for, for fossil fuel accountability that are proceeding around the world.

And there, there really should be an opportunity for communities to have access to justice for the harm that we're all facing.

 That is it for this [00:26:00] week. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our new season. You can access a transcript of this episode and read all sorts of stories on our website at drilled.media You can also sign up for our Patreon there. Free members will get our weekly newsletter, and if you wanna support our work by becoming a paid subscriber, you'll get access to bonuses, like sneak peaks of upcoming episodes, Additional interviews and more. Damages is an original critical frequency production. This episode was produced by Peter Duff. Our fact checker is Shilpa Jindia. Artwork by Matt Fleming. James Wheaton of the First Amendment project is our First Amendment lawyer. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Transcription

from the Union of Concerned Scientists compiles in one place all the documentary evidence on the role of fossil fuel companies in obstructing climate policy. We walk through the latest, and get an update on climate cases in the U.S.

Damages: New Evidence and an Update on U.S. Climate Cases

Denial to Delay

Information Pollution

La Lucha En La Jungla

The Real Free Speech Threat

Fred Balikenda and his family were forcefully evicted from their home in Kirama village, Buliisa district on May 13, 2024 to make way for the Tilenga project. Photo by Diana Taremwa-Karakire.

When Jealousy Mugisa Mulimba, a 52-year-old father of nine in Uganda’s oil-rich Buliisa district, was informed he would need to move his family from his ancestral home because French oil giant TotalEnergies needed his three acres to build their central processing facility in the region, he was reasonable. He didn’t put up a fight. Instead, he asked that the company give him three acres nearby; somewhere out of the way of the facility, but still near the place he’d always called home, the health facilities he and his family rely upon, and his kids’ schools.

He was instead shown land far away, isolated and distant from everything and everyone he’d ever known. After a five-year legal battle, a Ugandan court expropriated his land anyway in 2023, along with that of 41 other affected people.

“They are inhuman,” he said during a recent interview. “This is my land on which my ancestors are buried. I will not just leave like they want, I will continue fighting.”

Together with other affected people, Mr. Mulimba plans to appeal the decision of the Hoima court in Uganda’s high court.

Although the Ugandan government promises that oil projects will lift the country out of poverty and put Uganda’s natural resources to work for the betterment of Ugandan citizens, activists are concerned not only about the hundreds of 

millions of tons of carbon dioxide these projects

 will generate, but also about the more immediate impacts. These range from the potential for spills and the impact on animals and birds in 

, to the way the country’s burgeoning fossil fuel industry is displacing various communities, bringing them not the promised riches of an oil boom, but sending them ever deeper into poverty.

Uganda first discovered commercial quantities of oil nearly 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until TotalEnergies and the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company CNOOC inked a deal to exploit the resources in the

that the country’s fossil fuel industry began in earnest. The region, which lies on the country's western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is estimated to hold over 6.5 billion barrels of oil, with 1.4 billion barrels economically recoverable. TotalEnergies is the major operator for both the Tilenga oilfields, a $6 billion project covering Buliisa and Nwoya districts near the shores of Lake Albert, and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, project that will transport that oil from Uganda to an export port in Tanzania. Other partners are CNOOC and the state-owned Uganda National Oil Company, as well as Tanzania’s state-owned Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation.

Getting all that oil and gas to customers requires infrastructure, which is where EACOP comes in. The plan calls for a 

stretching from the small town of Kabale, in western Uganda, to the Tanzanian port of Tanga. If completed, it will have the capacity to carry up to 246,000 barrels of crude a day to a storage terminal and loading jetty in Tanga. The waxy nature of Uganda’s crude will require the pipeline to be heated constantly for the crude to keep flowing. Experts say that this is the largest heated oil pipeline to be constructed.

Meanwhile, the Tilenga oilfields lie in one of not just Uganda’s but Africa’s most biodiverse regions. According to 

state environment regulator National Environment Management Authority NEMA

, the Albertine region hosts 14 percent of all of African reptiles, 19 percent of Africa’s amphibians and 52 percent of the continent’s birds, as well as 35 percent of all of Africa’s butterflies and 39 percent of all African mammals.

 development of 6 oil fields and the drilling of about 426 wells,

In Colombia, Chevron has a habit of buying carbon credits from projects made behind indigenous people’s backs.

Ugandan Communities Say Total’s Oil Project Is More of a Land Grab than a Development Opportunity

“Numbers in the Trillions”: Fossil Fuel Producers on Hook for Climate Harms

Pipe Dreams: Tanzania's Oil Gamble

Activate Climate’s ‘Silent Majority’ to Supercharge Action, Experts Say

Denial to Delay

Information Pollution

La Lucha En La Jungla

The Real Free Speech Threat

Damages: New Evidence and an Update on U.S. Climate Cases

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

In Colombia, Chevron has a habit of buying carbon credits from projects made behind indigenous people’s backs.

Ugandan Communities Say Total’s Oil Project Is More of a Land Grab than a Development Opportunity

“Numbers in the Trillions”: Fossil Fuel Producers on Hook for Climate Harms

Pipe Dreams: Tanzania's Oil Gamble

Activate Climate’s ‘Silent Majority’ to Supercharge Action, Experts Say

Denial to Delay

Information Pollution

La Lucha En La Jungla

The Real Free Speech Threat

Support our reporting,subscribe today!

Damages: New Evidence and an Update on U.S. Climate Cases

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Support our reporting,
subscribe today!