Once again, Chevron has been caught buying carbon credits from a REDD project in Colombia that was developed without Indigenous Peoples knowing about it

“Zero on all counts: zero information, zero participation, zero benefits.”

The oil giant Chevron Corporation is one of the most notorious Big Polluters on the planet. In 2011, Chevron lost a US$9.5 billion judgment for deliberately dumping more than 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforests of Ecuador. Local communities have suffered a wave of cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects as a result.

Texaco — which merged with Chevron in 2021 — drilled for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964 to 1990. During that time, the company also spilled about 17 million gallons of crude oil and left hazardous waste in hundreds of open pits.

The result was one of the worst environmental catastrophes on the planet. Chevron has never cleaned up the destruction. Neither has it paid the US$9.5 billion judgment.

Instead, Chevron has spent more than US$2 billion on lawyers and PR firms to attack their victims. Steven Donziger, a lawyer who worked with Ecuadorian Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the case against Chevron, was jailed for 45 days and spent a total of 993 days under house arrest as a result of Chevron’s harassment.

In the 13 years since the judgment, Chevron has made more than US$200 billion in profit. That’s profit from the destruction of the climate.

Chevron and carbon credits

Between September 2022 and May 2024, Chevron’s Colombian subsidiary bought 3 million carbon credits from the Preserving the Life of the World, Mowíchina arü Maü, Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers REDD project in the Colombian Amazon.

Journalist Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, who works with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), took an in-depth look into this project. His article is part of a collaborative investigation called Opaque Carbon, about carbon trading in Latin America and was published in partnership with Drilled.

It turns out that Indigenous community living in the project area know nothing about the REDD project that generated these carbon credits. Six leaders from the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers reservation told CLIP that they know nothing about the documents, activities, or money raised by the REDD project supposedly taking place on their communal land.

In June 2023, CLIP revealed that Chevron had bought carbon credits from another REDD project without the Indigenous Peoples who lived there knowing anything about the project. This project was in the Cumbal municipality in Colombia.

A group of Pasto Indigenous People who live in the Greater Cumbal reservation took the project to court. The judges ruled that the Indigenous Peoples’ fundamental rights had been violated in both the initial court case and a subsequent appeal.

Both REDD projects, in Cumbal and the Amazon, were developed by a Mexican company called Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V. Both projects used the same auditing firm, Deutsche Certification Body S.A.S. And both project used the same certifying standard, ColCX.

CLIP’s June 2023 investigation revealed that these companies are not independent of each other:

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.

Chevron bought carbon credits from the Amazon REDD project after judges had halted the Cumbal project.

In October 2023, the Colombian National Accreditation Body suspended Deutsche Certification Body’s accreditation. “In total,” Bermúdez writes, “the oil giant bought 1.8 million credits after the journalistic revelations about problems in the Andean initiative.”

Zero information

In September 2022, the Colombian certification company ColCX approved the Preserving the Life of the World, Mowíchina arü Maü, Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers REDD project. On ColCX’s registry, the project is described as,

an initiative of the Tikuna indigenous people of the Cotuhe and Putumayo Rivers reservation, represented by the Major Indigenous Council of Tarapacá (CIMTAR), its governance body.

The project is planned to generate carbon credits for 100 years.

CIMTAR is listed on ColCX’s registry as the project owner. But Pepe Cham García, a Tikuna Indigenous leader and CIMTAR’s current legal representative told CLIP that he was unaware of the project:

“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.”

CLIP has asked ColCX for access to the project documents since December 2022. ColCX has not released them.

The parent company of ColCX is Canal Clima, which is part of Valorem, the holding company of one of the richest and most powerful families in Colombia — the Santo Domingo family.

In October 2022, Pepe Cham wrote to ColCX requesting information about the project. He explained that,

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.

Mario Cuasquén, ColCX’s CEO, replied two weeks later. Cuasquén wrote that the project “has been duly executed” under a contract between Global Consulting and CIMTAR. Cuasquén also forwarded a five-page letter from Barbara Lara of Global Consulting in which she claimed that the contract had been signed on 21 March 2022 by Cham’s predecessor at CIMTAR, Marcelino Sánchez Noé.

Lara wrote that Global Consulting was aware of the change in legal representative at CIMTAR, but Sánchez had filed an appeal against the Ministry of the Interior resolution confirming the change. Global Consulting would wait until the appeal was resolved.

On 30 December 2022, Vice Minister Lilia Solano confirmed the original decision by the Ministry of Interior and ratified Pepe Cham as CIMTAR’s legal representative.

But Cham received no further information from Global Consulting.

In August 2024, he wrote again to Global Consulting and ColCX requesting information about the REDD project. Global Consulting has still not replied.

ColCX’s CEO Mario Cuasquén told Cham that he was not authorised to give him the information “in view of the confidentiality contractual agreements in force”.

Cham asked for help from the Ministry of the Environment. But when the Ministry asked Global Consulting for the information, it received no response. The Ministry of Interior and the Ombudsperson’s Office did not reply to Cham’s request for help.

The two CIMTARs

Bermúdez writes that the Indigenous Peoples of the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers reservation are in the process of becoming an Indigenous territorial entity, as promised under Colombia’s 1991 Constitution.

While the transition is in process, there are currently two CIMTARs:

• the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo led by Pepe Cham since January 2022; and

• the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Council led by Marcelino Sánchez since March 2022.

As CLIP points out, ColCX’s registry clearly shows that the project owner is the Greater Tarapaca Indigenous Cabildo:

Sánchez did not respond to CLIP’s request for an interview about the REDD project.

ColCX declined to discuss the project stating that it had received a “request for non-disclosure of information”. ColCX did not reply to CLIP’s questions about who sent the non-disclosure request, or which CIMTAR it interacts with, or why it failed to provide Cham with the information he requested.

CLIP requested an interview with Barbara Lara of Global Consulting but did not receive a response.

Chevron did respond to CLIP’s questions. But it passed the buck to Global Consulting:

Global Consulting never reported any social or environmental problems in the Cotuhé and Putumayo reservations, or in any other project. Its reports emphasized that all legal and regulatory parameters were being met. Furthermore, we were recently informed that the reservation's Indigenous authorities have denied any social conflicts caused by this project.

Chevron states that it now has “no contractual relationship with the developer of the project”.

Chevron did not respond to CLIP’s follow up question about which Indigenous authorities made the claim denying any social conflicts caused by this project.

On 24 April 2025, Pepe Cham filed a legal action on behalf of CIMTAR, arguing that Global Consulting had violated its rights to information about the project.

On 8 May 2025, the judge ordered Global Consulting to respond within two days.

On 12 May 2025, Global Consulting once again denied CIMTAR’s request for information. In her response, Barbara Lara wrote that the requested information was a “trade secret”.