The Chocolate Fudge Cafe

Equadorean Protestors in Lago Agrio near the Columbian border

Cacao pods on trees

  Did you know that some of  the best chocolate comes from Equador?  Small family farmers are growing some of the best cacao in the world and the chocolate from those trees is delicious!  It is pure, organic and fair trade without the “greed energy” of some of the other cacao growing regions.

   This is why we must do all we can to protect the Equadorean rainforest and its farmers.  One way is to get Chevron to clean up its mess from an oil spill by Texaco.   The plaintiffs in a huge lawsuit in the Ecuadorean oil boom town of Lago Agrio, located just across the border from Colombia, allege that Texaco, which operated in Ecuador from 1964 to 1990 and was acquired by Chevron in 2001, poisoned their lands, rivers and ground water with toxic chemicals.

http://mobile.globalpost.com/dispatch/the-americas/090429/chevron-ecuador

If you interested in signing a petition regarding this issue:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/chevron_ecuador/

There is also activity in Tena and the Kallari, where Ivanhoe, a Canadian oil company, has leased rights from the Ecuadorian government to prospect for oil. The form of oil that is found in the area does not lend itself to conventional drilling, instead, a form of strip mining must be used. Naturally, the consequences of unrestrained exploitation of oil in the region could be devastating not only to Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, but to large amounts of acreage planted in cacao, and to many members of the Kallari community. One only has to visit the town of Coca to see the potential for problems.  Keep updated:  http://www.thechocolatelife.com/group/tenadiaries

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Cacao & The Environment, Chocolate general, Protecting Rainforests, Sustainable Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.