Are Investor and Indigenous Protections Competing or Coordinating?: The Framing of Rights of Chevron, Ecuador and the Lago Agrio People

Abstract

This paper utilises the Chevron/Ecuador dispute as a case study in order to examine the relationship between the 'rights' and obligations of three interested groups: indigenous (Lago Agrio) people, the nation-state (Ecuador) and the foreign investor (Chevron/Texaco). The case offers particular insight in that it demonstrates how investment arbitration frames the rights of these groups, arising from a foreign investor's oil operations on a local indigenous community. The focus of this paper is to analyse whether the international investment dispute was framed in such a way that attempts to reconcile legally embedded indigenous protections (both at the international and domestic level) and foreign investment protections and offers reasons, if not framed in such a manner, why this is may be the case.