Amazon Watch an earlier court's dismissal on the basis of "forum non conveniens." Thus, legal proceedings were started in Ecuador in 2003. Amazon Watch supports the Ecuadorian plaintiffs by publishing a press kit alleging that Chevron (corporate successor to Texaco) should be held accountable for the dumping of of toxic waste water into a region of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest inhabited by more than 30,000 people – purported to be one of the largest oil related contaminations ever, far exceeding that of the Exxon Valdez disaster. A 2011 decision in Ecuador ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion. Ecuador's Supreme Court in 2013 affirmed
Economic history of Ecuador To help make up for the oil revenue shortfall, a consortium of international banks loaned Ecuador an additional US$220 million, bringing public-sector external debt at the end of 1987 to about US$9.6 billion, one of the world's highest on a per-capita basis. (Ecuador's GDP for 1987 was US$10.6 billion.) During Febres Cordero's last two years in office, his economic team concentrated on implementing monetary reforms, renegotiating the external debt, and encouraging foreign investment. Its efforts were only partially successful. The government failed to hold wages down, and, despite efforts to curtail government spending, public-sector expenditures increased dramatically in 1987 and