The US circuit court of appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington ruled on 4 August that Ecuador should compensate the US oil company Chevron to the tune of US$106m (including interest), based on the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT) that came into effect in 1997. This would be an impossibly bitter pill to swallow for Ecuador, which has pursued Chevron for 22 years in an effort to win multi-billion dollar legal compensation from the US oil giant for despoliation of large swathes of Ecuador’s Amazon, which damaged the health and livelihoods of the country’s indigenous communities and peasants.…