While serving in the 1990s as indigenous-communities liaison for a legal team suing Texaco over pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Manuel Pallares got to know David Poritz, a U.S. high school student who studied the case in the United States. A few years later, Poritz and Pallares crossed paths again and hit on an idea: why not create a voluntary social-, labor- and environmental-certification system for oil companies? In 2009, they cofounded Equitable Origin, a certification company with offices in Ecuador and the United States. Poritz is president, and Pallares is vice president for stakeholder engagement. Pallares, a biologist with a master’s degree in geographic information systems from the University of San Francisco in Quito, hopes the company’s EO100 Standard will spur oil firms to improve practices and shrink their footprint. That, he says, could lead to further innovation, such as the trading of certification credits. Barbara Fraser spoke with Pallares recently in Lima, Peru. [Log in to read more]

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