Again, it's a matter of whether you're paying close attention, comrade.
A sloppy first-cut at the web - when I've been feeding you this info for
many months, indeed years - is not worthy of you, Doug.
Doug Henwood wrote:
... I can't read Spanish, I'm embarrassed to say, so I can't read the
Ecuadorean site.
Try the english solidarity site: www.sosyasuni.org
But I see nothing at all on ERA site that says anything like that
slogan... Many of the links produce file not found errors. So could
you fill this in some?
Try www.groundwork.org.za/Newsletters/December%25202008.pdf ... the key
points are below ***
ERA leader Nnimmo Bassey's most powerful statement was the opening
address to the OilWatch Africa General Assembly held three months ago in
East Legon, Ghana (conference theme: "Popularizing the struggle to keep
the oil in the African soil"). I'm not sure if it's on the web. The hard
copy I'm looking at right now talks a lot about climate change:
"Climate change:
* Fossil fuels most responsible
* Africans impacted most...
* We must reject carbon colonialism or carbon trade: CDM, REDD, etc
* We must demand climate justice and the payment of ecological debts
* We must demand the liberation fo the commons, of the atmosphere!
What is to be done byond the talks:
* Keep the oil in the soil - this does not require technology transfer!"
Cheers,
Patrick
PS, In September 2008 here in Durban we had a whole conference devoted
to the issue:
This is the html version of the file
http://www.groundwork.org.za/Newsletters/December%202008.pdf.
Page 1
- Vol 10 No 4 - December 2008 - groundWork - 1
VOLUME 10 NO.4
DECEMBER 2008
environmental justice action in Southern Africa
East and Southern Africa unite against oil
By Bobby Peek
A workshop looking at oil results in a commitment to ‘keep the oil in
the soil’
... in September 2008, groundWork, Justica
Ambiental and the International Working Group on
Oil hosted the East and Southern African workshop.
48 people, including both community representatives
and NGOs from South Africa, Swaziland,
Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi, Mauritius, Uganda,
Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and west Africans
from Nigeria, Chad, Mali and Congo Brazzaville,
attended a five day workshop where information
was shared on oil and gas and, critically, community
people shared the experience of their present
struggles and considered how these present struggles
could be the platform for articulating the struggles
in future. Participation was from a variety of sectors
that had close links to the daily reality on the ground:
fishermen in suits from Mauritius, Islamic clerics from
rural Mozambique, community members from Lake
Albert in Uganda and rural community folk from
Ethiopia.
During the meeting a critical question emerged: can
we make oil work in Africa? Can we have positive
development from oil in Africa? We must not kid
ourselves - we are not a staid bunch of homogenous
communities in Africa. On the contrary, we are a vibrant
and dynamic people. We have all lived through the
scourge of colonialism, racism and now an economic
elitism that is enforced by the ‘comprador’ nature of
our elite in Africa. People grappled with the notion
of whether they could engage with corporations and
governments to get good deals with oil. Fortunately
for the workshop, key participants from Oilwatch
Africa and Oilwatch International were present, and
the present experiences from West Africa and Latin
America were placed on the table in all their naked
and brutal reality.
Understanding the political context of each country
and struggle was an important part of the workshop.
Community people from the Niger Delta gave horrific
accounts of the present situation in a war ravaged
area. It was interesting to note that there are different
levels of resistance to resource extraction, and the
stories told and mulled over all resonated with the
curse of extractives, i.e. environmental and livelihood
destruction, the enclosure of the commons, the
alarming practice of actively taking away peoples’
rights, the failure of democratic decision making and
the failure to allow people the right to meaningfully
engage in the development debate.
Some participants, such as the fishermen of Mauritius,
had never been exposed to the oil and gas debate
and they were shocked to understand the potential
impact of oil exploration on their critical resource of
fish. Mozambican’s were surprised to learn that just
across the border in Tanzania they have colleagues
who speak Swahili just like them and who are facing
the same challenges of big oil. Malawi and Uganda,
which share the African Rift Valley, also share the sad
reality that companies want to exploit their natural
lakes for oil. In Uganda, Tullow Oil is already in the
advanced stages of getting approval to develop an
oil refinery at the source of the Nile on Lake Albert.
There was a tension, as always in such workshops,
between developing a network and getting some
local stuff done on the ground. At the end of the
day, excitingly, people opted for a focus on cross
border community work between people who are in
close proximity to each other to develop nodes of
action rather than just a network. As the local action
develops, a broader network is the inevitable result.
Finally, through the intense debate of five days, it
was clear that people were considering the very real
campaign of ‘keeping the oil in the soil’, ‘blocking
the block’ and ‘keeping the coal in the hole’. As
one of the Mauritian fisherman said in relation to oil
drilling, “You do not want to disturb the devil’s fire.”
In the meantime, Josh Dimon is back in Mozambique,
far from cell phones and the internet, where he is
working and talking with rural community people
to better understand how Africans will respond
to the oil juggernaut, and to assist people in their
response. Next year promises to be an exciting year
of people doing local action, and groundWork is
looking forward to getting involved in this with our
Mozambican and Swaziland neighbours.
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