International Assembly of Oilwatch

WRM's International Coordinator, who is a member of Oilwatch's Steering Committee, participated in this network's first international assembly, held in Mexico City on 27-30 July. Oilwatch, whose international secretariat is hosted by Accion Ecologica in Ecuador, is a Southern network fighting against oil exploration and exploitation in the tropics. The meeting was attended by some 50 activists from Africa, Asia, Central, North and South America and Europe, who shared experiences and discussed strategies and actions to halt the detrimental activities of the oil industry in tropical countries.

The reason for focusing on oil companies is simple: both transnational and state enterprises are responsible for extensive human suffering, ranging from loss of culture and livelihoods to harassment, imprisonment and assassination of opponents. From an environmental point of view, their activities result in deforestation, water, soil and air pollution and biodiversity loss. Accordingly, Oilwatch had presented a declaration at the Kyoto conference on climate change, whose first demand was to call for "a moratorium on all new exploration for fossil fuel reserves in pristine and frontier areas."

The Mexico City Assembly was a success in many ways, but particularly because --for the first time-- it brought together people from all over the world with a shared perspective and, most importantly, with a shared desire to gather their strengths to continue carrying out the common struggle against the oil industry.

Source: WRM's bulletin Nº 14, August 1998

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