Dear Friends:
Over the past 10 years, we at Oilwatch have been building a strong and active network of resistance to the negative impacts of fossil fuels activities on peoples and their
environment. With member organizations from over 50 countries, we are dedicated to developing global strategies for the communities affected by the oil operations and of
supporting their processes of resistance in the struggle against those activities.

We have worked hard to exchange information about oil companies operations in each affected country; about their operation practices as well as about the different resistance movements and international campaigns against specific companies. In addition, Oilwatch makes an effort to raise, at the global level, the environmental conscience, exposing the oil operations impacts in tropical forests and in local populations, also establishing the relationship between this activity and the destruction of biodiversity, the climate change and the unpunished violation of human rights.

During this same time period, we know that you have been developing and strengthening your own networks of resistance in your struggles for working people and families
throughout the world.

More clearly than ever before, we see how looking at our struggles from a distance, it is difficult not to see the profound connection among each other.

The struggle for staying healthy and eating well, the struggle for work with respect and a
future for our families the fight for clean sources of energy, for a sustainable and sovereign agriculture, the fight for decontamination and against global warming, the search for a green chemistry associated to a new policy on materials, the fight against transnational companies that exploit our work and expropriate our natural resources and the sustainable use of our nations, the fight for national sovereignty and world peace……. depends to a great extent on our ability to jointly resist the oil industry and the civilization it sustains.
Never before have the limits of the current development model based of hydrocarbons been seen so clearly.Never, until now, has the relationship between oil and the networks of power that control the world been so clearly understood, nor have the relationships between oil and the principal causes of misery which affect humanity been so evident.

• Behind the worst wars of the last century and the current,
• Behind the wastage of industrial, economic and financial resources,
• Behind the instability and impoverishment of many nations,
• Behind innumerable State coups, dictatorships and manipulations of democracy,
• Behind the profane subordination of the most productive workers,
• Behind the international foreign debt of the last 30 years,
• Behind the most dangerous chemical industries,
• Behind the systematic and uncountable extinction of indigenous peoples,
• Behind the contamination of the world’s fresh water, water of the seven seas, and air
of our cities,
• Behind the destruction of numerous forests,
• Behind the accumulation of enormous amounts of chemical and plastic wastes,
• Behind climate change that includes cyclones, floods and hurricanes which are ever
more extreme,
• Behind the appearance and expansion of numerous degenerative illnesses and
therefore,
•Behind the extinction of life on the planet and as a main cause of human deaths in
the world
We have oil


 The 20th century was the century of poisoning and mass death of people and life on the planet. This poisoning is the product not only of the wastes caused during extraction of oil, oil spills on land and sea and acid rain, it is also consequence of agrochemicals, Organic Persistent Contaminants, fuels, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pharmaceuticals, hospital wastes and other components produced from oil. These are being spilled and accumulated on the planet….. and they are killing the Land and us. At the same time, thousands of traditional cultures have been confronted and exterminated, separating them from their healthy and ecological customs. Only very few have managed to survive, but more isolated, impoverished and defenseless.

During the 20th century, we have suffered the worst threats to the sovereignty of our nations causing wars and intrigues due to oil. The large empires define their principal forms of economic and military power in relation to the possibilities of obtaining their own black gold, or to obtain secure access to it in other regions. This has been highlighted as the era of supreme power of the transnational companies, where pressure, manipulation and corruption promote the loss of national sovereignty. That is why one of the most audacious moves of the southern nations was to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC. For the southern part of the world, the oil model has meant the perpetuation of an inequitable exchange, a technological dependence, indebtedness, and impoverishment. The ecological debt between the north and the south, which began during the colonial years, rose with the unequal economic and ecological exchange. We built a society that based its growth and development on its addiction to oil, giving place to a literal invasion of lands, minds, esthetics, street, air, and seas.

Whilst this occurs, we have accepted separately each one of these aggressions. Or
worse still, fought among ourselves: such as oil workers against indigenous communities, inhabitants of one country fighting against another, such as people from the north against those from the south, such as the poor of the cities against indigenous and peasant people, such as those ill from consumption against pacifists, such as those that propose against those that criticize… And the list goes on and on.
The crisis of the oil civilization has reached its climax. But nothing is being done to end it. On the contrary, while our exit is being delayed, the effects of this crisis increase in a manner that is ever more lethal. Although it is evident that the transition into a new civilization requires the creation of technical, scientific, cultural and environmental alternatives, these are not clear yet. Likewise, there is a need for new adequate, although complex, macroeconomic, financial, political and cultural mechanisms that will allow the reconstruction of peace and equality among peoples, the recovery of our health and restoration of our environment, the renegotiation of the financial international debt and the compensation for the pillaging of the countries of the south, ensuring justice and a real democracy everywhere.
Therefore, the transition towards alternative energy sources, possibly also in the hands of the transnational companies, is not enough. We need to seek a new type of society. For us the fight of peasant, fishing and indigenous communities that face a frontal battle against globalization and neo liberalism, by defending their right to live on their lands, with autonomy, without physical, cultural or environmental aggressions, independent even of those that are considered “symbols of progress”, shows us a clear path. But we need to listen to each other, so that we may think of solutions that consider in a global form the problems of us all.

Which are the organizations and networks which we could start a positive collaboration in the fight against the oil civilization? Which are the most important social local and global movements that we cannot ignore in our efforts? Which are the international agreements and programs that could best help us in this process? Which are the new initiatives that we could and should devise?
To answer these and other needs. Oilwatch is inviting sympathetic networks to initiate a joint dialogue of our struggles and launch a global campaign against a civilization based on oil.
We invite you to share your opinions, comments, suggestions, and ideas to help us consolidate this concept, so that we can build a new path together, in order to
establish coordinated work strategies and a common campaign, where we can reflect all of our struggles which we are currently working on separately. This way, each and every one of our battles will gain a new dimension.

tegantai@oilwatch.org

www.oilwatch.org