OIL POLITICS: Forty years of resistance and mobilisation

Posted 16 June 2011, by Nnimmo Bassey, Next (Timbuktu Media), 234next.com

Milestones are important landmarks that prompt us to take time out to remember and reflect on what we have achieved, as well as to prepare for the challenges ahead.

After 40 years of campaigning, Friends of the Earth International looked back yesterday, June 15, 2011, on its contribution to the quest for environmental and social justice with considerable satisfaction.

Over the past decades, the federation and its allies have successfully campaigned for a raft of intergovernmental agreements regulating the disposal of wastes, and the use of chemicals such as pesticides and ozone-depleting substances.

It now seems inconceivable, for example, that countries once dumped their nuclear waste at sea, and that there were no controls over even the most lethal chemicals that persist and bio-accumulate in people and in nature. Environmental concerns such as these are now considered to be part of the everyday political discourse in many countries.

New and emerging challenges driven by the current neoliberal economic model pose new challenges and require strong, integrated and innovative responses. Our ecosystems are at breaking point: forests and biodiversity are disappearing, climate change is heating up the planet, and land and water resources are being polluted by oil, mining, and gas exploration. Communities and countries across the world are reeling from a volatile mix of financial, food and energy crises.

Friends of the Earth International, now a large and influential federation of autonomous environmental groups, was started 40 years ago by a small, dedicated and determined group of environmental activists from France, Sweden, the UK, and the US, who met in Roslagen, Sweden, on June 15, 1971. This meeting was to be the first of many passionate intercultural exchanges of concerns and ideas over the next four decades.

Originally a northern-based environmental organisation, Friends of the Earth International grew and evolved as many more member groups, especially from the Global South, joined it in the 1980s and 1990s.

Friends of the Earth International now boasts 76 national member groups around the world and has more than 2 million members and supporters. The federation joins forces with farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, workers, and young people, in our struggle for a better world.

Friends of the Earth Nigeria joined the federation in 1996 as a veritable part of the global environmental justice movement.

It is clear that real success can only be achieved if the underlying causes of problems are challenged. Settling for solutions that only deal with the short-term symptoms is pointless. Thus, Friends of the Earth International is committed to challenging the neoliberal model underpinning this short-sighted, profit-oriented perspective.

This is tackled in many different ways, from the local level through to the international. Campaigners in the federation work with local communities to defend their rights and promote food sovereignty and community-forest management, for example.

They are also well placed to mobilise people to pressure governments at the national level too, regardless of whether they are opposing bad decisions or proposing important new laws.

It also has the muscle to show up en masse at important environmental and economic summits – on climate change or international trade for example – to make sure that the world’s governments are aware of the impacts that their decisions may have on the daily lives of people and the environment, and to let them know what people around the world really think about these issues.

The federation will continue to track and challenge the activities of specific corporations, such as Monsanto or Shell, exposing their massive footprints on peoples and global environment and demanding change.

Challenging such powerful interests is not easy. Over the past 40 years, some of our members have paid a heavy price for their activism, including the abuse of their rights, imprisonment, beatings, disappearances, and even death.

But Friends of the Earth activists can count on their friends and allies around the world for support in their campaigns for the environment and for people.

Why does the federation run on the thematic pull to mobilise, resist, transform?

Firstly, effective resistance is impossible without widespread mobilisation. Commercial interests and political inertia are hard to shift, and people power is an absolute prerequisite for real and enduring change. Secondly, the federation harnesses its energies to resist the exploitation of people and their environments, together with its allies including social movements and local communities around the world.

And thirdly, the federation promotes the emergence of democratic structures, systems and processes in order to facilitate the transformation to sustainable and just societies. In other words, the federation is not a mere whistle-blower; it helps to create solutions and real alternatives to business-as-usual.

The federation is hugely diverse, and this diversity gives it strength. It is a kaleidoscope of different member groups – big and small, northern and southern, old and new – and all with different concerns, styles, structures and processes. This gives the network a truly creative and energetic dynamism and leads to powerful and multidimensional campaigns. It provides it with access to a treasure trove of knowledge systems and wisdom and inspires new ideas and concepts as well.

It is committed to building a movement for a new and better world based on solidarity, rather than competition and destruction.

Today, in its 40th year, it stands strong and proud with people around the world struggling for environmental justice and for the change we all so urgently need.

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