"Indigenous peoples and oil" events in Finland 1999
Contents
Ulla Lehtinen: "Indigenous peoples and oil" events in Finland 1999
Olli Tammilehto: A civilised world or a bloodsucker of the earth?
Background information on oil
Russia's oil production
Florian Stammler: Where does our oil come from?
Yeremei Aipin: Russia's oil industry and the development of rights of indigenous people
Agrafena Sopochina: "We Live on what the earth carries on itself"
Yuri Vella: Kogalym-Lor - the lake where a man died
Bruce Forbes: Industrial development in the Yamal-Nenets Area
Lidia Okotetto: I no longer understand the tundra that has loved me
Grigorii Anagurichi: A clash of civilisations at the ends of the world
Charity Nenebari Ebeh: The Ogoni experience
Magda Lanuza: Oil production in Central America
Ecuador and oil
Arturo Yumbai Iligama: The war against the poor
Colombia, the U'wa and oil
Roberto Afanador Cobaria: Oil is blood of the earth
Workshop 1: The strategies of oil industry and the responses of indigenous peoples' movements
Workshop 2: Networking of indigenous peoples threatened by oil and gas exploration
Workshop 3: Northern Dimension
Communique of the participants in the seminar "Indigenous Peoples and Oil"
Internet links
This publication is composed of a collection of the speeches of the invited guests. It includes also other background material. The events generated wide interest within Finland and also internationally.
The events were organised because environmental, development and human rights organisations have had increased requests and appeals in the 1990s from indigenous peoples around the world who are being trampled underneath by oil production activities. The old oil sources are getting depleted and technology has enabled prospecting for new sources in ever more distantat places that pose more and more dangers to the environment, often in the last habitats of indigenous peoples: in the sea, in the arctic regions, in the heart of the tropics and river deltas. Industrialised countries also often save their own resources for strategic reasons. On the other hand, oil production is cheaper in places where there is not need to have concerns of the environment, much less of human rights. The issue is that of environmental racism, too.
Even though environmental, cultural and political conditions vary greatly, the conditions of the indigenous peoples living near the oil production areas are very similar: their land, natural resources and culture, i.e. their very existence is threatened. Many indigenous peoples have become extinct. Violence and mass murder are the lived experience of many of them. Among our guests, the Nenets are one of those peoples who can no longer move any further: blocking them is the Arctic Ocean. The U'wa in Columbia have vowed to commit mass suicide if the oil companies come to their land. Our unsustainable lifestyle not only destroys our environment, but also those peoples who still know how to live in harmony with nature.
Oil comes from somewhere. But is also goes somewhere. The use of fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal - is the biggest single cause of climate change. Half of the oil consumption takes place in transportation - e.g., in our cars and in the transportation of biscuits, bottled water and other usuful and useless products from one continent to the other in the name of "free" trade. Since we have actively taken our consumption dreams around the world, other inhabitants of the globe would also like to participate in them. And they are doing it. The number of cars in the Asian pacific region is estimated to triple from 1995 to 2010. China's demand for fuels is also estimated to triple during this time.
In international environment conferences governments are trying to make agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emission. But oil companies are doing their best to put sand in the wheels of the negotiation machinery because they are by no means reducing their production. On the contrary oil production is estimated to rise by 24 per cent in the next decade and gas production by 40 per cent. We cannot even cope with our present emission yet the oil industry is ready to raise that tremendously. The oil companies have reason to be jubilant but do we?
Ulla Lehtinen