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The Oceans are Rising and so are We! +++ Global Action on Friday, 4 February 2022

A catastrophic oil spill by European oil & gas multinational Repsol is affecting over 20 beaches in Peru, devastating marine life and ecosystems, bringing several endangered species to the brink of extinction, and threatening the health and livelihoods of thousands of people. The company denies responsibility in the spill and does not want to pay for the clean up. As European climate movements, we cannot sit idle while a European multinational causes an ecocide on the other side of the world and let them run away with total impunity.

Elsewhere, in Argentina’s coastlines, thousands are mobilizing against two other European fossil fuel corporations, Shell and Equinor, as they are about to set foot with seismic surveys, deepwater drilling and fracking, threatening similar devastating consequences to marine wildlife and the environment than what Peru’s coastlines are already facing due to corporate greed.

That´s why we are coming together globally to stop corporate power from killing Most Affected People in Most Affected Areas, undermining democracies, selling false solutions for the climate crisis to the public while destroying ecosystems!

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While developed countries of the world are championing climate initiatives for reducing global emissions, the world’s largest fossil fuel multinational companies, based in those very countries, continue to go in the exact opposite direction, which is completely incompatible with all their sustainability commitments.

These multinationals are continuing to expand their oil and gas extraction around the world, especially in the Global South, employing highly dangerous and controversial methods such as fracking, seismic surveys and offshore/deepwater drilling.

However, recent victories have been achieved by local resistance campaigns which have succeeded to thwart the plans of some of such corporations, Shell and Equinor, from the coasts off South Africa, Australia, as well as from the Cambo oilfield off Scotland. In recent weeks, popular resistance has also been building unprecedented momentum in Argentina’s coastlines, where tens of thousands have been mobilizing against the same companies, under the call for an “Atlantic Coast Rebellion”.

Most of the world’s population lives in coastline areas, and offshore & deepwater drilling, seismic surveys and fracking continue to expand in search of extracting up to the last drop of oil and gas. While oceans act as geographic barriers between continents, they also connect us. We believe it’s time to come together internationally under a global rebellion of coastlines and affected communities, where we can build a multinational resistance against a multinational threat that continues to colonize the planet and the Global South in search for more oil & gas at any human and environmental cost.

Among other European multinationals, Germany’s largest oil and gas company, Wintershall, is extracting oil and gas through fracking in Argentina – by using a method called safe and efficient, while the same method is not allowed in Germany due to the associated ecological risks such as groundwater contamination and the induction of earthquakes. In Vaca Muerta, Wintershall is operating along with other fossil companies such as Shell from the Netherlands/UK, Equinor from Norway, Total from France and BP from UK. In some areas, where the fracking towers are located, children dying of leukemia can reach levels three times higher than national average, the Indigenous Mapuche people are being expelled from their lands, fish are dying in contaminated rivers and fires are rampaging after infrastructural accidents.

This is by no means an individual case – multinational corporations are destroying the homelands of Indigenous peoples globally, committing unforgivable ecocidal crimes, while they are trying to greenwash their business of destruction in the northern hemisphere to perpetuate their profits.

Frontline communities and activists from the Global South are calling on grassroots movements and organizations fighting corporate power and their environmental crimes to come together in an unprecedented action of international solidarity, where we can bring visibility to these stories and generate enough impact to slow and stop the advance of corporate colonialism all over the world! We will do our part in Germany.

We will join a global action on February 4th where over 15 countries from both Global North and South are coming together to expose the crimes of these corporations and demand Repsol takes responsibility for the oil spill in Peru, for Equinor and Shell to drop their plans for offshore drilling and fracking in Argentina, as well as to express solidarity with all other frontline struggles against fossil fuel corporations around the world!

The oceans are rising and so are we!