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| SEPTEMBER
15, 1998 3:40 PM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Rainforest Action Network Mark Westlund - ranmedia@ran.org Steve Kretzmann: - skretzmann@igc.org |
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| Groundbreaking Study Shows Petroleum Exploration Threatening Natural Areas, Indigenous Peoples and the Global Climate; International Coalition Announces Campaign to End New Petroleum Exploration | ||||
| HOUSTON
- September 15 - Challenging oil industry leaders gathered for the Congress of the World
Energy Council, Rainforest Action Network and Project Underground today released a report
assessing the threat of new petroleum exploration to the climate, the environment and
indigenous peoples. Coinciding with the release of the report, a global campaign was
launched against new exploration. Included with this report -- entitled Drilling to the Ends of the Earth: The Ecological, Social, and Climate Imperative for Ending New Petroleum Exploration -- are six full-color maps which overlay for the first time priority exploration areas with frontier forests, mangroves, coral reefs and indigenous populations. In almost every case, priority exploration sites endanger natural areas, threaten indigenous people, and most often both. The report also includes a critique of ongoing oil and gas exploration in the context of global climate change. It reports that in the last ten years, since nations of the world first committed themselves to stopping global warming, the industry has expanded drastically, almost tripling the number of countries and companies involved in new exploration for oil and gas. Carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are the number one cause of global climate change. "The petroleum industry's quest for every last drop of oil is threatening the rights of indigenous communities globally, destroying the Earth's last intact ecosystems, ensuring global climate disaster, and locking developing countries into a death spiral of debt and dependency," said Project Underground's Steve Kretzmann. "People need energy, not oil. Industry and governments need to support energy and development policies that favor people and the planet, not profits and pollution." "We have an easy choice -- to protect threatened ecosystems and peoples, or to continue investing in new oil and gas," explained Shannon Wright of Rainforest Action Network. "Oil's day is over; it is time to invest in the wealth of renewable energy and sustainable development options that exist." Key report findings include that the oil and gas industry spends over $150 billion annually on new exploration, and that the area covered by new exploration activities in the last decade roughly equals the land area of the U.S. and Europe. This ongoing exploration threatens: frontier, old growth forests in 22 countries, coral reefs in 38 countries, and mangroves in 46 countries. In addition, indigenous peoples on every habitable continent and at least eight isolated indigenous groups face an immediate or near-term threat from new exploration. The report also examines how dependency on oil for development policy leads to a cycle of debt and under-development. The campaign against new petroleum exploration announced today by Nigerian indigenous leader and Oilwatch representative Oronto Douglas calls for an end to new exploration, beginning with projects slated for fragile ecosystem, wherever the local community objects, and in areas where isolated, traditional indigenous people live. Also, the campaign calls on the international community -- particularly financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund -- to recognize the ecological debt owed by the North to the South, and to directly support renewable energy technologies in developing countries. "In Nigeria people are dying because of oil," said Oronto Douglas, an attorney for the Nobel prize-nominated Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed for his activities in 1995 with eight others. "With alternative sources of energy ready to be maximized, it is simply immoral to carry on with an outmoded product such as oil. Petroleum is poisonous for the Earth's climate, and it has been the cause of so much human suffering. The quest for more must end now." ### |
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