In March 24, 25 and 26, 2023, more than 25,000 people gathered in the Marais poitevin, the second largest wetland in France, for an international mobilization against mega-basin projects. These enormous giant craters, of about ten hectares, filled by drawing from the water tables embody the maintenance at all costs of an agro-industrial model which crushes the peasants and destroys the living environments. Already implemented in Chile for a few decades, their effects are devastating: the billionaire owners of avocado crops are hoarding water to fill mega-basins, while the surrounding villages are supplied by tanker trucks. “No es sequia, es saqueo! »sums up the popular slogan that echoes from Chile to Mexico – “It’s not drought, it’s looting! »
Pollution, overexploitation, commodification, land grabbing, disruption of water cycles: everywhere in the world the situation is critical. While water scarcity affects 40% of the world’s population, the agrifood giants Danone, Nestlé and Coca-Cola are appropriating spring water, depriving the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the United States and Canada. of their water, to sell it for exorbitant prices in plastic bottles. Elsewhere, mines and large dams are also multiplying, destroying the territories still inhabited by peasant and indigenous communities, in unison with capitalist injunctions to “decarbonise” economies.
Despite the “water war” in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000, the counter-summits, the recognition of the right to water, in 2010, by the UN, the privatizations and the financialization of water stopped progressing. Water even went public in 2020. In the face of this ecocidal offensive on water, land and our livelihoods, water struggles continue to swarm and connect across the world.
A growing vital revolt
Some of us were therefore physically present in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) in France on March 25, to make our fights resonate and internationalize. We, Chilean activists fighting against the destruction of our ecosystems by authoritarian neoliberalism; activists from Mali and West Africa fighting to reclaim our land from land grabs; Kurdistan activists opposed to the relentless war waged by the Erdogan regime in Turkey, which uses water as a weapon; but also indigenous yukpa activists from Abya Yala, fighting for the self-determination of our peoples in the face of a colonial and extractivist system; of the Lakota nation, of Mexico; from the social centers of northeastern Italy or No TAV [non au TGV Lyon-Turin] ; French and European activists involved in hundreds of territorial struggles against destructive projects. Others were present through the warmth of our hearts and thoughts.
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