By RAN is proud to be an original supporter of ClearWater, which has launched an incredible new website today. Here are a few words from our friends at Amazon Watch about the important work ClearWater is doing and how you can get involved.
“Without clean water, we cannot survive,” Emergildo Criollo told me recently.
You may have heard of Emergildo. An indigenous leader of the Cofan Nation in Ecuador’s northern Amazon, he has been a relentless advocate for his people, speaking out about oil giant Chevron’s toxic legacy in his territory. But today, even as he continues the fight to hold Chevron accountable, Emergildo isn’t waiting for a cleanup that seems always on the horizon.
Emergildo is taking matters into his own hands, helping to bring clean water to thousands of Indigenous people who have suffered without for decades.
Rainforest Action Network is proud to stand with Emergildo, and the other Indigenous leaders who are part of an effort to address that dire need.
It’s called The ClearWater Project.
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ClearWater began with a big goal: provide safe, sustainable access to clean water for every Indigenous family in the region, whose ancestral waterways have been poisoned by oil production and ensuing industrialization.
In just two years, ClearWater has installed more than 500 family-sized rainwater harvesting and filtration systems that serve thousands of people in communities that have long suffered an epidemic of cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses that numerous health studies in the region blame on a lack of access to safe sources of water for drinking, bathing, and cooking.
Our efforts have been able to make this impact because, from the beginning, ClearWater has been a collaborative partnership between the five indigenous nationalities here—the Cofan, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa, and Waorani—and international supporters, such as water engineers, humanitarians, activists, and philanthropists.
ClearWater believes in collaborative, integrative, community-led solutions, where someone like Emergildo is coordinating amongst the different Indigenous nationalities to install new water systems, local youth are using GPS to map their biological and cultural resources, and frontline leaders are learning new media techniques to broadcast their concerns to the world.
Clean water, health, and dignity. From this foundation, Emergildo and the Indigenous people of Ecuador’s northern Amazon are building a movement for rainforest protection and cultural survival.
I’m proud that Rainforest Action Network is a founding partner in this project, and I hope you’ll join us, too.
Explore ClearWater’s impact by navigating around this cutting-edge interactive map designed by another Amazon Watch family member, Gregor MacLennan, now Digital Democracy’s Program Director.
Learn more about ClearWater on our website or find us on Facebook and Twitter.
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Han Shan is an Amazon Watch Advisory Board Member. |