Winning against water polluting miners

We’ve been hoping to say this for a very long time and here it is: El Salvador’s water is safe!

OceanaGold’s lawsuit against El Salvador has been dismissed — a lawsuit that threatened the country’s last source of drinkable water.

Here’s what happened: A few years ago OceanaGold, an Australian mining company, bought off Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company with a contract to build a massive gold mine in the North of El Salvador. The mine didn’t meet environmental guidelines and threatened the last remaining river with drinkable water in the country.

As much as 90% of El Salvador’s water is not safe for drinking. Here is a picture of the pollution caused by mining to one of the country’s most important rivers: 

Protecting water means protecting life, so the SumOfUs community stood, and fought, with the Salvadorans opposing the mine:

• Over 200,000 of us signed petitions targeting the mining company and the World Bank. 
• We donated funds to grassroots groups in El Salvador.
• In Australia, our members made phone calls to AMP, one of Oceana’s top investors to pressure it to drop the lawsuit.
• Over 30,000 of us wrote emails to the anonymous World Bank arbitrator making this decision If all this wasn’t enough, we even took your signatures to OceanaGold’s doorstep as well as a clear message: water should be put before profits.

You can make sure the fight against ludicrous corporate lawsuits is as strong as ever — chip in whatever you can afford here now.

The fact that the World Bank dismissed this case is an amazing breakthrough in fighting for the kind of world economy we want to live in.

Together, we helped stop yet another case of corporate bullying. But the fight against mining giants continues. International trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership will increase the frequency of lawsuits against small and poor countries by massive and rich corporations, as well as enhance the powers of secret courts in ways we have not yet seen before.

— sumofus.org