Project Underground exists as a vehicle for the environmental, human rights and indigenous rights movements to carry out focused campaigns against abusive extractive resource activity. We seek to systematically deal with the problems created by the mining and oil industries by exposing environmental and human rights abuses by the corporations involved in these sectors and by building capacity amongst communities facing mineral and energy development to achieve economic and environmental justice.
In general we work to provide informational, technical, legal and scientific support to communities facing oil, gas and mining operations; as well as to campaign in support of communities adversely affected by these industries. More specifically Project Underground serves those communities threatened by the mining and oil industries by:
Informing communities of the environmental impacts of oil and mining activities;
Informing communities of their rights under international and national law;
Supplying corporate data, history, and examples of best-practice to communities;
When requested Project Underground helps communities resist unsustainable activity through a variety of avenues including, but not limited to, networking with other communities of resistance, helping seek national and international legal redress, publicity, access to international fora, with a range of tactics involved in our own brand of nonviolent, strategic campaigning and by building their organizational capacity.
In just a few years Project Underground has become a force to be reckoned with. Although the Financial Times calls us a "pressure group," we see ourselves as much more. By working at the nexus of the environmental, human rights, and indigenous movements we are redefining proactive public interest solidarity work for the 21st century.
Focusing on the mining and energy industries, Project Underground has made the case that the protection of human rights and the environment are intrinsically linked - as they were for the Native Californians hit by the 49ers, as they are for the U'wa of Colombia struggling against Occidental Petroleum and as they will be for us all as we enter an era of climate change.
Based on this understanding, Project Underground has filled a niche for supporting communities threatened by mining and oil operations with focused corporate campaigns. Our work to inform people of corporate environmental and human rights abuses through innovative communication strategies, and our capacity to network communities in resistance to abusive resource extraction grows daily. As it does, our ability to campaign in support of more peoples and their rights also expands.
To ensure that we can transform the practices of these industries in the long term, we have built a solid organizational foundation. Our information department works to educate communities and the public about the breadth of corporate transgressions, while our campaigns target corporations for focused change.
Perhaps the greatest achievement to date has been amplifying the stories of struggle and success from the communities whom we support. Our documentation of the risks entailed in a mining proposal in Dominica; our proof of the claims of Ken Saro-Wiwa that Royal Dutch Shell was polluting his beloved Ogoni and killing its people; and our exposure of the abuses of Freeport McMoRan in Indonesia - all this is only the tip of the iceberg of human tragedy and triumph around which we work.
We expose the myths perpetrated by powerful resource industry interests and tell the truth about the kind of development that comes from a hole in the ground. We aim to serve our growing constituency further by producing more educational materials and devising better ways to engage our supporters in making change around the mining and oil industries.
Through our publications and campaign work we aim to tell the world about community activists and their battles, to link them to further media coverage and to empower them in their work. We will continue to do this by building more direct collaborations with the people most affected by the oil and mining industries, and by strengthening our links with Oilwatch, the Indigenous Environmental Network and others through practical capacity-building trainings, exchanges and exercises.
We are not afraid to ask the hard questions. 80% of gold production produces only jewelry - is this ongoing threat to communities and ecosystems worth the price of vanity? The oil and gas industry spends billions of dollars a year looking for more of a fuel we must soon phase out - must the cost of our energy policy and economic development be an ongoing loss of biodiversity and indigenous cultures?
Our grateful thanks to all who have helped Project Underground thus far, and those who inspire us: especially the people of New Guinea, the Niger Delta, Cubara, Newe Sogobia, Bougainville, Tabasco and many other places that have to be unnamed but who lead us all in the common struggle for a better future.
