Big business wants to control our planet’s common natural resources to make profit—by taking over land, privatizing water, patenting seeds, and pushing aside anyone who gets in their way. Fortunately, there are people around the world—movements of peasants, Indigenous Peoples, women and youth—who are fighting to defend resource rights and to put the rights of people and communities ahead of corporate interests. Our partners are on the frontlines of this struggle.
At Grassroots International, we use resource rights as a way to frame political and economic struggles to win the most fundamental of human rights: the rights to land, water, and food. Without these natural resources, life itself is unsustainable.
Following tireless community organizing led by Rise St. James, residents of St. James Parish, Louisiana, have successfully stopped the development of what would have been the largest methanol factory in North America.
As movements like the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) fight for the future of the Amazon basin, they are fighting for the future of all of us.
