The Fight For Water

Description

The 'Fight for Water' is about an oil spill that happened on Feb. 28th, 2009 in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rain forest. About 14,000 barrels of crude oil seeped into the Napo and Coca Rivers, both of which are tributaries of the Amazon River.

Through the eyes of the local residents, both indigenous and non-indigenous, the film explores not only the specific case of the Santa Rosa spill, but also the legacy of contamination of water from the exploitation of petroleum in the northern Amazon region of Ecuador and the struggle for survival by the inhabitants of the region within the framework of the new environmental protection that are part of the Constitutional reform of 2008.

The film also examines another controversial topic in the border area with Colombia; the impact of the 150,000 refugees and displaced people from the Colombian conflict, and the relationship between contamination of water in the border areas and the human impact of the coca eradication programs that were implemented as part of Plan Colombia, a joint initiative between the United States government and their Colombian counterpart.

'Many people come here from the outside world, to see… to inspect, but they don’t see anything. One thing is to look, but to really see what we need, that does not happen… but to talk to someone from up there from down there is like living in a dream.'

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