Oscar Olivera

Oscar Olivera is the 2001 winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

"In October 2000, the Institute for Policy Studies awarded to Oscar its Letelier-Moffit International Award for human rights activity, named after two IPS staff members who were murdered in Washington DC in September 1976 by agents of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. This was a few months after he helped to organize and lead the resistance against water privatization in the city of Cochabamba...

"The Goldman Institute awarded to Oscar in 2001 a $125,000 prize for environmental action. When asked about the significance of a labor leader winning an award for environmentalism, Oscar describes the idea of “environment” in general, discussed as “resources,” as being for him an “imported idea,” having deep implications of usefulness in the context of capitalism. He proposes moving away from this idea of “resources” and moving instead towards the idea of the common good, which would include the goals of social movements like the labor unions and less tangible rights than water and earth. Oscar invested the prize money he received from the Goldmans in the April Foundation, so named for the last days of the Water War, and the interest earned on this money funds much of his group’s work."


 * South Council, 50 Years Is Enough