France: International mobilization for water (and more)

Between July 16 and 21, 2024, several meetings were held combining actions and organizations, which brought together more than 30,000 participants in western France. These meetings were part of a series of protests against the so-called “mega-basins”, artificial water reservoirs, which have stolen from the environment and society, and against which several major mobilizations have already taken place[1].

By the IWL’s France Supporters’ Group

United by more than 120 organizations, the collectives “Bassins, no thanks” (“Bassines Non Merci” – BNM in French) and “Rise of the Land” (“Soulèvement de la Terre” – SLDT), intended to put pressure on the agro-industrial companies responsible for the monopolization of water, land, and the fruits of local peasant labor. This objective was directed, for example, against Terre Atlantique, Ocealia, Pioneer, Terrena and Soufflet, which, more or less directly, push farmers towards productivism, and the construction of mega-basins such as that of Saint Sauvin. It is also directed at the public authorities who finance the development of infrastructure to export their (over)production, a concrete local example being the La Rochelle port development project [2].

Through the diversity of their situations and experiences, participants from many countries ( including Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Belgium, India, Morocco, Rojava, Palestine, Sweden, Colombia, Tibet, Germany, Portugal, Chile, Italy, Ireland, Lebanon, Kanaky, etc.) have both showed their support and demonstrated to what extent water is also at the crossroads of ecological, social, and political issues in other parts of the world[3].

Some elements of context in France

These meetings were held a little more than a week after the legislative elections. The Nouveau Front Populaire [New Popular Front], a grouping of so-called left-wing parties, emerged victorious but with a relative majority that has left two-thirds of the Assembly to the presidential parties and the far right. The elections did not produce much of a result. The possibility of seeing the far right win and President Macron being allowed to lead a coalition government was real. The organizers took into account the need to fight against the far right and the rise of fascism in France and in countries with similar situations[4].

Undoubtedly, repression has not reached the level it could have with a government led by the National Rally, but it still reached a significant threshold. The Minister of the Interior, for example, once again struck the “eco-terrorism” chord, even though the “Water Village” was legal and organized with the agreement of the mayor of Melle[5]. The fact that the ministerial communiqué was so far removed from reality suggests that its aim was rather to threaten people who wished to participate in the mobilizations, but feared repression, and to prepare the consent of “public opinion” for an actually political repression. Even the Garde Républicaine [Republican Guard] was sent to the site, patrolling on horseback. The minister declared that “The law has always ruled in favor of the peasants. The role of the policeman or gendarme is to enforce these court decisions. There is no reason for farmers, who have justice and the law on their side, to see their properties destroyed by those who do not respect the law”. In addition, the minister is so out of touch with reality that he went so far as to contest certain court decisions that have declared some of these mega-basins illegal. In this way, he has once again shown himself to be the objective ally of the most “far-right” factions of the peasant movement. The latter, through the “Coordination rurale” [Rural Coordination], has used slander to try to mobilize against environmental activists, to whom they attributed a plan to attack farms. This is despite the clear communication that the objective is to target those responsible at a high level for the precipitous and anti-ecological plan. The prohibition of counter-demonstrations, by the municipality, the government and the state has revealed that they still wanted to maintain an monopoly on repression, at least in appearance[6]. The legalism of the Minister of the Interior in this matter is lawfully questionable. In addition to denying judicial decisions on the basins, he had given guarantees, for example, to the actions of some farmers belonging to this same “Coordination rurale”[7 ] during the mobilizations of the first quarter. This duplicity is undoubtedly one of the factors that led to the decision of an unidentified group to attack a convoy of cyclists on their way to the Village de l’Eau [Water Village], resulting in the injury of several people[8].

Two farmers’ unions supported the mobilization against the mega-basins. The Confédération Paysanne and Modef, which, as in the mobilizations of the first quarter of 2024, defended a progressive line by linking the interests of farmers to the defense of the environment and the need to develop another mode of production.

This context, marked by numerous difficulties, only adds value to the strong participation in the Water Village and the actions of July 19 and 20[9].

The international dimension: some characteristics and issues

An international call for participation in the Water Village was launched with the aim of developing convergences by sharing experiences of struggle and studying ways of organizing by “redrawing a democratic geography based on water”[10]. Among these avenues is the idea of organizing at the basin scale[11] and coordinating the forms of organization that could be implemented.

For the initiators of the project, the idea was not to start from scratch, but to build on existing initiatives, in which water is not necessarily the main structural element.

Among them, we can highlight the projects of River International[12], World Watershed Appeal[13], Appeal for a Diplomatic Council of Watersheds[14] and Bakery International[15], as well as the Forest Alternatives Network[16] and the integral cooperatives, among others [17].

Some of these initiatives place themselves more or less explicitly within the scope of existing national and international institutions, seeking a form of legitimacy through the development of environmental legal statutes or positioning themselves as mediators between social movements and official powers. These questions are not without interest, but they recall the political limits in which the alter-globalization movement of the early 2000s was mired: who enforces the law? What is the nature of the existing institutions today? Who is the social subject capable of emancipating itself from the constraints of capitalism and overthrowing it?

The Water Village participants, on the other hand, focused more on the development of autonomous forms of organization, with great differences in this conception of the economy according to their contexts. The difference between the level of structuring required by “reformist” initiatives and their actual embodiment in this initiative calls into question the ability of reformism to anticipate the limits of autonomy and its difficulties in thinking through the question of political power, in which the issue of representation plays an important role. On the other hand, it would be wrong to speak of some groups as “thoughtless” and to place all initiatives claiming to be autonomous in the category of “utopian socialism”, for example.

Most of those who participated showed themselves more or less explicitly aware of the contradictions of the chosen strategies, and often explicitly chose to find ways to act in whatever situation they were in with the aim of politicizing people by “doing it” with them. There was no explicit criticism of the French Trotskyist organizations which, in this matter, opted for more performative discourses to distinguish themselves and justify their self-construction, instead of investing their forces in a real movement without the certainty of immediate repercussions.

One of the best summaries expressed during the meetings, taking into account both the issues at stake and the need to start from real experiences, was formulated by the Rojava delegation. We could criticize the political issues that are not raised and perhaps deliberately avoided in this statement, but it has the merit of leaving all possibilities open in terms of political and practical responses[18].

Some lessons from the meetings

In addition to the contacts that have made these meetings possible and the relationships of trust that they have helped to establish or strengthen, they have made it possible to become aware of facts that help to refine the elaboration of strategic responses that are sometimes based on the need to adapt to the current period, sometimes on the need to perhaps reaffirm certain past experiences and certain foundations. Here are some examples:

-Some of those present at the Water Village believed that non-governmental organizations could be levers to correct the effects of capitalism. Today, they question these strategic options. The (predictable) degeneration of the alter-globalization movement and the increasing depoliticization of most NGOs means that these people will have to pay particular attention to internationalist and revolutionary prisms of analysis and avenues of solutions. Depending on our strengths and the priorities of the period, there might be some interest in addressing these activists by participating, for example, in the next World Social Forum in Benin in 2026, in the Social Summit to be held November 15-17, 2024 in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for the G20, or in meetings to be held on the margins of the next COP, and climate conferences.

Other global meetings are also being prepared that are politically closer to those that took place in Melle and to our orientations, such as the International Meetings for Climate and Life in Mexico from November 4 to 9, 2024[19].

-On a more theoretical level, the diversity of testimonies of initiatives has shown differences in contexts that do not allow us to copy and paste organizational solutions. The solutions proposed by some autonomous groups in Europe, to organize themselves, in countries whose material conditions favor the feeling of being able to escape the needs of a large-scale collective organization, may be of some interest. In Rojava, the cultural oppression and the war waged against an entire people by the surrounding regimes undoubtedly created the conditions for the need to form a “community” to resist. The conditions of immediate survival on this scale also demand the need for a more formalized social organization, or even to negotiate with certain unfriendly powers to obtain the means to defend themselves.

Some interventions highlighted the need to de-westernize the ways of analyzing (and judging) oppression and the ways of resisting oppressions and exploitation of different natures. It is worth asking to what extent this “de-Westernization” should not pass rather through a Marxization of the prisms of analysis, i.e., taking into account the material conditions and social relations specific to each situation.

-The reconstruction of an operative culture for a large number of people was also an achievement of this meeting. Although improvements still need to be made so that activists participating in the actions do so with full awareness of the cause, the organizers seem to have learned from the experience of the second Sainte-Soline meeting. The operational culture also materialized in the operation of the canteens, which required the coordination of many activists to prepare and serve thousands of meals each day.

[1 ]https://litci.org/fr/interview-sur-la-mobilisation-contre-les-mega-bassines-a-sainte-soline/

[2 ]https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/en-eu/blog/stop-mega-bassines-du-16-au-21-juillet-plus-de-12

[3]Here are some examples of activists explaining their struggles:
Carlos Beas, from Mexico: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxVfy9B-JWo
Mizkin Ahmed, from Rojava: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=h97_04h80Bk
Rajendra Singh, from India: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=54lCM-8qSiU

[4 ]https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/blog/pour-un-soulevement-antifasciste

[5 ]https://rmc.bfmtv.com/actualites/police-justice/mobilisation-anti-bassines-darmanin-a-saccage-tout-notre-travail-deplore-le-maire-de-melle_AV-202407170338.html

[6 ]https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/environnement/anti-bassines-les-syndicats-agricoles-divises-a-l-approche-des-manifestations-dans-le-poitou-5305424

[7 ]https://rmc.bfmtv.com/actualites/societe/transports/je-les-laisse-faire-pour-gerald-darmanin-la-colere-des-agriculteurs-est-un-coup-de-sang-legitime_AV-202401260411.html

[8 ]https://reporterre.net/Des-militants-antibassines-agresses-en-route-vers-le-Village-de-l-eau

[9]July 19 report: https: //www.bassinesnonmerci.fr/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/CP1907.pdf
July 20 report with an explanation of what was at stake in the mobilization: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YYiGpZ-UCY

[10 ]https://laboursolidarity.org/fr/n/3088/appel-planetaire-a-converger-du-14-au-2107-en-france-pour-le-partage-de-l039eau

[11 ]https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassin_versant

[12 ]https://www.lelieuunique.com/evenement/vers-une-internationale-des-rivieres-camille-de-toledo