The environmental group Oilwatch this week announced it hopes to nominate ex-President Abel Pacheco for a Nobel Peace Prize for the moratorium on oil exploration he implemented during his presidency, from 2002-2006.
“We feel that by declaring a moratorium on oil exploration, he (Pacheco) has contributed to world peace; petroleum is behind most of the world’s wars, including the current war between the United States and Iraq,” Oilwatch representative Mauricio Alvarez told The Tico Times Monday.
Nominating someone for the Nobel Peace Prize requires the support of a former Nobel Prize winner or a university, Alvarez explained, and Oilwatch is confident that Pacheco has this support, though Alvarez said it was too soon to mention the names of the former President’s supporters.
“Numerous social and ecological organizations, in addition to well-known people in the cultural, political and social worlds are supporting this action and we are counting on the support of at least two Nobel Peace Prize winners,” according to a statement from Oilwatch.
President Oscar Arias won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, during his first presidency, and, ironically, Oilwatch hopes that Pacheco’s nomination will make it “more difficult for the other Nobel Peace Prize winner (Arias) to create politics contrary to this declaration of peace,” the statement said.
Last week, Arias met with members of a Brazilian oil company and announced the possibility of petroleum exploration off the country’s Caribbean coast (TT, June 2).
