Interview with Han Young Me, Chief of Policy, Korean Women Peasants Association (KWPA)
Dae-gu, South Korea, 4 December 2008

by Grain

Download the video.

A dozen of farmers organisations en Haiti gathered on December 12, 2008 for a mass protest in the capital city Puerto Principe as part of a national campaign for Food Sovereignty. More on the Via Campesina Spanish and French Pages.

I was in Mozambique because I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the Fifth International Conference of La Via Campesina in Matola, a suburb of the capital city Maputo. La Via Campesina is an organization of organizations, a powerful aspect of the growing movement of peasants, family farmers, indigenous and landless people of the world. My goals were to help record the conference by interviewing some of the delegates and to learn more about the campesin@ way of life and how that way is crystallized in a call for and a practice of food sovereignty. In particular, I wanted to learn what that means to the peasants and small farmers of Mozambique.

Members of the First of December farmers' association, which works with the national organization UNAC (União Nacional de Camponeses / National Peasants' Union) in the Sanga district, near Lichinga, in the Niassa province of Mozambique. Photo by Nic Paget-Clarke.

Poznan statement from the Climate Justice Now! alliance

12 December 2008

Members of Climate Justice Now! – a worldwide alliance of more than 160 organisations -- have been in Poznan for the past two weeks closely following developments in the UN climate negotiations.

This statement is our assessment of the Conference of Parties (COP) 14, and articulates our principles for achieving climate justice.

Statement of La Via Campesina

A delegation of small farmers and peasants from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America has been observing this week the climate negotiations of UNFCCC in Poznan (COP14).

We are shocked by the level of corruption that UNFCCC has reached in allowing corporations to take over the political process of climate negotiations. Instead of tackling climate changes, what is being discussed in Poznan is how to create business opportunities in the face of a looming global disaster.

 Testimony of Sarwadi, Indonesian farmer

Poznan, 11 December 2008
Sarwadi Sukiman, a small farmer from Sumatra (Indonesia) is currently sharing his experience in Poznan during the United Nations climate talks, as part of the Via Campesina delegation. His story shows what happens when plans such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) are implemented and what impacts they have on small farmer's lives. REDD is a new mechanism negotiated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that provides funding to developing countries to protect forests in order to capture carbon and stabilise the climate. This carbon trading mechanism is getting a lot of international support at the Poznan conference. However, the real impact of such programmes on peasants and indigenous peoples is disastrous.

An Open Letter to Our Governments

We, representatives of peasant organizations, women, migrants, workers, consumers, urban and rural poor, fisherfolks, social movements and civil society organizations are writing to express our alarm that efforts are being made to conclude the Doha “Development” Round of negotiations.

Mr. Lamy is using the current financial crisis as the justification for the need to urgently conclude the Doha Round. He argues that the conclusion of the Round would be the solution to the crisis. The recent G20 declaration last November 15 in Washington DC also called for the conclusion of the Doha Round as a way to solve the current financial crisis. We disagree with Mr. Lamy and the G20 and in fact cite as an example the current commitments made under the General Agreement in Trade and Services (GATS) which has prevented countries from being able to respond to the current financial crisis and so we see the whole system of the WTO as the problem and cannot be part of the solution.