Fight climate change with food sovereignty
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- Published on Monday, 08 December 2014 15:02
La Via Campesina and GRAIN release two new documents on food and climate change ahead of the People's Summit on Climate Change in Lima, Peru.
With this year's UN Climate Change Conference under way in Lima, La Via Campesina and GRAIN announce the joint publication of two new documents that detail how a global programme to support food sovereignty can resolve the climate crisis and feed the world.
The documents show how the dispossession of peasants and indigenous peoples of their lands has laid the basis for destructive resource extraction and an industrial food system that is responsible for 44-57% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Nyéléni Newsletter: Agroecology and Climate - New edition
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- Published on Friday, 05 December 2014 14:20
Peasant Agroecology, the key for humankind and the planet
Agroecology has existed for many years, and much has been written about it already. It is a multidimensional approach, founded on knowledge, know-how and peasants’ ways of life, grounded in their respective natural, social and cultural environment. For many years it was considered as archaic and not really adapted to “modern progress”. Agroecology was banished, but is now making a big comeback. But who will reap the benefits?
Agroecological farming ensures soil, peasant seeds and farmers’ knowledge is valued and sustained. It is the symbol of the diversity of production and practice that exists, of the diversity of food and its cultural identities adapted to their social and natural environment. Yet today it is being taken over by industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture is the opposite of agroecology, as it is based on profit, uniformity, specialisation, and concentration, with all the deadly consequences that this implies.
Click here to download the english edition or read it directly at www.nyeleni.org !
Speech by La Via Campesina delegation in the closing ceremony of International Year of Family Farming, Manila, Philippines
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- Published on Thursday, 04 December 2014 14:41
27th November, 2014
Dear Madam/ Chair and respected dignitaries
I take the floor on behalf of La Via Campesina, the world’s largest movement of family farmers, Indigenous people, fisher folks and small scale food producers. All over the world peasants, small scale producers continue to grow and distribute healthy food in their communities and feeding the world. They are indeed the family farmers that feed over 75% of the world population. And it is very important that the International Year of family farming allowed us to increase the attention to this important and crucial sector.
This is in stark contrast to the commercial food industry, whose priorities are profit and speculation and whose strategy is to make agriculture increasingly dependent on agro-toxics and inputs controlled by the corporates, increasing their profits through the sale of toxic chemicals and inputs which is responsible for the destruction of natural resources and peasant based food production and family farming.
Position Paper of La Vía Campesina:Environmental and Climate Justice Now!
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- Published on Wednesday, 03 December 2014 21:54
We continue organizing, mobilizing, and building alternatives to redress the climate crisis and defend Mother Earth.
We, La Vía Campesina, indigenous people, small farmers, youth, migrants, rural workers, agricultural day laborers, fisherfolk, artisans, alongside our allies in the struggle for profound social transformations, are coming together in Lima for the COP 20 to reiterate once again our commitment to feeding the people of the world, to organizing, mobilizing, struggling and building alternatives that cool down the planet, not just for our own benefit but for all those who share Mother Earth.
Very recently, civil society witnessed again how the people of the world continue defending ourselves and rejecting the false solutions of capital and its institutions who claim to take us into account. With 2014 being International Year of Family Farming, the World Bank and its allies in the United Nations (UN) tried selling the world what they termed “Climate-Smart Agriculture” as some sort of new product that would put the brakes on the climate crisis once and for all. However, on the streets of New York and within the Climate Summit itself, we unmasked this fallacy and informed public opinion what “Climate-Smart Agriculture” is all about: more industrial agriculture, more World Bank financing and support for the capital of the few, more contamination and plundering of natural resources, more exploitation of lands, territories, peoples and workers. Above all else, it is part of the same green economy proposal based on less justice and less ecology.
