Thousands of Cancuns for climate justice!
La Via Campesina invites people's movements to mobilize around the world

Social movements from around the world are mobilizing for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that will take place in Cancun from 29 November to 10 December 2010.

The COP 15 in Copenhagen demonstrated governments' incapacity to tackle the root causes of the current climate chaos. At the very last moment, the US undemocratically pushed through the so called "Copenhagen accord", in an attempt to move the debate out of the UN and the Kyoto promises and to favor even more voluntarily free market solutions.

Climate negotiations have turned into a huge market place. Developed countries, historically responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions are inventing all possible tricks to avoid reducing their own emissions. For example, the "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM) under the Kyoto protocol allows countries to continue polluting and consuming as usual, while paying low prices supposedly so that developing countries reduce their emissions. What actually occurs is that companies profit doubly: to contaminate and to sell false solutions.

On June 4th about ten thousand Haitian peasants marched to protest US-based Monsanto Company’s ‘deadly gift’ of seed to the government of Haiti. The march was seven kilometers from Papaye to Hinche, in a rural area on the central plateau, and was organized by several Haitian rural social movements that are proposing a development model based on food and seed sovereignty instead of industrial agriculture. Slogans for the march included “long live native maize seed” and “Monsanto’s GMO & hybrid seed violate peasant agriculture.”

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. About 65 percent of Haiti’s population lives in rural areas and are subsistence farmers. On January 12 2010, a devastating earthquake leveled Haiti’s capital city Port au Prince, and 800,000 urban refugees migrated to rural areas. According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP) and a member of La Via Campesina’s international coordinating committee, “there is presently a shortage of seed in Haiti because many rural families used their maizeseed to feed refugees.”

Hinche, Haiti– An estimated 10,000 peasants gathered for a massive march in Central Haiti on June 4, 2010, to protest what has been described as “the next earthquake for Haiti” – a donation of 475 tons of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds by the US-based agribusiness giant Monsanto, in partnership with USAID. While this move comes at a time of dire need in Haiti, many feel it will undermine rather than bolster the country’s food security.

According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) and spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papaye (MPNKP), the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti is "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."

Invitation - LA VIA CAMPESINA IN HAITI

The current political framework and the processes of economic integration carried out by governments and transnational capital together make it necessary for us to unify our vision and strengthen our action strategies against this new imperialist attack.

The earthquake which occurred in Haiti on the 12th January killed 300 000 people, injured 500 000 others and left thousands of people homeless…35 seconds made 3 million disaster victims. Haiti’s vulnerability in the face of natural catastrophes has many causes underlying which are the actions of the colonial and neo-colonial powers, principally Spain, France, United States, as well as the policies of the International Financial Institutions and of transnational corporations and the national groups holding political and economical power.

(June 3rd, 2010) As part of a Via Campesina’s call for international solidarity in defense of food sovereignty, Family Farm Defenders in the United States wishes to express its strong support for the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) and other farmer allies in Haiti as they take direct action on June 4th, World Environment Day, to rid their country of unwanted chemically treated hybrid seeds imported by Monsanto.

This is hardly the first time that Monsanto has exploited human tragedy to advance its own agenda of monopolizing the world’s genetic heritage for private profit.  Whether it’s a civil war, drought, tsunami, or earthquake Monsanto appears hellbent to take advantage of any opportunity to dump its patented products on desperate communities.

This is a video about the 17th of April 2010 - celebrated as Via Campesina Action Day in rememberance of the massacre committed on Via Campesina activist farmers in Amazonia. In this year the activists in Berlin organized a number of discussions and film viewings and finally this meeting in a formerly squatted vegetable garden in the center of Berlin. "Another world is plantable" is written on the wall in this garden and the garden collective "Ton Steine Gärten" is planting food here since a year now. Also there is a small interview with an activist from "Reclaim the fields" a group which was formed in the last ESF in Sweden and is now squatting fields and planting food in various places in Europe. But see for yourself!

Andrea Plöger

Representatives of La Via Campesina from Europe and Latin America joined the demonstrations today in Madrid demanding that the more than 60 heads of state from Europe and Latin America abandon the negotiations to sign free-trade agreements between their countries and regions and the EU.

The only beneficiaries such agreements are the same transnational corporations and international financial investors which have caused the current economic, social, environmental and political crisis.

The ideology of infinite growth based on neoliberal trade conditions managed by international speculative funds and banking systems is dead. It is not in the interests of the people of Europe or Latin America to sign the agreements imposed by the European Commission.