By La Via Compesina, September 9, 2011
Peasant and indigenous people have thousands of
solutions to confront climate change!
La Via Campesina calls on social movements and all
people to mobilize around the world
The international peasant's movement La Via Campesina
and its South African member the Landless Peoples Movement are mobilizing for
the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that will take place in Durban, South
Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011.
Caravans of African farmers from
Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and other countries will reach Durban to join
other farmers and social movements from all parts of the world to demand climate
justice.
African women farmers, members of La
Via Campesina, will participate in the 2nd Southern Africa Rural
Women Assembly, from
November 30 to December 2, in Durban (co-organized by la Via Campesina Africa
1, TCOE, Women on Farms Project, Lamosa, ESAFF, UNAC, Namibian National Farmers
Union, among others).
La Via Campesina will also take part in the Global
Day of Action on December 3, with thousands of other activists to demand climate justice.
La Via Campesina and other African
food and farmers groups in Africa are also inviting all movements, allies and
activists to a special Mobilization Day for Agroecology and Food sovereignty on
December 5 in Durban and around the world. (co-organised by ESAFF regional,
ESAFF Uganda, ESAFF Zimbabwe, ROPPA, TCOE, Surplus People Project, etc.)
Climate negotiations are turned
into a market place
At COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, most of
the world’s governments, with the notable exception of Bolivia, met not to
seriously address climate, but rather do business with transnational
corporations that traffic in false solutions to climate change like REDD and
other carbon market mechanisms, agrofuels and GMOs. They have turned the
climate negotiations into a huge market place.
Our governments accepted a “business
as usual” framework that condemns Africa and South Asia to virtual
incineration, in which the very first victims are the farmers of these two
continents, as rising temperatures create an even more hostile environment for
crops, livestock and human beings. Most governments ignored the Cochabamba
Principles, which provide a clear framework for seriously addressing global
warming and protecting the Earth.
Under the UNFCCC, Developed Countries
and polluting corporations, historically responsible for most greenhouse gas
emissions, are allowed all possible tricks to avoid reducing their own
emissions. For example, the carbon market and carbon offset mechanisms allow
countries and companies to continue polluting and consuming as usual, while
paying small amounts of money to help poor people in developing countries
reduce their emissions. What actually occurs is that companies profit doubly:
by continuing to contaminate and by selling false solutions. Meanwhile, under
REDD, poor people are stripped of many of their multiple rights to use communal
forest lands, even as new land-grabbers emerge to consolidate large tracts by
evicting farmers in order to traffic in carbon credits.
We know that the keys sources of
climate-altering emissions are the globalized corporate food system based on
industrial agriculture for export and for agrofuels, a transportation system
based on private automobiles instead of public transport, and the polluting
industries of transnational corporations. Without real and enforceable
commitments to transform this, , there is no hope to prevent the virtual
incineration of our farm lands and ability to feed the world.
We are peasants, small holders and
family farmers, who today produce the vast majority of food consumed on this
planet. We, and the food we produce, are being placed in danger, as
temperatures rise, planting dates become unpredictable and there are ever more
severe droughts, hurricanes and monsoons. Yet we also offer the most important,
clear and scientifically-proven solutions to climate change through localized
agroecological production of food by small holder farmers under the Food
Sovereignty paradigm.
The global food system currently
generates at least 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions, through long-distance
transport of food that could easily have been grown locally, by excessive use
of petroleum and petroleum-based agrochemical inputs, by monoculture, and by
forest clearing for the industrial plantations we call “green deserts.”
We can drastically reduce or even
eliminate these emissions by transforming the food system based on food
sovereignty, i.e. producing locally for local consumption, a diverse production
based on peasant families and communities, with sustainable practices
Agroecology is Not for Sale!
We reject any attempt to extend the
carbon market and offset mechanisms of REDD to soil carbon, even when this
comes dressed up by the World Bank as support for small farmer agroecology or “Climate
Smart Agriculture,” because:
Just as in the case of REDD for forests, the carbon in our soil will
essentially become the property of polluting corporations in the North. This
amounts to the sale and privatization of our carbon. “Our Carbon in Not for
Sale”!
The voluntary soil carbon market will be just another space for
financial speculation, and while farmers receive pennies, speculators will make
any real profits.
This is just another way for polluting industries and countries to
evade real reductions in emissions.
It is also a way to divert attention from the massive carbon
emissions produced by industrial farming and agribusiness, especially in the
North, and place the burden of reducing emissions on peasants in the South,
while nothing is done about carbon emissions from industrial agriculture.
If we as farmers sign a soil carbon agreement we lose autonomy and
control over our farming systems. Some bureaucrat on the other side of the
world, who knows nothing about our soil, rainfall, slope, local food systems,
family economy, etc., will decide what practices we should use or not use.
Agroecology provides a wealth of benefits to the environment and
farmer livelihoods, but by reducing the value of agroecology practices to the
value of the carbon sequestered, not only are these other benefits devalued,
but it can create perverse incentives to alter the agroecological practices
(and opens the door to technologies like GMOs) to only maximize carbon rather
than provide all the other benefits of agroecology.
It is inseparable from the neoliberal trend to convert absolutely
everything (land, air, biodiversity, culture, genes, carbon, etc.) into
capital, which in turn can be placed in some kind of speculative market.
If the currently low value of soil carbon were to rise on the
speculative market, this could generate new land grabbing to charge soil carbon
credits, as land consolidation is a prerequisite for making soil carbon credits
profitable.
How peasant's agriculture Should
be Supported by Public Policy
Support farmer-to-farmer training programs administered by farmer
organizations
Support the agroecology training schools of farmer organizations
End all open and hidden subsidies to industrial farming
Ban GMOs and dangerous farm chemicals
Offer production credit to small farmers who produce
agroecologically
Direct government food procurement for hospitals, schools, etc.,
toward buying ecological food at fair prices from peasant farmers
Support ecological farmer’s markets for direct sale to consumers
Transform agronomy curricula to emphasize agroecology and
farmer-to-farmer methodology
Create fair price incentives for locally produced ecological food
Etc.
Commitments of La Via Campesina
While we make many legitimate and
urgent demands on our governments to seriously address climate change, we
pledge to continue to build agroecology and Food Sovereignty from below.
We pledge to take the following practical steps:
1.
We
continue to strengthen the movement of agroecology in the grassroots level to
adapt to changing climate patterns.
2.
We will
work to “keep carbon in the ground and in trees” in the areas under our
control, by promoting agroforestry, tree planting, agroecology, energy
conservation, and by fighting land grabs for mining and industrial plantations.
3.
We will
engage and pressure governments at all levels to adopt food sovereignty as the
solution to the climate change.
4.
We will
fight the inclusion of peasant agriculture in carbon financing mechanisms.
5.
We will
continue our struggle for agrarian reform to distribute land to family farmers
and to oppose all forms of land grabbing.
6.
We will
build a powerful smallholder farmer and peasant voice to be present with other
sectors of civil society at COP-17 in Durban, and at Rio +20 in Brazil, with
the message that we oppose false solutions to climate change and demand the
adoption of the Cochabamba Principles. We will insist on Small Holder
Sustainable Agriculture and Food Sovereignty as the most important true
solutions to climate change.
No to Climate Land Grabbing!
Our Carbon is Not for Sale!
Peasant agriculture is Not for Sale!
Agroecological Production by Small Farmers Cools the
Planet!
Globalize the Struggle! Globalize Hope!
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