Peoples' Dialogue - Articles

Assembly of the Oppressed, 5th December 2011, Durban, South Africa

As the Assembly of the Oppressed we are gathered here to demand the transformation of the entire neo liberal capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neo liberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and the re-colonization of the territories of the people’s of Africa and the global South. We are here to declare that direct action is the only weapon of the oppressed people of the world to end all forms of oppression in the world.

We are here in Durban, South Africa where the 17th United Nations Conference of Parties is taking place and are discussing false solutions to the climate crisis. And we can see that the future of Mother Earth and of humanity is in peril as those responsible for nature’s destruction are attempting to escape their responsibility and erase history.

We, La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants, small-scale and agricultural family farmers, is severely dismayed at the attempts of the developed countries to further escape their historic responsibility to make real emission cuts and push for more false and market based solutions to the climate crisis.

Here in Durban, they are discussing a “new mandate” as an outcome of the COP 17, one which contains market mechanisms and a voluntary pledge system in order to move away from the mandated program of working towards legally binding commitments to cut emissions. Also, developed countries are working hard to escape their historical responsibility and not pay their climate debt by pushing for a green climate fund that involves private capital and the World Bank. Finally, there is a push to include agriculture in the negotiations, treating agriculture as a carbon sink rather than a source of food and livelihood. For La Via Campesina, with this trend of negotiations, it is better to have no deal than a bad deal that condemns humanity and our planet to a future of climate catastrophe.

We are now at the worst moment for agriculture and small farmers and for nature. The impacts of climate change are steadily worsening, leading to harvest failures, destruction of habitats and homes, hunger and famine and loss of lives. The future of humanity and the planet is in critical danger and if these false solutions push through, it will be a catastrophe for nature, future generations and the whole planet.

We therefore demand to all governments in the negotiations:

- For all countries from the global South to stand up for their people and to defend the people and the planet with dignity and conviction. The government of South Africa has already sold out its people in this regard.

- For all the developed countries to live up to their historical responsibility of causing this climate crisis and to pay their climate debt and commit themselves to at least 50% domestic emission reductions based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

- Stop industrial farming that promotes pollution and climate change through high levels of use of petroleum based chemicals

- Governments must support agro-ecology

- For all countries to listen and work for their people and not be under the control of transnational corporations.

- For all countries to stop trying to save capitalism and making the people, including small farmers, pay for their economic and financial crisis.

We as La Via Campesina, demand the implementation of the people’s global agreement on climate agreed on in Cochabamba. And here in Durban and in a thousand Durbans, we strongly reiterate our solutions to the climate crisis.

- Further global warming must be limited to a rise of 1 degree Celsius only.

- Developed countries must make domestic emission reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

- Developed countries must commit to payment of their climate debt and give funding from at least 6% of their GDP. All funds for this climate finance must be public and be free from the control of the World Bank and private corporations.

- All market mechanisms must be stopped, including REDD, REDD++ and the proposed carbon markets for agriculture.

We reiterate that there will be no solution to climate change and the predatory neo-liberal system that causes it, without the liberation of women, and rural women in particular, from age old patriarchy and sexist discrimination. We therefore demand as part of comprehensive action against patriarchy and sexism:

* The promotion of women’s land access and rights through targeted redistribution
* Laws and policies must be made responsive to the particular needs of women

We as La Via Campesina, demand an end to the commodification of our Mother Earth reject the mechanisms of the carbon market. Furthermore, we reject the proposed inclusion of a work program on agriculture in the negotiations and reject all proposals of market mechanisms surrounding agriculture.

We as La Via Campesina and the people of the world have the real solutions to the climate crisis and we call on all governments to heed them before it is too late. At this assembly of the oppressed we declare to the people of the world that the solutions are in their hands. Through building social movements and mobilizing popular struggles for social change the world’s people will overcome the close alliance between governments and multinational corporations that is strangling the world. In Africa at the moment this alliance is perpetrating one of the biggest land grabs in history, which would mean more chemical-industrial farming, more poverty and exploitation, and more climate change. The only serious counter to this is the land occupations initiated by the landless themselves. From the perspective of food sovereignty, agrarian reform and climate justice, these land occupations deserve the fullest support.

Sustainable peasant’s agriculture and agroecology cool down the planet.

Food Sovereignty is the solution!

Peasant agriculture is not for sale!

Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hopeAsamblea de los Oprimidos, 5 de diciembre de 2011, Durban, Sudáfrica

Articles pictures and videos from Durban on www.viacampesina.org

International Food Sovereignty Day to Cool Down the Earth

5th December 2011, Durban, South Africa

We call on all farmers’ movements and organizations, rural workers, landless people and all the food sovereignty movement to join us for an international day of mass action on the 5th of December 2011, during the COP 17 civil society mobilization in Durban, South Africa.

Humanity is confronted with a food, economic and ecological crisis that is rooted in the neoliberal capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. These multiple crises highlight the limits of neoliberal capitalist production. Today transnational corporations and governments are presenting false solutions to climate change, hijacking the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP17) also referred to as the Conference of Polluters, to be held in Durban South Africa.

These corporate elites, western governments and the neo liberal capitalist system that is responsible for generating the crisis are presenting us with false solutions. The countries of the South and Africa in particular will be hard hit by climate change. Scientists indicate that the African continent is expected to be drier and would become warmer more quickly than other regions of the planet, despite the fact that Africa has contributed the least to global warming. This will hugely impact on agriculture, which is an important livelihood source across Africa. There will be yield losses of the major staple foods of the continent like maize, sorghum, millet, cassava etc. due to temperature rises.

Industrial agriculture and production is responsible for global warming, hunger, land dispossession, massive displacements of farmers, rural workers and indigenous communities across the continent.

In South Africa the host country after 17 years of democracy, millions of farm workers and dwellers have been evicted from commercial farms, only 5% of agricultural land has been transferred to black people, millions in rural and urban areas suffer from food and nutritional insecurity. Today this country is the most unequal society in the world. Particularly women in South Africa have felt the impact of these unequal relations and exclusion more severely.

The solutions put forward by these corporations and governments are already leading towards a re-colonization of Africa and the countries of the global south with massive land grabs and the imposition of a new green revolution.

Instead of finding real solutions to climate and ecological crisis faced by humanity, the Durban COP17 meeting is a platform for corporations through their governments to accelerate the complete commodification of nature. These criminal schemes presented as solutions include amongst other things the promotion of Genetically Modified Seeds, Agro-fuels, carbon trading, climate smart agriculture, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

Why an Agro-ecology and Food Sovereignty Day

As farmers, farm workers, landless women and men we should mobilize through direct action against these false solutions to expose its criminal intent and catastrophic consequences for the continent and the global south. At the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Right of Mother Earth (April 2010) held in Bolivia resulted in the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba real solutions to climate change were offered which was totally ignored by governments. Food Sovereignty and agro-ecology are the real solutions of farmers and workers to climate change.

We call on all farmers, workers and the landless and all social movements to join us in Durban and everywhere in the world on the 5th of December 2011 to demand a change of the entire capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neoliberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and inequality. The crisis of the planet requires that we take direct action. During the agro-ecology and food sovereignty day we will have public protest marches to the conference of the polluters, actions against multinational corporations like Monsanto undermining our seed sovereignty, which will cuminate in a massive Assembly of the Oppressed to discuss ways of ending this unjust system. This will be a day of continued actions where farmers and workers from the entire African continent with social movements from the whole world will demand:

• Genuine agrarian reform for food sovereignty
• Agro ecological revolution as the solution to climate change
• Restructuring of the entire food system
• Full and equal participation of women in the new food system and in the society as a whole
• Building of a food system based on human needs
• End to multinational control of our genetic resources
• Seed sovereignty where seed can adapt and mitigate climate change

We call on all the movements of farmers and workers to mobilize and have local direct action in every locality in the world on the Agro-ecological and Food Sovereignty Day.

Reclaim Climate Justice!

Our Planet is not for sale!

No to the Conference of Polluters!

Defend Mother Earth!

Africa is not for sale!

No to the re-colonization of Africa!
This call is convened and supported by:

LA VIA CAMPESINA

AGRARIAN REFORM FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY CAMPAIGN, SOUTH AFRICA

SURPLUS PEOPLE PROJECT (SPP), SOUTH AFRICA

TRUST FOR COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND EDUCATION (TCOE), SOUTH AFRICA

WOMEN ON FARM PROJECT (SOUTH AFRICA)

EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA SMALL SCALE FARMERS’ FORUM (ESAFF)

ESAFF ZIMBABWE

ESAFF UGANDA

ROPPA (Network of Farmers and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa)

If you want to join us in Durban for December 5th, organize an activity in your community/locality/country and share it with us on that day, sign and support the call, or any other inquiry about that specific action, please write to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The world is currently facing various systematic crises that have serious devastating consequences in the life of humanity. Among these are financial, economic, climate and food crises. These crises find their birth, platform and springboard in a neoliberal system under the command of a minority interested only in their own enrichment to the direct harm of entire communities and nations.

This situation has been accompanied by an environment fertile with the appearance and flourishing of false solutions in response to contemporary challenges of humanity. One of these solutions, allegedly for the resolution of the lack of food in the world, mainly in the global South, is the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. In Mozambique particularly, there are voices that begin to defend the introduction of GMOs in agriculture through the adoption of a law that regulates the cases of seed-crossing to improve the productive capacity of national agriculture, thus combating food insecurity.

The National Peasant Movement (A União Nacional de Camponeses, UNAC) the movement of family farmers created in 1987 with various national, regional, international allies and a member of the major international movement of family farmers, La Via Campesina, restates in a loud voice its position against the use of GMOs in agriculture because we understand that among other negative impacts:

a) The planting of GMOs increases the control of multinational corporations that produce and market them over the producers and consumers in such a way that removes from farmers, particularly family farmers, their natural right to plant, develop, select, diversify and share seeds among themselves.

b) The genetically modified organisms do not resolve any environmental crisis but rather by themselves place the environment at risk because they lead to the standardization of plant varieties and to the disappearance of biodiversity.

c) The introduction of GMOs in the developing countries is a component of a global campaign developed by some governments, multinational corporations, and multilateral institutions aimed at maintaining their control over seeds and consequently over the international system of production and commercialization of food, reducing the sovereignty of dependent countries through absolute control over the market of foods.

d) The technology of GMOs represents the most visible signal of hegemonic control on the part of its defenders, of scientific and technological knowledge at the service of monopoly and private interests and not at the service of humanity itself.

e) The cultivation of GMOs is based on and is part of a campaign of the multinational forces to destroy peasant agriculture through a coercive model that requires the peasants to constantly replenish their seeds because genetically modified seeds are incapable of restoring their fertility naturally.

For these and other reasons we reaffirm our total and entire trust in family farming and in the model of agricultural production that for thousands of years we have been developing, proposing and defending in strict accordance with Mother Nature and with the future of humanity. Because we believe that:

1. Agroecological agriculture as practiced by small farmers as well as the policies in favor of Food Sovereignty are the only real effective solutions to respond to the multiple challenges with which our regions are confronted.

2. The methods of agroecological production allow us to obtain food products that are of good quality and do not harm the environment, simultaneously improving and conserving the fertility of the soil thanks to a good utilization of natural resources and without the use of chemical products.

3. Peasant seeds by themselves, as has been proven for thousands of years, can respond to climate adversities and in this way ensure the food of present and future generations.

4. Agroecology requires and is sustained in the development of knowledge and of technology based on secular and traditional indigenous knowledge of agroecological science, which advocates the protection of the natural environment, biodiversity and economic and social viability of a truly sustainable form of development.

5. Agroecology, by maintaining the control of seeds in the hands of the peoples, creates conditions so that the peoples and their nations can develop in a sovereign way, capable of deciding their own destiny.

6. Peasant agriculture is the pillar of the local economy and contributes to maintaining and increasing rural employment and allows the survival of cities and villages. It allows the collectives to reinforce their own culture and identity.

7. The policies of development must be social and environmentally sustainable and fit into the real challenges of the peoples. Food sovereignty defends a system of production that maintains fertile soils, respect for biodiversity, cultural habits and the diversity of local seeds.

Maputo, August 8, 2011

No to privatization and to standardization of life!

Yes to biodiversity and food sovereignty!