Food Sovereignty: A positive approach to climate change
While the planet is already suffering the effects of climate change, civil society groups try to raise the alarm on the fact that the present system of production, trade and consumption is at the root of the problem.
Bulletin articles
Before the plantations came, villagers in Teluk Kabung in Riau province in Sumatra, grew coconuts. A few years ago, thousands of hectares of forest surrounding the village were clearcut and replaced by acacia monocultures to supply Asia Pulp and Paper's massive operations. “As soon as they cut down the trees in the forest, the pests swarmed in, and ate our coconut trees,” a villager told Mitra Taj, a radio journalist from Living on Earth. Dozens of dead coconut trees lie on the ground near the village.
The Mau Complex – the largest forest of Kenya – has been the ancestral home of the Ogiek Community. Although extremely important in terms of water catchment, micro-climate regulation and biological diversity, the Mau forest has been regularly cleared for settlement and private agriculture supported by official policies. Destruction of the forest has undermined Ogiek’s rights to livelihood, culture and even a future.
Hydropower is often portrayed as “clean” or “green” energy and as part of the solution for preventing fossil fuel-related climate change. However, government-sponsored and corporate-promoted hydropower implies building huge dams that result in environmental destruction and widespread violation of human rights, ranging from loss of livelihoods to forced evictions and related cases of repression.
A full 41% of the Sierra Madre region in the Mexican state of Chiapas – 227,000 square kilometres of land, equivalent to one half of the whole of Central America – has been turned over to Mexican and foreign corporations through mining concessions. Mining companies from Canada, the United States and Australia extract gold and silver from this mineral-rich region with the consent and protection of governments and the backing of free trade agreements.
In November 2009, 117 Nigerian organisations signed on to a statement to the government with a challenging message: leave oil in the ground. They expressed they were “united in our opposition to new oil blocs and call on all progressive-minded peoples and organizations to support our call that new oil finds be left in the ground and bitumen left in the soil.”
The situation of the Ayoreo people of the Chaco region of Paraguay serves as an excellent illustration of the fact that forest conservation is a human rights issue. It also very clearly demonstrates that the protection of forests should be placed in the hands of those who have the greatest stake in their preservation: the indigenous peoples who depend on them for their survival.
When a house is burning down, the important thing is to put out the fire. Although the neighbours might be able to help, the fire brigade is expected to manage operations. We expect the State to provide the necessary support to put out the fire. Once it is out, experts will establish the causes of the fire and, in the event of arson, the perpetrators will be held responsible and duly punished in accordance with the law. But first the fire needs to be put out.
It seems increasingly likely that no binding deal will come out of Copenhagen and that the North will attempt to scrap the Kyoto Protocol. It also seems likely that some sort of deal will be pushed through on reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). There is a serious danger that REDD will act as greenwash for the North's failure to reduce emissions dramatically.
Even when everything would seem to indicate that the future of the planet’s climate is in the hands of a group of clowns, the possibility always exists of recovering common sense, that is to say, the sense of ordinary people.
International negotiations about global climate protection have been slow, delivering meagre results. The debate began over 20 years ago, articulating the target of achieving 20 per cent in CO2 emissions reductions, and ended up in the Kyoto Protocol with a mere 5 per cent – and even this has been questioned time and again.
Forests again high on the agenda – really forests?