As the Climate Summit in Copenhagen plods onward, various so-called solutions to global warming are being tossed around: Alternative energy, Cap and Trade, adaptation and mitigation, and many more. It can be hard to make sense of them, and even more difficult to unpack the myths from the realities. Fortunately, Annie Leonard, who brought us “The Story of Stuff” offers a new video to explain the Story of Cap & Trade.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), an independent international research and development organization, recently published a book that should be of interest to Grassroots International's supporters. Available free online, Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems offers great analysis and links to video and audio files that show farmers, indigenous peoples and consumers all working to promote food sovereignty.
Throughout the world, social movements are the driving force behind a new food sovereignty policy framework, which aims to guarantee and protect people's space, ability and right to define their own models of production, food distribution and consumption patterns.
At a gathering of food and trade activists from around the United States and Canada, Grassroots International's partner, the Via Campesina, receieved the 2009 Food Sovereignty Prize for its relentless struggle for the rights of peasants and small producers of the world and against the disastrous neoliberal system of industrial agriculture. The award was received during the annual conference of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) held in Des Moines, Iowa, October 10-13.
For some, October 12th is commemorated as the day that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas. For many more, it marked the beginning of over 500 years of foreign domination, cultural destruction and systematic exploitation. Over the last 15 years, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has perpetuated that tragic history.
Join with other justice-minded people to use this October 12th to push for the renegotiation and replacement of NAFTA and forge a new history based on mutual respect, human rights, and dignity.
The Global Week of Action on Trade is a collaborative worldwide action between different communities, to protest the damaging impact of "free" trade, while highlighting alternatives to NAFTA, CAFTA, other free trade agreements and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
It is being organized in conjunction with the Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and Her Peoples, launched at the IV Hemispheric Summit of Indigenous People in Puno, Peru, last May.
"We ratify the organization of the Minga (traditional indigenous collective communal organization) of the Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and Her Peoples against the commercialization of life (including land, forests, water, seas, agro-fuels, ex
Because we need just, equitable and not simply effective action on climate change – it’s not just about numbers but about just numbers. Because the rich countries are shifting the burden to the South – on the developing and least developed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that have contributed the least to global warming. Because short-term economic interests are driving the negotiations – the considerable lobbying power of big oil, big coal, big agriculture, and other big corporations is out in full force ahead of the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009. And because the people are not being heard – especially those who will be adversely affected
Below is a blog by Salena Tramel, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for the Middle East and Haiti. It originally appeared on Huffington Post.
Here in Haiti, a country all too often characterized by internal instability, the biggest scandals of all have external origins. Just ask the Haitians.
Grassroots International ally, Food & Water Watch (FWW) issued a statement questioning the Obama Administration's "new" approach to addressing global hunger and poverty announced at the G8 Summit in Italy. Is this really new, or old wine in new bottles? FWW argues that more free trade and biotechnology (or reinventing the Green Revolution) are not new ideas and only end up supporting agribusiness and other corporations.
The US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA), created in 2005 by the Bush and Garcia administrations, came into effect on February 1st, 2009. Since this time, several protests have been held within the country by indigenous groups, peasants and their supporters. At the heart of the protests are several laws, which have been enacted, and since revoked, by the Garcia administration under the FTA.
The Food Sovereignty movement in the United States is well and alive. And thanks to the work of food cooperatives, community supported agriculture (CSA) and local farmers, little by little more neighborhoods and cities are joining this social movement that is reclaiming the right to quality food.
This past weekend, the movement's strengthen was displayed in Brooklyn, NY, where over 2,000 people met in one of the largest U.S. events for Food Sovereignty this year.
Participants in the Brooklyn Food Conference represented different places and backgrounds in the U.S. food movement. Event speakers included some of the leading voices in the United States, such as social activist Malik Yakini from Detroit, and Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved.
Many social movements from across the Americas were in Trinidad for the 4th People’s Summit to articulate their demands for moving the hemisphere towards economic (including trade) and climate justice, food sovereignty, human rights, and an end to militarization. They represented movements of women, peasants, indigenous peoples, labor and those struggling for environmental justice.
Saulo Araujo, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I traveled to the People's Summit of the Americas with the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA). The HSA is composed of networks, social movements and organizations from across the Americas that are primarily opposed to free trade. Its beginnings were in the Belo Horizonte, Brazil People's Summit in 1997 in anticipation of the Santiago, Chile Summit of the Americas.
My colleague, Saulo Araujo, Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I are in Trinidad for the 4th People's Summit of the Americas (April 15-18, 2009). Being held in conjunction with the 5th Summit of the Americas, the People's Summit was coordinated by local Trinidadian social movements and civil society organizations, particularly labor unions (for e.g. the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and NGOs and the Oilfield Workers Trade Union), as well as transnational networks such as the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA).
Family farmers and other food justice activists will mark April 17, the International Day of Peasant's Struggle, with a protest against corporate speculation on agricultural commodities which is behind the global food crisis now threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers. This action is in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the world's largest umbrella movement of family farmers, Grassroots International's ally the National Family Farm Coalition, rural workers and indigenous peoples.
Specific demands include:
The G20 meetings in London are drawing a lot of attention in the media and around the world. Typically, much of the mainstream media attention is focused either on the pomp sideshow (the Queen and Michelle Obama's hug) or the small portion of the protestors that broke windows and equipment in the RBS offices (which bolsters mainstream media's emphasis on sensationalism and their ability to dismiss genuine global protest against the destructive policies of governments and multilateral institutions).
Today, a coalition of faith, hunger, international development, farm and food organizations – including Grassroots International – sent a letter to President Barack Obama requesting decisive support for efforts to wring out excess speculation in agricultural futures markets that threatens the food security of hundreds of millions of people. The letter notes that "A significant part of last year's food price fluctuations were the result of excessive speculation in the commodities markets by the very hedge funds and investment banks that helped create the current economic meltdown."
The world's most powerful "leaders" meet today in Washington to debate what is to be done about the global financial crisis - a crisis they themselves were instrumental in causing. It is their blind devotion to a consistently failed ideology, outright greed, and a slavish willingness to be accountable only to their corporate backers (on the part of almost all that are gathering), and an ambition to get a seat at the table in the country club (on the part of the G-20 minus 7) that has created this toxic mix that we are all being forced to swallow.
The world's most powerful "leaders" meet today in Washington to debate what is to be done about the global financial crisis - a crisis they themselves were instrumental in causing. It is their blind devotion to a consistently failed ideology, outright greed, and a slavish willingness to be accountable only to their corporate backers (on the part of almost all that are gathering), and an ambition to get a seat at the table in the country club (on the part of the G-20 minus 7) that has created this toxic mix that we are all being forced to swallow.
The Artibonite region is Haiti's rice bowl, and it could not be clearer as I traverse this lush valley. The rice fields rival those of Southeast Asia, spanning a breathtaking distance and then finally dissolving into a steep ring of mountains. A peasant working the fields is an understandably common sight around here. The more disturbing (and even more common) sight, however, is the rice imported from the US ("Miami rice") that is sold to Haitians in local marketplaces. It is unthinkable that Haitians would be forced to buy rice from the North at prices that they cannot afford in the very place they grow it.
