by | 2011-12-20 · 17:07

From World Rainforest Movement: At the end of the International Year of Forests, is there anything to celebrate?

Excerpted from World Rainforest Movement Bulletin Issue #173

The United Nations (UN) declared this year, 2011, the International Year of Forests. Now that 2011 is coming to an end, it would be interesting to take a look back for a brief overview.

The theme of the International Year was “Celebrating Forests for People”. Back in January, we asked, will the world’s forest peoples actually have any reason to “celebrate”? Will progress be made this year in fighting the direct causes of deforestation, such as logging and the expansion of agribusiness? What about the so-called indirect or underlying causes, that is, the reasons behind the destruction of forests, such as an economy fuelled by the drive for profit and financial speculation, and excessive consumption that benefits only a small minority of the world’s people?

REDD+

Once again, the international agenda on forests was dominated by the debate over the REDD+ mechanism. Banks, consultants, governments and even many NGOs were heavily caught up in attempts to move forward with the implementation of REDD+. Billions of dollars have been spent on these efforts, as denounced by a platform of NGOs, including indigenous peoples’ organizations (1). These are funds that could have been used to encourage and build on successful initiatives for forest conservation and respect for human rights around the world, with no connection to the REDD mechanism.

What is rather striking is the “blindness” of those who most forcefully insist on promoting REDD+, such as the World Bank and various consulting firms. It seems they are unable to see the hard evidence of human rights violations taking place where REDD+ pilot projects are being implemented, as demonstrated by the case study undertaken by WRM on a project being jointly implemented by Conservation International and the Walt Disney Company in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2), among other studies. They are equally blind to the growing number of studies that have determined that REDD+ will not work due to serious obstacles, and particularly as a market mechanism (3). The many problems that have come to light led a coalition of indigenous peoples and other local communities to launch a call at COP 17 in Durban for a moratorium on REDD projects (see the article in this issue of the bulletin).

While Brazil strives to portray itself as the protector of the world’s largest rainforest, a group of parliamentarians, with links to agribusiness, tried to reform the country’s Forest Code this year, opening the way for the legal deforestation of millions of hectares, primarily for the benefit of those same agribusiness interests. Meanwhile, the proposed means of compensating for this destruction would be REDD+ projects and payment for environmental services, for which specific legislation is being speedily drafted. The promotion of a “green economy”, based on the commodification and control of natural resources and land, threatens the legally guaranteed rights of indigenous and traditional communities in Brazil.

The increased pollution resulting from this model also aggravates the pollution caused by large transnational corporations in the North, which implies increased negative impacts on indigenous populations and other communities who live near these industries and their extractive areas in the North, exacerbating racism and other environmental and social injustices. In the South it also means, in the medium and long term, negative impacts on rainforests, making REDD+ a counterproductive proposal, even for those who believe that a “standing forest” and certain amount of control over it will guarantee their future.

There is a lack of structural proposals to tackle the direct and indirect causes of deforestation. Those that do exist continue to be viewed by governments and their partners as overly “radical”. But without these “radical” proposals, the climate will suffer an increase in the average global temperature of close to four degrees within a very short time (4). This will mean a genuinely radical change in the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world, especially women, who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The definition of forests

Another factor that contributes to deforestation is, without a doubt, FAO’s definition of forest, which allows monoculture tree plantations to be classified as forests. WRM undertook an intensive mini-campaign on this issue this year, developing tools and submitting a letter to FAO in September in which it urged the organization to urgently initiate a review of this definition, with the effective participation of forest peoples.

The opposition to the current definition of forests may have had an echo at COP 17 in the recommendation made by the SBSTA (5), the advisory body of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, in the framework of discussion around REDD. The SBSTA recommends that each individual country be allowed to adopt its own definition of forest, as opposed to a single definition imposed by the UNFCCC. Although, on the one hand, this opens up the opportunity to fight in each country for definitions that exclude monoculture tree plantations and better reflect the local reality of forests, it also opens up the possibility of the adoption of definitions that even further promote the expansion of monoculture plantations.

It is this second possibility that is most likely, given the enormous lobbying power of companies in the sector and the financial institutions that persuade national governments to promote tree plantations. Some government representatives have grown accustomed to having their electoral campaigns financed by plantation companies, who in exchange are provided with lands and various state incentives and other benefits. Without a clear definition and reference established at the international level, the door is open to definitions that best serve corporate interests.

The lack of interest in addressing the underlying causes of deforestation is even more obvious when we look at the advances made in plans to promote false solutions for the climate crisis. A prime example is the use of agrofuels, especially wood biomass, to generate electricity in Europe. The aim is to maintain the current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, turning once again to certification systems like the FSC for eucalyptus and pine plantations and the RSPO for oil palm plantations geared to the production of palm oil. Neither of these systems prevents the occurrence of serious human rights violations, as demonstrated by the article from Indonesia in this month’s issue of the bulletin. Governments prefer to cater to the interests of corporations and banks, rather than worrying about the well-being and future of people and the environment, and even the climate. They attempt to confront the economic crisis with the same models as always, without bothering to establish limits on the exploitation of natural resources or to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the big polluters.

Resistance

We would have little to celebrate this year if it were not for the concerted challenges to “greenwashing” through certification systems, like the FSC label, in the countries of the North (6), and above all, if it were not for the resistance of the peoples of the forests and other biomes who have been struggling in various countries of the South against deforestation, and have fought back in areas where governments are providing incentives for the establishment of monoculture tree plantations and other forms of land grabbing.

The urgent need to protect the rights of these communities is becoming increasingly obvious. The alternative is the perpetuation of the violation of their rights and the criminalization of people who are only fighting to defend those rights, something that is happening in many different countries, from the pine plantation areas in Chile to the eucalyptus and oil palm plantations in Indonesia. Respecting the rights of the peoples who live in and depend on forests and other biomes is the best way to conserve forests, reduce the impacts of climate change, and promote food security and sovereignty.

To advance in this direction, we believe that it isfundamental to support and link together the most diverse resistance processes, from the struggle for forest conservation to the struggle against the international financial system, creating ties of solidarity among the peoples of the South and also with the peoples of the North, in order to increase the pressure on corporations and governments.

It is essential that the voices of different peoples, opposed to the privatization and appropriation of land and natural resources and in defence of their basic human rights, have a louder and more coordinated echo at the next big international events, such as Rio+20 (see the Rio+20 call for mobilization in this issue of the bulletin). And finally, we also firmly back the global call to fight land grabbing launched last month in Mali, Africa by La Via Campesina (see the related article also in this issue).

1- http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/REDD/Open_Letter_no_REDD.pdf 
2- http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/REDD/DRC_REDD_en.pdf
3- http://www.fern.org/carbonmarketswillnotdeliver
4- http://outrapolitica.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/a-un-ano-de-cancun-y-dias-de-durban-mas-de-4o-c/
5- http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/l25a01.pdf
6- An example was the denounce to the FSC in Belgium derived from the case of Veracel Celulose in Brazil (see http://www.duurzaamoppapier.be)

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Filed under Biodiversity, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD, UNFCCC

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by | · 12:44

“This is not the democracy that we fought for:” An Interview with Ricado Jacobs, South African member of La Via Campesina

This is the second of three interviews I conducted with members of the Via Campesina delegation during United Nations COP17 in Durban, South Africa recently. The first interview, with Alberto Gomez of UNORCA, Mexico, is here.

— Jeff Conant, for GJEP

Ricado Jacobs is with the Food Sovereignty Campaign of La Via Campesina in South Africa. Ricado was in Durban for the UN Conference of Parties, and for the activities that La Via Campesina organized in and around the COP. I had the chance to speak with him about La Via Campesina and its views on the UN Climate Summit, and the issues of food sovereignty and climate justice more broadly.

Jeff Conant: What is the significance of La Via Campesina as a global movement?

Ricado Jacobs: If you look at the impact of the transnational corporations, they are on a global scale, they cross borders. So, we need to respond on a global scale. La Via Campesina is an important vehicle for organizing on a world scale.

But it’s not just that the impacts we’re facing happen at a world scale, it’s that they transcend the power of the nation state to control. For example: Water-Efficient Maize for Africa is an effort by Monsanto, together with the Gates Foundation and others, that uses state research councils. Monsanto provides the resources and produces the outputs, but uses state research councils, in South Africa and Mozambique, to implement the program. Farmers didn’t know what this was all about, but through support organizations and La Via, we engaged in a process of learning, and the farmers raised an objection to the project. This was the first time that farmers, themselves – not NGOs – had raised an objection to a program like this.

Well, after our objection, we got a response directly from Monsanto; not from the state, but from the corporation. So you can see who has the power. This is why we cannot restrict our struggle to the state.

We see food sovereignty as a means through which to unite diverse issues and to define a field of struggle. In this sense, La Via Campesina is one of the few movements in the world that can unite on a common platform, that resonates in a very similar way across national borders.

JC: What is the importance of La Via specifically here in Africa?

RJ: Historically in Africa, the NGOs have taken a lot of political space. Where you have these big NGOs taking space, this actually inhibits movements from organizing in their own way. So, this is one thing: La Via Campesina, as a movement, is showing how social movements can take back this space, and is showing farmers how to organize, without the intermediaries of NGOs.

Also, now the question of food sovereignty is becoming more important – it’s not just about agrarian reform, or about taking land, but about transforming the whole food system. So, it’s an exciting period of growth for us.

In Zimbabwe, we analyze the situation in two ways. When the so-called land reform happened in Zimbabwe, the poor and landless saw Mugabe as a hero, while the middle class saw him as a villain. We have to ask why that is. We don’t want to make the same mistakes here that have been made in Zimbabwe. There’s no way we can condone the eviction of people from their land in urban areas, for example. But as far as rural land takeovers go, we support it – so our support is limited to that element. The land occupations are a spontaneous movement, but in Zimbabwe, the state used the movement for its own ends. In a sense, this was good, because it prevented bloodshed. By the same token, Mugabe was one of the few national leaders who rejected GMOs. That’s good, and we need to support that. Recent research is emerging about the benefits of land occupations, particularly related to food sovereignty. But it shows, again, that the contradictions are huge.

Peasant movements have taken up the torch of land sovereignty. You cannot talk about climate justice without addressing this kind of redistributive justice. Where are we going to practice agro-ecology if we don’t take land? But we have to do this without making a hero out of the state. Participatory democracy and self-management should be central in our struggle.

Now, the nature of imperialism and land grabbing has taken a different form – it’s no longer one colonial power coming over on ships. Now it’s China, it’s the Arab states, it’s Goldman Sachs. So we need to take a different approach, and a more nuanced approach, to how we address the challenge. So, again, this is the importance of La Via Campesina in Africa – it gives us a basis to struggle against the state, but not only against the state. The struggle is against many things, and we need to articulate these things.

What makes La Via Campesina unique in Africa is that it is completely horizontal in its politics and in its structure – there’s no messiah, no one doing the thinking for you. It’s important for us to learn from this, to break from the past where we always have some big leader. Always, in South Africa, in all of Africa, historically, you have one figure; when the Leader speaks, everyone goes crazy, and when the Leader sells out or is killed, the movement is over. You look at someone like Gaddafi, who wanted to be King of Africa, and you say, this is crazy. But this is not an anomaly – this is how Africa works. This is what happened with Mandela – he orchestrated the neoliberal entry into South Africa, and this has left South Africa crippled.

With la Via, even the Secretariat rotates – every few years, it moves to a new place, with a new team, new leadership. Obviously, we have historic leaders, like Rafael Alegria – but that doesn’t mean that he always has to lead. In this sense the movement growing in Africa has been greatly influenced by other movements, like the Zapatistas.

This doesn’t mean we repeat what’s been done elsewhere – La Via Campesina in Africa has to confront African realities. I think, if there is any key difference between the African movements and the Latin Americans, it is that they are very rooted in their history. So we have to ground our movements in our history of resistance and lessons of other struggles.

JC: How does the United Nations COP process relate, or not, to the process of social movement organizing for climate justice?

RJ: If you look at this Conference of Polluters, none of them have a mandate. It’s a few hundred or a few thousand people who decide on the fate of humanity. Where does this power emanate from? Do we live under democracies, or is this democracy? Or is this something else? As the Egyptians said when their uprising was taken over by the military, no this is not the democracy that we fought for. So they went back to the streets to fight more and complete the task of the revolution.

I call it the North African Spring, not the Arab Spring, to not cut it off from the rest of the African continent. And even the Occupy Movement in the U.S., there’s hope there. We need to build strong movements, to convince large sectors of the population that we need to bring change – but not merely in democratic terms. It’s almost like you can use the language of climate change to talk about movement building – we need resilient movements in order to mitigate and adapt to the evils we are facing.

By resilient I mean, we have to have a clear vision about the different solutions that will respond to the crisis in different places. In Europe they have seventeen percent unemployment, and that’s a crisis. In South Africa, we have forty percent unemployment, but it’s completely normalized here – we don’t even have a discourse about it. Imagine, forty percent of your population is food insecure. You go to Cape Town, and you see this stark inequality – the super-rich and the super poor. How is this reflected in our discourse about food, about agriculture?

On a global scale, we’re talking about a crisis of civilization. Not in the apocalyptic sense, but that we need a new humanity. For this, we can turn to the Cochabamba Peoples Accord as a sound basis for what people, en masse, have decided.

JC: How does La Via Campesina propose to move beyond the confining logic of the COP?

RJ: On December 5, Food Sovereignty Day, we held a march and an Assembly of the Oppressed. It was a space where peasants and movements could organize their own program – no big names, just ordinary people, ordinary men and women. We had about three hundred people gathered under a big tent at the gate of the University [of Kazulu-Natal], and people came to the assembly with the energy of the march. It was a space for farmers and the landless, for people from the Rural Women’s Assembly.

One of the key messages that came from the Assembly was that the movements need to organize on an autonomous level, like this. There is a lot of exhibitionism in the COP, not just by state parties, but by the NGOs. La Via’s efforts to hold a march and an assembly, these are important because it was our own space. In these spaces there was a clear articulation that food sovereignty and agro-ecology is the solution we propose. This is powerful in part because no one could come with their big flag and appear to take over.

In the COP, even the civil society space was organized by NGOs, not movements. We could have had something more militant – we could have highlighted the US Embassy in relation to the COP, for example. If we pose the question in dramatic terms – the crisis of civilization, not in an apocalyptic sense, again, but in the sense that the crisis we are confronting runs through every aspect of our societies – than this compels us to move beyond ordinary tactics.

Another key message that came out is that we need to look at women’s oppression, and patriarchy. Women’s issues are central, because women, particularly African women, bear the brunt of the impacts from the food system. So, the Assembly of the Oppressed is against all forms of oppression. This is why, our most recent formulation of how we define food sovereignty, we say that food sovereignty is an end to violence against women. This is rarely brought out in its full dimension.

The other dimensions that came out in the themes of the Assembly were seed sovereignty and the crisis of capitalism. We begin from the standpoint of seed sovereignty, because, once they take away seed sovereignty, we’re all, I don’t know how else to say it, fucked. So far, they haven’t been able to successfully replace our seeds with some other technology, like they’ve done in other areas – you get super-weeds, you have no scientific evidence showing that their GMO seeds produce higher yields, you have nothing showing that corporate control of seeds has any advantages whatsoever, to anyone. So, peasant movements continue to hold this vital resource.

And then you have the crisis of capitalism. In Africa, this is expressing itself as a new wave of colonization and land grabbing. This isn’t the old “primitive accumulation” of Marx – this is what the geographer David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession.” The question is, how do we respond. We’re dealing with a different enemy now: not with an enemy that emerges from the center to the periphery, as they used to say, but with an enemy that comes at us from all sides.

One of capitalism’s key crises is the provision of food. Now you have commodity food prices skyrocketing, you have the finance industry central to the food system, you have landgrabs taking different forms, you have all of these threats. How do you respond to them?

The uprisings in Egypt and everywhere remind us that direct action is an important pillar for the poor and the oppressed all over the world. Direct action needs to be combined with a radical emancipatory politics to free humanity and mother earth. Otherwise, this whole thing becomes an exercise in impacting the media, and then we go away and the corporations and the state continue to run the show.

 

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Filed under Climate Justice, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Land Grabs, UNFCCC

by | 2011-12-19 · 10:41

Video: Climate Justice Outcry! Dudes co-opt COP 17 final march

Note:  Nope, that headline is not from GJEP.  In fact it’s the title of one of the videos shot by the Media Co-op in Montreal during the Durban meetings of the UN climate negotiations.  Their Canadian network spans: The Dominion • Halifax • Vancouver • Montreal • Toronto.  There is a lot of controversy surrounding the action this video documents, including GJEP’s Anne Petermann’s scathing post on Friday “Showdown at the Durban Disaster: Challenging the ‘Big Green’ Patriarchy.”  GJEP and Anne are receiving many comments and emails, both pro and con on Anne’s article.  To those who disagree with Anne’s analysis:  please watch this.  To everyone else, let’s have a laugh, albeit a sad one, and resolve to up the ante for the people and the planet with concrete, meaningful action and analysis, and make Climate Justice! more than just two words to chant.  After Copenhagen COP 15, many of us lost a long time friend and comrade, Dennis Brutus: poet, scholar and  anti-apartheid activist.  If Dennis was still physically present, I believe he would have linked arms with Anne and Keith; Dennis knew what struggle meant. For more Media Co-op coverage of Durban, please go to http://mediacoop.ca/durban.  -Orin Langelle for the GJEP Team

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Independent Media, Media

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by | 2011-12-17 · 10:33

“Our Struggle is for the Permanence of Agriculture”: Interview with Alberto Gomez of La Via Campesina, Durban South Africa

At COP17 in Durban, as at COP16 in Cancún previously, Global Justice Ecology Project worked closely with La Via Campesina, the world’s largest movement of peasant farmers. As part of our collaboration, I was asked to help document the movement, by conducting interviews with coordinators and members of La Via Campesina. Over the next several weeks and months, I hope to publish this series of interviews, as well as a series of articles examining the relationship of this movement to the ongoing struggles for food sovereignty and against the corporate domination of agriculture, which is one of the leading causes of the climate crisis.  — Jeff Conant

 “Our Struggle is for the Permanence of Agriculture”: Interview with Alberto Gomez of La Via Campesina, Durban South Africa, December 2011

Made up of 150 organizations in seventy countries, and with more than 200 million members, La Via Campesina holds the claim to being the largest movement of peasant farmers and artisanal food producers in the world. La Via Campesina was born in 1993, but traces its roots much further back – indeed, as Alberto Gomez hints in this interview, the movement’s roots are entwined with the history of agriculture, land reform, and social movements throughout the ages.

Alberto Gomez is the national director of UNORCA (Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas) in Mexico. UNORCA is one of thirteen organizations – twelve of family farmers in Canada, five in the U.S., including three migrant farmworkers’ organizations, and five campesino (peasant farmer) groups in Mexico – that make up the North American coordination of La Via Campesina.

La Via Campesina brought an international delegation to United Nations COP17 in Durban, South Africa, that included a caravan of some 200 African farmers, and regional representation from Mexico, Haiti, and elsewhere. As a grassroots movement, La Via does not participate directly in the United Nations climate summits. But, like a peasant army stationed outside the gates of a walled city, La Via tends to establish a presence nearby, to monitor the negotiations, to build alliances, and to make its presence known.

Jeff Conant: We last talked a year ago, in your own country, at COP16 in Cancún, Mexico. What was the experience of La Via Campesina at COP16, and what has come of that experience?

Alberto Gomez: In the COP in Mexico, the first question was, how to build power, given the extreme security and control there. This question led us to build alliances that weren’t, let’s say, the typical ones – principally with the Asemblea de Afectados Ambientales, which brings together a variety of struggles of people affected by mines, dams, toxic contamination, in rural areas, but also in the cities. We also built together with another network, made up largely of Indigenous Peoples’ groups, called la Rede en Defensa del Maiz, (The Network in Defense of Corn), and also with urban sectors through coordinating with the struggle of the electricity workers who had lost their jobs, and who due to the liquidation of their union earlier in 2010, were in a moment of open struggle.

We decided to arrive in Cancún in a way that would make visible the realities of Mexico. So we organized international caravans to raise awareness of the local struggles…to raise their visibility. This allowed us to come to Cancún with power and visibility. In Cancún the question was how to project these struggles – these kinds of struggles exist on all regions of La Via Campesina – and to draw clear lines between these local struggles.

In Cancún, we were faced with excessive vigilance, including Federal Security agents, who were told that La Via Campesina was a violent organization, an armed and dangerous organization. Due to this, we were provoked, and we were immediately displaced from our camp, by the army. But we didn’t want confrontation – that wasn’t our intention.

What helped was presswork, working the media, as well as two big marches and several actions. This allowed us to project our intentions, to project the understandings of La Via in the face of the government’s decisions, and the exclusion we were faced with.

All our work in the popular neighborhoods of Cancun also brought a lot of support; and it built toward an event that was important and extremely successful, which was the visit of President Evo Morales to our encampment. This also helped to give us visibility, and certainly that was a moment that remains strong in our memory.

I think that the work of getting daily information about the progress of the negotiations, the work of building alliances, the work of seeking out and finding other people and other organizations that share our positions, and the work of maintaining strong positions, all of these are important aspects of what La Via Campesina does at the COPs that makes these moments useful to us as expressions of our strength.

JC: La Via Campesina had a strong presence in Cochabamba in April, 2010, at the People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, and has continued to carry the banner of Cochabamba. What is the significance of that?

AG: We were in Cochabamba with the intention of building a common base, which was the Cochabamba People’s Accord. A good part of the Cochabamba Agreement are in our own demands – in this century, the temperature must not rise more than 1.5 degrees; the industrialized countries have to reduce emissions by fifty percent without conditions; the rich countries need to accept their historic debt, and also bring an end to the impunity of transnational corporations that has caused the global economic crisis and the climate crisis.

We continue demanding, in concordance with the Cochabamba Agreements, that there is an urgent need for a climate justice tribunal to try the polluters, and a declaration, an official United Nations Declaration, for the Rights of Mother Earth. All of this is to say that, if the Cochabamba Agreements appeared at one time, before COP16, in the UN negotiating text, and were then conveniently forgotten by the United Nations, these demands continue being valid today.

JC: What is La Via Campesina’s perspective on the UN COP process? What does the UN process have to do with the lives of peasant farmers?

AG: Our perspective on the negotiations is that it is better to have no agreement than a bad agreement. Agriculture shouldn’t be in the negotiations in any form. We see that, in the diplomatic language of the UN, there is a series of interests that signify the possibility that there won’t be any global agreement – that’s good. But the danger is that a series of small agreements will be made here that are fatal for humanity. This is why it’s more important than ever that we have popular consultas, consultations about what the world’s people actually think about the climate crisis.

Now it’s become so dramatic, each year more disasters… For example, right now we are experiencing terrible drought in Mexico – this year there won’t be enough corn, there won’t be enough wheat. We’re already importing fifty percent of our food, and with the climate crisis we can expect to become increasingly dependent on imports. Hurricanes, floods, all of this, is increasing the number of climate-related deaths, poverty, hunger.

This is a historic moment of profound gravity that demands that we let our governments know that they aren’t elected to ignore us – they are not elected to be administrators for the rich countries, or for the multinationals. They are supposed to serve the people, with dignity, because this is about the future of humanity. So we have to have great imagination to bring a halt to this process, to build popular consciousness toward becoming a force strong enough to put the brakes on the way these negotiations are turned into a business for the wealthiest part of humanity.

JC: From the standpoint of being here in Africa, how do you see the differences, or similarities, between La Via Campesina in Africa and in the Americas?

AG: Our African comrades have a great way of expressing their struggle. If they had had the economic capacity, the African delegation that has come to Durban, which is already quite large, would be twenty, thirty times bigger… Without claiming that I know much about the history of Africa, I believe that African movements are in a process of emerging from the control of the big NGOs that have historically managed their struggle. La Via Campesina in Africa shows that this process will be as powerful as it has been in Latin America, or even more powerful, because this is an awakening that allows them to say, maybe for the first time, ‘we can speak for ourselves, nobody can speak for us’. This is well-timed for la Via, because in 2013, we will hold our Sixth International Conference, and the Secretariat will move to Africa. This signals a moment when we can expect rapid growth and strengthening of the movement in Africa. We’re convinced of this.

JC: La Via Campesina will be twenty-years old in 2013. What are the movement’s most significant gains its almost twenty years of existence?

AG: One important victory is in simply being La Via Campesina, and existing for twenty years. To exist and to keep growing is itself a victory. Second, La Via Campesina has become a reference point – now our positions are taken up by other organizations. This is another important gain. The contribution of La Via Campesina to have frozen the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a gain, and this comes from La Via being organized in each of its regions, not only to oppose the WTO, but to propose alternatives.

In the rural areas, there has been a great learning process, that men and women are equal, that men’s participation and women’s go together. Thinking of the future, us old guys don’t see much possibility of big changes in our countries – but the decision to bring in the youth, to engage them in capacity building. The youth are now our hope for building food sovereignty, and for creating a permanent agriculture.

Another important victory is in recognizing who our enemies are – that is, that our enemies are the multinational corporations – and that they are not just the enemies of us, the peasant farmers, but of all of humanity. We have identified ourselves as anti-capitalist, and this has helped us to bring in some of the Northern organizations.

Not to be presumptuous, but La Via Campesina is the strongest international movement, and is expanding very quickly. For this reason, we understand well that we need many more movements with the same strength. We are a big movement, but we are humble, and we know that we can’t do it alone.

JC: Here in Durban they are talking about “Climate Smart Agriculture,” – a new way of putting soil and agriculture into the carbon market. It seems there are always new technologies, new threats. How is La Via Campesina confronting these threats?

AG: Geoengineering, nanotechnology, Synthetic biology – this all comes together in one package. We are in a moment of great threat toward peasant agriculture, as against nature itself. In this moment of multiple crises, economic, climatic, we realize that when we say there is a crisis of capitalism, this doesn’t mean capitalism is going to collapse. What it means is that capitalism is looking for new ways to sustain itself, to create new forms of accumulation. With all these forms of new technology, agriculture, nature, everything goes into this package. This is the threat facing us in the next global summit, at Rio+ 20. This is what they call the Green Economy.

The Green Economy signifies a global set of policies, a scheme that can adapt itself to any country, any region; in essence it implies a new form of governance. This is an aggression, on one hand, to the very existence of campesinos, peasant farmers, and on the other hand, to nature itself.

The biggest business in the world is the food business. Peasant farmers make up a little less than half the world’s population, and we produce more than seventy percent of the world’s food. Urban farmers, fisher people, they contribute another significant amount. This shows, on the one hand, that we have continued to exist, and on the other, that we continue to pose a threat.

All of nature has to be merchandized, given value, given a price, and it has to have an owner in order to be sold on the market – this is the Green Economy, green capitalism – that is the shell they’ve developed to get through their crisis. But it comes at the cost of the future, not just of peasant farmers, but of all of humanity.

JC: You used the phrase ‘permanent agriculture,’ as if it were possible that agriculture could come to an end. What does this mean?

AG: Our peasant agriculture is the accumulated knowledge of centuries. We are the accumulation of centuries of knowledge. This is the agriculture that exists and has always existed and continues to exist, and they want to wipe it off the map. Ours is a struggle for the permanence of our agriculture, versus the industrial, agrotoxic agriculture that turns the entire world into a supermarket. This supermarket itself is causing the greatest part of the emissions that have brought on the climate crisis – in this sense, industrial agriculture is a threat to the entire world. Our agriculture, on the other hand, is permanent. As long as humanity exists, peasant agriculture must exist. This is why we call it ‘permanent agriculture.’

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20, UNFCCC

by | 2011-12-16 · 17:54

Addendum: Formal Complaint Filed Against UN Security Actions in Durban

As an addendum to a note previously posted by my colleague Orin Langelle regarding his Formal Complaint Against UN Security, I would add: upon arriving at the scene described in that post, I was similarly accosted. When I moved to photograph the interaction between UN Security and Mr. Langelle, I was similarly threatened with removal from the grounds. I was told to erase any photographs taken up to that point, or risk having my camera confiscated.

I showed the unidentified Security officer my badge, and asked him to take note of the fact that, like Langelle, I held formal UN press accreditation, and was simply doing my job. I then informed him that I would take no more pictures, but would stand by to take notes until the problem was resolved — upon which he again threatened me with expulsion.

“On what grounds?” I asked

“I know how you journalists work,” the unnamed UN Security Officer said. “Tomorrow you’ll publish something about this in the newspaper.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re going to eject me from the conference on the basis that I might publish something in the newspaper tomorrow? That seems to me to be a serious breach of any kind of freedom of the press.”

“Let me see your badge,” he said.

Unnamed UN Security officer attempting to block photograph, as Orin Langelle lodges complaint. Photo: Anonymous

This, friends, is the Institution responsible for resolving the climate crisis at a global level. Think about it….

— Jeff Conant

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Filed under Climate Justice, Independent Media, Media, Political Repression, UNFCCC

by | · 17:00

Radio Interview: Soils and Agriculture in the Carbon Market on KPFK Los Angeles

Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation is interviewed on the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK on Wednesday December 7th about the impacts on Africa of including agriculture in the Durban climate talks, and turning agriculture into a new carbon offset.

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute and weekly interviews with activists on key environmental and ecological justice issues.  In addition, during major events such as the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa, we organize daily interviews Tuesday through Thursday.

To listen, click on the link below and scroll to minute 27:39.

The Sojourner Truth Show

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC

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by | · 14:15

Showdown at the Durban Disaster: Challenging the ‘Big Green’ Patriarchy

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Dedicated to Judi Bari, Emma Goldman, my mother and all of the other strong women who inspire me

An action loses all of its teeth when it is orchestrated with the approval of the authorities.  It becomes strictly theater for the benefit of the media.  With no intent or ability to truly challenge power.

I hate actions like that.

GJEP's Anne Petermann (right) and GEAR's Keith Brunner (both sitting) before being forcibly ejected from the UN climate conference. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

And so it happened that I wound up getting ejected from one such action after challenging its top-down, male domination.  I helped stage an unsanctioned ‘sit-in’ at the action with a dozen or so others who were tired of being told what to do by the authoritarian male leadership of the “big green’ action organizers–Greenpeace and 350.org.

I had no intention of being arrested that day.  I came to the action at the UN Climate Convention center in Durban, South Africa on a whim, hearing about it from one of GJEP’s youth delegates who sent a text saying to show up outside of the Sweet Thorne room at 2:45.

So GJEP co-Director Orin Langelle and I went there together, cameras at the ready.

We arrived to a room filled with cameras.  Still cameras, television cameras, flip cameras–whatever was planned had been well publicized.  That was my first clue as to the action’s true nature.  Real direct actions designed to break the rules and challenge power are generally not broadly announced.  It’s hard to pull off a surprise action with dozens of reporters and photographers milling around.

Media feeding frenzy at the action. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

After ten or so minutes, a powerful young voice yelled “mic check!” and the action began.  A young man from 350.org was giving a call and response “mic check” message and initiating chants like “we stand with Africa,” “We want a real deal,” and “Listen to the people, not the polluters.”  Many of the youth participants wore “I [heart] KP” t-shirts–following the messaging strategy of the ‘big greens,’ who were bound and determined to salvage something of the Kyoto Protocol global warming agreement, regardless of whether or not it would help stop climate catastrophe.

The messaging and choreography of the action were tightly controlled for the first hour or so by the male leadership. The growing mass of youth activists and media moved slowly down the cramped corridor toward the main plenary room and straight into a phalanx of UN security who stood as a human blockade, hands tightly gripped into the belts of the officers on either side.  I found myself wedged between the group and the guards.

Pink badges (parties) and orange badges (media) were allowed through the barricade, but yellow badges (NGOs) were strictly forbidden–unless one happened to be one of the ‘big green’ male leadership.  They miraculously found themselves at various times on either side of the barricade.  The Greenpeace banners, I might add, were also displayed on the non-blockaded side of security, providing a perfect visual image for the media: Greenpeace banners in front of the UN Security, who were in front of the mass of youth.  This was another indication that the “action” was not what it appeared to be.  No, the rising up of impassioned youth taking over the hallway of the climate convention to demand just and effective action on climate change was just a carefully calculated ‘big green’ photo op.

There was wild applause when Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace (at that moment on the protester side of the security barricade) introduced the Party delegate from The Maldives–one of the small island nations threatened with drowning under rising sea levels.  He addressed the crowd with an impassioned plea for help.  Later, the official delegate from Egypt was introduced and, with a great big grin, gave his own mic check about the power youth in his country had had in making great change.  He was clearly thrilled to be there in that throbbing mass of youthful exuberance.

Youth confront security during the protest. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

But as with many actions that bring together such a diversity of people (youth being a very politically broad constituency), at a certain point the action diverged from the script.  The tightly controlled messaging of the pre-arranged mic checks, began to metamorphose as youth began to embody the spirit of the occupy movement, from which the “mic check” had been borrowed.  New people began calling mic check and giving their own messages.  Unsanctioned messages such as “World Bank out of climate finance,” “no REDD,” “no carbon markets” and “occupy the COP” began to emerge as repeated themes.  At first, the action’s youth leaders tried to counter-mic check and smother these unauthorized messages, but eventually they were overwhelmed.

After a few hours of this, with no sign of the energy waning, the “big green” male leadership huddled with security to figure out what to do with this anarchistic mass. Kumi, or it might have been Will Bates from 350.org, explained to the group that they had talked it over with UN security and arranged for the group to be allowed to leave the building and continue the protest just outside, where people could yell and protest as long as they wished.

This is a typical de-escalation tactic.  A group is led out of the space where it is effectively disrupting business as usual to a space where it can easily be ignored in exchange for not being arrested.  In my experience, this is a disempowering scenario where energy rapidly fizzles, and people leave feeling deflated.

I feared that this group of youth, many of whom were taking action for the first or second time in their lives, and on an issue that was literally about taking back control over their very future, would leave feeling disempowered.  I could feel the frustration deep in my belly.  We need to be building a powerful movement for climate justice, not using young people as pawns in some twisted messaging game.

There was clear dissention within the protest.  People could feel the power of being in that hallway and were uneasy with the option of leaving.  Finally I offered my own ‘mic check.’  “While we are inside,” I explained, “the delegates can hear us.  If we go outside, we will lose our voice.”

But the ‘big green’ patriarchy refused to cede control of the action to the youth.  They ratcheted up the pressure.  “If you choose to stay,” Kumi warned, “you will lose your access badge and your ability to come back into this climate COP and any future climate COPs.”  Knowing this to be patently untrue, I cut him off. “That’s not true! I was de-badged last year and here I am today!”  This took Kumi completely by surprise–that someone was challenging his authority (he was clearly not used to that)–and he mumbled in reply, “well, that’s what I was told by security.”

Crowd scene in the hallway. Photo: Langelle

Will Bates, who was on the “safe” side of the security line, explained that UN security was giving the group “a few minutes to think about what you want to do.” While the group pondered, Will reminded the group that anyone who refused to leave would lose their badge and their access to the COP.  “That’s not letting us make up our minds!” yelled a young woman.

I felt compelled to give the group some support. I mic checked again, “there is nothing to fear/ about losing your badge,” I explained, adding, “Being debadged/ is a badge of honor.”

After the question was posed about how many people planned to stay, and dozens of hands shot up, the pressure was laid on thicker. This time the ‘big green’ patriarchy warned that if we refused to leave, not only would we be debadged, UN security would escort us off the premises and we would be handed over to South African police and charged with trespass.

At that a young South African man stood up and defiantly raised his voice.  “I am South African.  This is my country.  If you want to arrest anyone for trespass, you will start with me!” he said gesturing at his chest.  Then he said, “I want to sing Shosholoza!”

Shosholoza is a traditional South African Folk song that was sung in a call and response style by migrant workers that worked in the South African mines.

The group joined the young South African man in singing Shosholoza and soon the entire hallway was resounding with the powerful South African workers’ anthem.

Once consensus was clearly established to do an occupation and anyone that did not want to lose his or her badge had left, Kumi piped up again.  “Okay. I have spoken with security and this what we are going to do.  Then he magically walked through UN security blockade.  “We will remove our badge (he demonstrated this with a grand sweeping gesture pulling the badge and lanyard over his head) and hand it over to security as we walk out of the building.  We do not anyone to be able to accuse of us trying to disrupt the talks.”

That really made me mad.  The top down, male-dominated nature of the action and the coercion being employed to force the youth activists to blindly obey UN security was too much.  I’d been pushed around by too many authoritarian males in my life to let this one slide, so I mic checked again.  “We just decided/ that we want to stay/ to make our voices heard/ and now we are being told/ how to leave!”  “I will not hand my badge to security.  I am going to sit right here and security can take it.”

And I sat down cross-legged on the floor, cursing my luck for choosing to wear a skirt that day.  Gradually, about a dozen other people–mostly youth–sat down with me, including Keith and Lindsey–two of our Global Justice Ecology Project youth contingent.

But still the male leadership wouldn’t let it go.  I’ve never seen activists so eager to do security’s work for them.  “Okay,” Kumi said, “but when security taps you on the shoulder, you have to get up and leave with them.  We are going to be peaceful, we don’t want any confrontation.”  Sorry, but in my experience, civil disobedience and non-compliance are peaceful acts.  And I find it impossible to imagine that meaningful change will be achieved without confrontation.

At some point from the floor, I decided I should explain to the crowd who I was.  I mic checked.  “I come from the United States/ which has historically been/ one of the greatest obstacles/ to addressing climate change.  I am sitting down/ in the great tradition/ of civil disobedience/ that gave women the right to vote/ won civil rights/ and helped stop the Vietnam War.”

Karuna Rana (left), sits in at the action. Photo: Langelle

About that time, a young woman named Karuna Rana, from the small island of Mauritius, off the southeast coast of Africa, sat down in front of me and spoke up.  “I am the only young person here from Mauritius. These climate COPs have been going for seventeen years!  And what have they accomplished?  Nothing!  My island is literally drowning and so I am sitting down to take action–for my people and for my island.  Something must be done.”  Her voice, from such a small person, was powerful indeed.  An hour or two later, while standing in the chilly rain at the Speakers’ Corner across the street after we’d been ejected from the COP, she told me that it was my action that had inspired her to sit down.  “You inspired me by standing up to the people that wanted us to leave.”  I told her that her bravery had similarly inspired me.

Kumi led a group of protesters down the hall, handing his badge to UN security. Those of us who remained sitting on the floor were next approached by security.  One by one, people were tapped on the shoulder and stood up to walk out and be debadged.  Keith, who was sitting next to me said, “Are you going to walk out?”  “No.”

Security tapped us and said, “C’mon, you have to leave.”  “No.”  Keith and I linked arms.

Then the security forcibly removed all of the media that remained.  I watched Orin, who was taking photos of the event, as well as Amy Goodman and the crew of Democracy Now! be forced up the stairs and out of view.  As they were removed, Amy yelled, “What’s your name?!”  “Anne Petermann. I am the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project.”

I was familiar with the unpleasant behavior of UN security from previous experiences, and so I was somewhat unnerved when security removed the media.  Earlier in the week a UN security officer had shoved Orin’s big Nikon into his face when he was photographing the officer ejecting one of the speakers from our GJEP press conference who was dressed as a clown.   Silly wigs are grounds for arrest at the UN.

One of the reasons that media have become targets of police and military violence all over the world is because they document the behavior of the authorities, and sometimes, depending on their intentions, the authorities don’t want their behavior documented.  Not knowing what UN security had in store for us, I decided I should let the remaining people in the hall–who could no longer see Keith and I since we were sitting and completely surrounded by security–know what was happening.  I explained at the top of my voice that that the media had been forced to leave, and encouraged anyone with a camera to come and take photos.  The photos on this blog post by Ben Powless of Indigenous Environmental Network are some of the only ones I know of that document our arrests.

Keith Brunner is hauled away by UN security during the sit-in outside of the plenary at the UN Climate Convention. Photo: Ben Powless/ IEN

They took Keith first, hauling him away with officers grabbing him by his legs and under his arms and rushing him into the plenary hall–which, we found out, had been earlier emptied of all of the UN delegates so the racket outside would not disturb them.  I was then loaded into a wheelchair by two female security guards.  A male guard grabbed my badge and roughly yanked it, tearing it free from the lanyard, “I’ll take that,” he sneered.   I was then unceremoniously wheeled through the empty plenary, past the security fence and into the blocked off street, where I was handed over to South African police.

“They’re all yours,” said the UN security who then left.  The South African police discussed what to do with us.  “What did they do?” asked one.  “They sat down.”  “Sat down?”  “Yes, sat down.  They are environmentalists or something.”  “Let’s just take them out of here.”  So I was loaded into the police van, where Keith sat waiting, and we were driven around the corner, past the conference center and to the “Speakers’ Corner” across the street, where the outside “Occupy COP 17” activists had been having daily general assemblies during the two weeks of the climate conference.  “Hey, that’s cool,” said Keith.  “We got a free ride to the Speakers’ Corner.”

I was told later that Kumi was the first arrested and had been led out of the building in plastic handcuffs, offering a beautiful Greenpeace photo op for the media. I rolled my eyes.  “You’ve GOT to be kidding me.  They used HANDcuffs???  Gimme a break.”  More theater.  Greenpeace is nothing if not good at working the media with theatrical drama such as pre-orchestrated arrests. Kumi may not have wanted to lose his badge, but he made the most of it.  At the Speakers’ Corner following our arrests, the media flocked to him while I stood on the sidelines.  The articles about the protest in many of the papers the next day featured Kumi speaking at the protest, Greenpeace banners prominent.  The fact that it was a COP 17 occupation that he had repeatedly attempted to squelch somehow did not make it into the news.

I lost a lot of respect for Greenpeace that day.

But many of the youth also saw how it went down.  I was thanked by several participants in the protest for standing up to the ‘big green’ male leadership and defending the right to occupy the space.  I, myself was deeply grateful for the opportunity to do something that felt actually meaningful in that lifeless convention center where the most powerful countries of the world played deadly games with the future.


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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Posts from Anne Petermann, UNFCCC

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by | · 12:27

Formal Complaint Filed Against UN Security Actions in Durban

Note: I sent the following letter today to the UN Climate Change Secretariat.  I’m publishing it in Climate Connections because I feel that people should be informed about what the UN says versus what it does in practice.  I have been a concerned photographer for four decades.  I mention this because I am an activist photographer who was on assignment for Z Magazine at the UN Climate Conference in Durban (I’m also the Co-Director/Strategist for Global Justice Ecology Project).  I believe that telling the truth and providing facts to people so they can make informed decisions are two of the highest standards for the media and for activism.  The photos below were not sent to the UN, they are only for this posting.-Orin Langelle

Elke Hoekstra-Team Assistant-Information Services

United Nations Climate Change Secretariat -Bonn, Germany

Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8

Dear Ms. Hoekstra,

I am a journalist who was accredited by the UN to participate in the 17th Conference Of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa.  On 9 December 2011, I went to the Media Centre in the ICC UN compound to register an official complaint of mistreatment and censorship from an event that occurred on 8 December 2011.  I was told by you to send an email and you would pass my complaint to the appropriate UN authorities.

Please send this letter to the appropriate UN authorities.

I am lodging a formal complaint against the UNFCCC for the treatment I received from one unidentified uniformed officer just after noon on 8 December; since he did not have on a badge I cannot name him. I am also lodging a formal complaint against a plainclothes security officer

The clown with red hair was ejected from the UN compound immediately after this press conference while he was being interviewed by the media. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

who hid his badge when he stopped me after the first officer physically assaulted me by slamming my camera into my face after taking a photograph of him escorting a young man from the building who was arrested while giving an interview to the media following a press conference in which the young man had participated.  He was evidently ejected for wearing a clown suit.  Apparently a clown participating in an official press conference is a reason for being ejected from the UN grounds.

I attended COP 17 on assignment for Z Magazine. I have attached my Letter of  Assignment. [Not relevant to this blog posting.] Your records will show that I have been a UNFCCC accredited journalist since 2004 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I realize that by filing a formal complaint, I am potentially jeopardizing my “right” as a member of the media to be accredited by the UNFCCC to attend any further UN climate negotiations.

My responsibility as a journalist is to report the truth. I feel that it is also my responsibility to inform the UN of past statements written by the UN on the freedom of the press.  My first notation is based on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in 1948 that states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

I will now cite a UN News Centre release dated 3 May 2008 on the annual World Press Freedom Day:

When information flows freely, people are equipped with tools to take control of their lives,” noted Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message for the Day, observed each year on 3 May. “When the flow of information is hindered – whether for political or technological reasons – our capacity to function is stunted.”

Unidentified UN security officer (center) leads the de-clowned clown (left) out of the UN compound. Immediately after this photo was taken, the UN security guard smashed my camera into my face for taking the photograph. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

Mr. Ban stressed that a free, secure and independent media is one of the foundations of peace and democracy. Attacks on freedom of the press are attacks against international law, humanity, and freedom itself – everything the UN stands for, he said.

The release further states:

The theme for this year’s World Press Freedom Day, which was established by the UN in 1993, is “access to information and the empowerment of people.”

In his message on the occasion of the Day, the head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – the body tasked with protecting freedom of expression – stressed that press freedom and access to information feed into the wider development objective of empowering people by giving people the information that can help them gain control over their own lives. 

“This empowerment supports participatory democracy by giving citizens the capacity to engage in public debate and to hold governments and others accountable,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

Security officer (right) who refused to show his UN credentials, threatens to eject me (left) from the UN for complaining that an unidentified UN security officer had slammed a camera into my face. Photo: Anonymous

Access to information is primordial to the exercise of the basic human right of freedom of expression, Mr. Matsuura added. To be free, the media need to have access to information. Such access is also indispensable in fighting corruption, which has been defined as the primary obstacle to development.

I urge you to read the entire UN communiqué which upholds the rights of freedom for the press: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26553&Cr=press

Furthermore, on 9 December 2011, I witnessed members of the media being shoved up a staircase to prevent them from reporting the actions of UN security who were ejecting people protesting the failing negotiations near a high level plenary room.  Shoving the media, or anyone for that matter, up a staircase is dangerous and people could have been injured.  That was clearly an act of censorship and reckless endangerment by UN security.  I was in the midst of these journalists.  I have a condition of chronic degenerative arthritis and scoliosis in my back and UN security actions could have caused further damage to these conditions.

I urge you to please take action on this formal complaint. This is not a frivolous grievance and I fully understand the dangers that journalists face in gathering news.  A New York Times Opinion Page article, “A Dangerous Pursuit,” published 21 March 2011 reported “that more than 160 journalists have died in Iraq since the war began.  That is more than both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam combined.”

I realize that I was not in a war zone, however with the UNFCCC failing to make any real progress in curtailing climate change and by depriving journalists the ability to report what goes on during these important meetings, I can only wonder how many climate deaths will occur because people do not have the facts needed to make informed decisions.  I am afraid to think of that possibility.  And I have no doubt that  some of those deaths will be the fault of the UN.

I must ask, why is the UN afraid of the media documenting what happens in the UN?  Media should not tolerate this type of censorship, nor should the UN tolerate it.

I have Cc:d Lydia Sargent, Editor of Z Magazine and Larry Goldbetter, the President of the National Writers Union.

Sincerely,

Orin Langelle

International Federation of Journalists                          Card Nr.  U S 1198

National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)  ID#83303

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