Via Campesina Aufruf zur Mobilisierung nach Kopenhagen
Bäuerliche Landwirtschaft kühlt den Planeten! La Via Campesina mobilisiert nach Kopenhagen
Kleinbäuerinnen und -bauern aus der ganzen Welt werden im Dezember nach Kopenhagen kommen, um ihre Vorstellungen zur Lösung der Klimakrise zu verteidigen. Nachhaltiger Landbau und lokale Nahrungsmittelproduktion können tatsächlich den Planeten abkühlen. Bäuerliche Landwirtschaft erlaubt es, Kohlenstoff im Boden festzulegen, und benutzt deutlich weniger fossil getriebene Maschinen und erdölbasierte Agrarchemikalien. Wenn wir lokale Produkte essen, wird weniger Energie benötigt, um Lebensmittel um die halbe Welt zu transportieren. Angesichts der immensen Auswirklungen der industriellen Landwirtschaft auf die Treibhausgasbilanzen würde eine massive Umstellung von industriellen Monokulturen zu kleinräumiger, nachhaltiger Landwirtschaft und die Entwicklung lokaler Märkte eine erhebliche Reduktion aller Treibhausgase ermöglichen. Kombiniert mit einem ernsthaften Programm zur Reduzierung von Konsum, würde ein solcher Plan jegliche Diskussion über Emissionshandel, Biotechnologien und andere (risiko-) technologische „Lösungen“, wie sie derzeit im Rahmen der UNFCCC diskutiert werden, überflüssig machen. Wir sind überzeugt, dass diese Punkte in Kopenhagen deutlich gemacht werden müssen. Wir glauben daran, dass die Stimmen der Menschen dieser Erde gehört werden müssen. Die Mobilisierung der wachsenden, globalen demokratischen Bewegung für (Klima-) Gerechtigkeit, die sich aus vielen sozialen Bewegungen weltweit zusammensetzte, zur COP 15 zeigt, wie wichtig diese Themen sind.
Die Stimmen der Menschen kann viele Klänge annehmen, sie können flüstern oder schreien, singen oder spielen, reden oder debattieren. Die Geschichte sozialer Bewegungen zeigt, dass Proteste vielfältige Formen annehmen können. Für La Via Campesina, ziviler Ungehorsam war immer ein Bestandteil unserer Strategien, um Ernährungssouveränität zu erreichen, gemeinsam mit Debatten, politischer Arbeit, und dem Vorleben konkreter Alternativen auf unseren Feldern.
Wenn hunderte Bäuerinnen und Bauern ein Stück Land besetzen, das von einem transnationalen Konzern beansprucht wird, wenn tausende von Ihnen sich vor der Welthandelsorganisation versammeln, um zu fordern, dass die Agrarmarktliberalisierungen rückgängig gemacht werden sollen, dann verteidigen wir unser Recht auf Leben. Unser Recht, die Welt und uns selbst zu ernähren. Unser Recht auf Respekt, und darauf, aus dem Teufelskreis der Armut auszubrechen.
La Via Campesina unterstützt und beteiligt sich an gewaltfreien Aktionen des zivilen Ungehorsams, wenn es politisch gerechtfertigt ist, mit dem Ziel eine gerechtere und menschenwürdigere Gesellschaft zu entwickeln. Wir sind gegen jegliche Form von Gewalt als Selbstzweck, genauso wie wir die Gewalt zurückweisen, die von der Politik ausgehen wird, die hinter verschlossenen Türen diskutiert wird. Eine Politik, die Konzernen Kohlenstoff-Zertifikate für die Entwicklung von Monokultur-Plantagen zuspricht, ist eine gewaltförmige Politik. In entlegenen Dörfern führt diese Politik zu Vertreibungen, Widerstand, Repression und Verwüstung der Umwelt. Wir verurteilen die repressiven Gesetze, die derzeit in Dänemark verabschiedet werden, um abweichende Meinungen mundtot zu machen, aufs Schärfste! Im Endspurt vor Kopenhagen, rufen wir alle soziale Bewegungen zu gemeinsamer Mobilisierung und Einheit auf, mit unserer ganzen Reichhaltigkeit und Vielfalt. Wir sind überzeugt, dass eine starke Demokratie nur gestärkt werden kann, wenn sie es Menschen aus der ganzen Welt erlaubt, Klimagerechtigkeit, Ernährungssouveränität und soziale Gerechtigkeit zu verteidigen und vorzuleben.
Josie Riffaud, Mitglied des internationalen LVC KoordinationsKreises und mitverantwortlich für das Themenfeld Klimawandel. Henry Saragih, Koordinator von LVC
Jakarta, 6. November 2009 (1)zugrundeliegende Daten werden in Kopenhagen im Dezember 2009 veröffentlicht
Small farmers cool down the earth! Copenhagen: La Via Campesina joins the mobilisations
Small farmers – women and men - from around the world will gather in Copenhagen in December to defend their proposal for solving the climate crisis. Sustainable farming and local food production are actually cooling down the earth. Peasant agriculture allows carbon to be sequestrated in soils and uses less fossil fuel-based machines and chemical inputs. Moreover if we eat local, less energy is used to ship food around the planet. Given the huge impact of industrial agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions, a massive conversion from industrial monocultures to small-scale sustainable agriculture and the development of local markets would actually allow a massive reduction of all greenhouse gases. (1)
Combined with a serious programme to reduce consumption, such a plan would actually make irrelevant any discussion on carbon trading, bioengineering and other technological fixes and trade mechanisms currently discussed in the UNFCCC.
We believe that these points have to made in Copenhagen. We believe that the people's voices from around the world have to be heard. The growing global democratic movement for justice of many social movements preparing for COP 15 shows the importance of these issues. People's voices make many tunes, they can whisper or shout, they sing or play, they talk or debate. The history of social movements shows that protests take many shapes too. In La Via Campesina, civil disobedience has always been part of the strategies carried out to support food sovereignty, along with debates, political work, and the promotion of real alternatives in our fields. When hundreds of farmers occupy a piece of land grabbed by a transnational company, when thousands of them gather in front of the WTO to ask for an end to the liberalisation of agriculture markets, we defend our right to live. Our right to feed the world and to feed ourselves. Our right to be respected and to get out of poverty.
La Via Campesina supports and takes part in non-violent actions of civil disobedience when it is justified politically in order to develop a society with more justice and dignity. We clearly reject violence as a means of action as we reject the violence of the policies discussed behind closed doors. Policies allowing companies to get carbon credits to develop monoculture plantations are violent policies. In remote villages, they lead to land evictions, farmers’ resistance, repression and environmental devastation. We strongly condemn the repressive laws that are being passed in Denmark to muzzle dissent. In the run up of the UNFCCC, we call for mobilisation and unity among all social movements in our large and rich diversity. We believe that a confident democracy can only be strengthened by allowing people from around the world to defend and implement climate justice, food justice and social justice.
Via Campesina Call to mobilise for a Cool Planet – Copenhagen December 2009
Stop! The UNFCCC is going off the rails!
Don't trade off Peasant's agriculture for rights to pollute
While scientific predictions of climate catastrophe continue to grow, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen on 7-18 December 2009 for the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The solutions being discussed by the UNFCCC continue to allow big energy consumers to pollute with impunity while paying others to implement projects supposed to capture carbon. The Kyoto protocol and the market mechanisms it implemented have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to slow down climate changes(1).
Notwithstanding the urgency of the situation, this convention has failed to radically question the current models of consumption and production based on the illusion of continuous growth. Instead, they have invented new business opportunities for the private sector to continue to make huge profits at the expense of the destruction of the planet. Carbon has become a new privatised commodity in the hands of speculators who use it as a new product in the non-real economy that has lead to the current economic crisis.
Agriculture is now at the centre of the climate talks. According to the statistics, agricultural practices contributed about 17 per cent of global emissions between 1990 and 2005. Moreover, the increased pressure on agricultural land is likely to be one of the main drivers of deforestation, an other major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. (2) Actually, forest destruction as well as environment degradation from the agricultural sector mainly come from industrial agriculture.
Large agribusiness extensions and vast monocultures make an intensive use of oil-based chemical fertilisers, pesticides and machinery, they convert carbon-rich forest and prairie into green deserts and they are based on a long and unnecessary chain of secondary processing and transport links. On the other hand, small scale sustainable family farming is a key solution to Climate Change. It contributes to cooling down the earth and plays a vital part in the relocalisation of economies which will allow us to live in a sustainable society.
Sustainable local food production uses less energy, eliminates dependence on imported animal feedstuffs and retains carbon in the soil while increasing biodiversity. Native seeds are more adaptable to the changes in climate which are already affecting us. Family farming does not only contribute positively to the carbon balance of the planet, it also gives employment to 2,8 billion of people(3) – women and men - around the world and it remains the best way to combat hunger, malnutrition and the current food crisis. If small farmers are given access to land, water, education and health and are supported by food sovereignty policies they will keep feeding the world and protecting the planet.
For peasants around the world, the false solutions proposed in the climate talks, such as the REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), the carbon offsetting mechanisms and geo-engineering projects are as threatening as the draughts, tornadoes and new climate patterns themselves. Other proposals such as the biochar initiative, no till agriculture and climate resistant GMOs are the proposals of agribusinesses and will further marginalise small farmers. The heavy promotion of industrial monoculture plantations and agrofuels as solutions to the crisis actually increase pressure on agricultural land. It has already led to massive land grabbing by transnational companies in developing countries, kicking farmers and indigenous communities out of their territories. It is unfair to use the benefits that small farmers provide to the environment as an excuse to keep polluting as usual. The UNFCCC is currently discussing mechanisms to include agricultural land in carbon trading mechanisms, a move that could leave farmers with no other support than dirty money from polluters. These mechanisms are bound to fail, because they are not focused on reducing use of fossil fuels or reducing emissions in industrialised countries.
Therefore La Via Campesina calls all its members, friends and allies to mobilise in Copenhagen and around the world during the UNFCCC conference in December 2009. A special action day on agriculture will be declared as part of the mass protests by hundreds of social movements and organisations. * * *Towards Copenhagen: What you can do at national and local level* * * *1.Collect data and information related to the impact of climate change on small farmer agriculture and small farmer livelihoods* * * *2.Collect data and information related to the impact of market based solutions/ false solutions to climate change on small farmers* * * *3.Bring information from the grass-roots level on how small farmers' agriculture has been conserving ecosystems.* * * *4.Persuade your government to reject market-based and pro-business “solutions” and to promote real solutions to the current crisis such as the protection of small scale sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty.* 5.Join the mobilisation! Together with other social movement we will participate in various parallel activities in September in Bangkok during the UNFCCC last preparatory meeting towards Copenhagen. We will also mobilise for social and climate justice during the expected WTO meeting and the FAO food Summit in October/November 2009.
/We reject the false business solutions of the UNFCCC!/
/ /We demand an urgent reorientation of the world's economy towards a people - centred economy where peasant's agriculture and local food systems play a major role./
/ /People and the planet are more important than profit!/ / /
/Don't make business out of an environmental catastrophe!/ / /
/Small scale family farming and food sovereignty cools down the earth!/
(1) Peter Atherton of Citigroup who was heavily involved in Carbon Trading has said about the world's biggest Carbon market - “ The European Emissions Trading Scheme has done nothing to curb emissions…Have policy goals been achieved? Prices up, emissions up, profits up…so no, not really” . (Citigroup Global Markets (2007), quoted in L. Lohmann in Governance as Corruption, presentation, Athens, November 2008; www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/ATHENS%2010.pdf <http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/ATHENS%2010.pdf> (2) Address by Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , 14 May 2009 (3) Le Monde, 23 April 2009.