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La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants and small-scale food producers, stands firmly with the Korean Peasant League, the Korean Women Peasants’ Association, and numerous other trade unions and citizen groups mobilizing against President Yoon Suk-yeol’s anti-democratic declaration and imposition of martial law.

For the first time in 44 years, martial law has been invoked by a president who, by all indications, has lost popular support. The democracy of this nation has been nurtured by the blood and sacrifices of its people—particularly its peasant and rural communities. Yet Yoon Suk-yeol is ruthlessly trampling on that hard-earned democracy.

Over the past year, peasant unions across the country have protested the government’s lackadaisical response to a worsening climate crisis, its push for cheap imports that threaten peasant livelihoods, and its promotion of corporate-oriented farming policies. This is a president who has lost the trust and support of peasant and rural communities.

While the stated reason for declaring martial law is “to eradicate pro-North Korean forces and maintain constitutional order,” all citizens—except Yoon Suk-yeol—understand the true intent behind this declaration. Yoon has resorted to the irrational and anti-democratic measure of martial law to prolong his political survival as his legitimacy crumbles.

More than 10,000 people who attended the “Citizens’ Candlelight Vigil” held in front of Donghwa Duty Free Shop in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Thursday evening, strongly call for the resignation of Yoon Seok-yeol for rebellion! Photos: IKP NewsMore than 10,000 people who attended the “Citizens’ Candlelight Vigil” held in front of Donghwa Duty Free Shop in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Thursday evening, strongly call for the resignation of Yoon Seok-yeol for rebellion! Photos: IKP NewsMore than 10,000 people who attended the “Citizens’ Candlelight Vigil” held in front of Donghwa Duty Free Shop in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Thursday evening, strongly call for the resignation of Yoon Seok-yeol for rebellion! Photos: IKP NewsMore than 10,000 people who attended the “Citizens’ Candlelight Vigil” held in front of Donghwa Duty Free Shop in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Thursday evening, strongly call for the resignation of Yoon Seok-yeol for rebellion! Photos: IKP NewsMore than 10,000 people who attended the “Citizens’ Candlelight Vigil” held in front of Donghwa Duty Free Shop in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Thursday evening, strongly call for the resignation of Yoon Seok-yeol for rebellion! Photos: IKP News

Martial law has historically been used by the military dictatorships of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan to suppress democracy and human rights in order to consolidate power. It is a measure that has not been invoked in the 44 years since South Korea transitioned to a formal democratic system. Faced with a crisis of his own making, Yoon Suk-yeol has essentially admitted to being an anti-democratic dictator through this desperate and unjustifiable declaration.

Yoon’s unconstitutional martial law was annulled after the National Assembly passed a resolution to repeal it with 190 votes in favor. However, despite being present at party headquarters, many of his party’s lawmakers abstained from attending the session, effectively aiding and abetting Yoon’s unconstitutional actions.

La Via Campesina stands firmly with the Korean Peasant League and the Korean Women Peasants’ Association in their demand to impeach Yoon Suk-yeol and hold his accomplices accountable.

More power to the peasants of South Korea! Reject Military Dictatorships!
Globalize the Struggle, Globalize Hope!

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#25Nov24 : International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women commemorated with mobilizations around the world

The current context of multiple crises, exacerbated by brutal occupations, wars and conflicts, is causing poverty, hunger, migration, death and femicide around the world. Any solution to the crises demands that gender and social justice be at the center of our political agenda.

Women, constituting the majority of the peasant, indigenous, landless, pastoralist, fisherfolk, nomadic, gatherers and agricultural workers, play a fundamental role in Food Sovereignty and food security, and economy. They produce more than half of the world’s food production, and build climate resilience, conserve biodiversity and the provide essential care for families, communities and Mother Earth. However, they continue to experience the structural violence of patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism.

Thus, in the international call for action on #25Nov24 La Via Campesina insisted that deliberation and action are needed within our movements, but also in communities, societies and countries. Follow all the action around the world on our padlet here and our special webinar.

This month, the international peasant movement participated in #COP29 in Baku and issued a statement on its main responses to the climate crisis. It denounced the false solutions, such as carbon markets, offset schemes, genetically modified crops, geoengineering mega projects, “Climate Smart Agriculture” and “Nature-based solutions”. These solutions reinforce an imperialist development agenda, deepening colonialism, patriarchy and environmental degradation. Consequently, they erode the cultural, ancestral and territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities and peasants.

In Paris, a photo exhibition organised by the City of Paris opened on November 21 and will run until 13 January next year. The exhibition. The exhibition includes La Via Campesina photos highlighting the central role of peasants and the diversity of rural workers.

The Week of Actions of Solidarity with Palestine was organised from Sunday, November 24 to Friday, November 29. The mobilisationcalled for protests and campaigns for justice and to stop the genocide in Gaza.

This month marked the Eighth Anniversary of the signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia. La Via Campesina joined to celebrate the progress in the implementation of the six points of the Agreement. The peasant movement reaffirmed its commitment to continue working to build a sustainable peace for all.

The following is a brief overview of the main actions and activities carried out by our member organizations in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas this month.

Starting with news from Latin America: In Honduras, during a protest in Tegucigalpa, women’s organizations including La Via Campesina members denounced impunity in femicides and gender violence. They urged authorities to take effective measures and investigate cases of murders of women in Honduras. They also questioned the inaction of the authorities in the face of the impunity and poverty that affect women. A dignified and peaceful life for all can only be be achieved by addressing the structural causes of violence.

The Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) of Guatemala held its 13th National Assembly to analyse the political, social and economic context of the country. This exercise helped the organisation to understand the current challenges and plan their actions in defense of indigenous and peasant communities. A study on “Violence against indigenous women and the impact on their lives in the Polochic Valley” was shared during the meeting. It highlighted the realities faced by indigenous women in the Polochic Valley and called for action to combat the violence and protect their rights.

In Brazil, between November 20 and 25, the women of the Landless Movement of Brazil organized the National Day to Combat Violence Against Women and Girls. The actions held in the five regions of the country. A series of collective activities of care and affection were also carried out in MST areas throughout the country. Training, meetings, moments of listening, exchanges and sharing were organised to strengthen the struggle for relationships free of all forms of violence.

In Colombia, Fensuagro, celebrated the closing of the diploma course on “Participation and Political Advocacy of Peasant, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Women”. This 115-hour training course focused on equitable access to land and environmental protection. The training was attended by women leaders from the 7 regions of Colombia, the National Women’s Team and regional coordinators of FENSUAGRO. During the training, they shared knowledge, experiences and motivations.

The National Assembly of Ecuador is processing the Comprehensive Organic Code Project for the Reactivation of the Agricultural and Fishing Sector (COIRAP). Peasant and Indigenous Organizations and other civil society organizations that are part of the Platform for Food Sovereignty are demanding that the project to be stopped as it only benefits agribusiness. They demanded that the Assembly comply with existing regulations on Food Sovereignty.

The Caribbean region, this November 25, joined the call of the international CLOC-Via Campesina, for justice, Food Sovereignty. The members denounced wars, genocide and anti-democratic interference in their countries through economic blockades. The region highlighted the urgency to continue the collective and articulated struggles to denounce and put an end to the historical violence against women and social structure in our rural areas.

The BORICUÁ Organization in Puerto Rico held its First Meeting of the Women’s Articulation, and adopted the agenda of the continental and international women’s articulation of the Cloc – Via Campesina. With the slogan “Sowing Food We Harvest Freedom” the women committed to strengthen the articulation and to influence the local agenda to defend their rights.

We move to North America: From November 21 to 23, the National Farmers Union of Canada held its Convention in Saskatoon. Under the theme “Valuing Farming, Land and People” the NFU invited its members to reconnect with other farmers, farmworkers and allies to fight for favorable agricultural policies for Food Sovereignty. Experiences of indigenous cooperatives empowering communities and preserving traditions were shared.

In the United States, Family Farm Defenders denounced the new GM wheat is a false climate solution that threatens farmers and wildlife. The organisation stressed that to secure farmers’ finances and the environment, more work should promote regional and local seed varieties instead of looking to multinational corporations for guidance. It is unfortunate that the government continues to ignore ethics and common sense, as it recently approved as “safe for breeding and cultivation” a new genetically modified (GM) wheat variety: HB4.

In Europe, On November 13, the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) and its member organization FUGEA from Belgium mobilized in Brussels in front of the European institutions to demand an end to the EU-Mercosur FTA. This FTA threatens the livelihoods of countless small farmers and rural communities. Together with civil society organizations, trade unions and NGOs, they also demanded fair market regulation, minimum prices and a fair distribution of the Common Agricultural Policy budget to support a just and sustainable agroecological transition.

The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) held its General Assembly on November 13 to 14. The event brought together 50 participants from 20 European organizations. Discussions involved youth, women and LGBTQ+ groups advancing political strategies. They stood in solidarity with farmers from Europe and South America in a protest against the EU-Mercosur FTA and addressed key issues such as the CAP, forest management, access to land and digitization of agriculture, highlighting shared struggles across Europe.

In Africa, North Africa and Arabic region: On November 25, FNSA Morocco joined several women’s organizations and human rights groups to organize a protest in front of Parliament. The protest denounced violence against women worldwide and supported Palestinian women. The event included speeches addressing the challenges faced by women in Palestine and around the world, highlighting the connection between gender and socio-political issues. Activists from different sectors, including agriculture, participated and showed their solidarity and advocated for an end to violence and discrimination.

In Tunisia, on November 25, the One Million Rural and Landless Women’s Association launched the “We Are Everything” campaign. The campaign which ends on December 10, denounces the marginalization of women agricultural workers by the State and their lack of recognition in food production and food sovereignty. The campaign aims to have “female farmer” recognized in their identity documents. The recognition will facilitate women’s access to land, financing and the implementation of projects.

In Togo, the Togolese Coordination of Peasant Organizations and Agricultural Producers (CTOP) participated in the Regional Forum on Agroecology and Organic Agriculture held in Nigeria. In addition to contributing to the discussions, CTOP participated in the forum’s exhibition to showcase the richness and diversity of its members’ agroecological practices. The exhibits showcased the innovation and commitment of producers to a more sustainable agricultural future. It demonstrated the potential of agroecology to strengthen food sovereignty in West Africa.

The Kenya Peasant League commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by organizing a virtual awareness campaign against gender based violence. They emphasized that women farmers play an important role in food production, stating that the violence faced by women farmers must stop.

ESAFF Uganda farmers held a meeting in Bugiri district on December 3 and interacted with various stakeholders on the impact of gender based violence and explored solutions to end GBV in communities. They also conducted an informative and educational radio program on gender-based violence in communities and how to overcome it.

Moving to Asia, South Korean farmers’ organizations have condemned their president’s decision to impose martial law in the country. In a statement issued by the country’s peasant organizations, they have thanked the parliament for unanimously voting against the president’s undemocratic move. They have also called on all peasant unions, students and citizens to come together in a public demonstration on December 7 in defense of democracy. The situation continues to evolve and we will have more updates in the next issue.

On November 23, the Assembly of the Poor of Thailand organized a public protest to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the opposition to the Kaeng Suea Ten dam. The event included a sacred forest ordination, discussions and exchange of experiences among various partner networks. In the evening, a fundraising concert was held to support ongoing activities.

In Nepal, the Nepal Federation of Peasants held a solidarity action in support of the Palestinian people and their unwavering struggle against occupation, calling for an immediate end to the ongoing genocidal war. Dozens of people attended the public demonstration on November 29 in Kathmandu, which was also part of the week of action to end violence against women and girls. Women farmers’ leaders and organizers called for an end to all forms of violence, stressing that the situation of women and children in Palestine requires immediate global attention and action.

In Sri Lanka, the Movement for Agrarian and Land Reform (MONLAR) held a press conference to clarify its position on the national debt situation. The debt has been perpetuated by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. MONLAR stated that the IMF must recognize the mandate given to the National People’s Power (NPP) in the presidential election, which was not intended to continue the injustices and long-standing damage caused by neoliberal policies to the country’s agricultural sector and farming community.

The 1st La Via Campesina Asian Women’s Political School was held in Thailand. For five days, they came together in solidarity to learn about their shared struggles against capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy and colonialism, interconnected forces that uniquely impact peasant women in their countries. They also delved into the root causes of injustices faced by peasant women, including discrimination, false solutions, violence, microfinance, land grabbing, class and caste systems, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and climate change. They stated that the central problem affecting women in Asia is the corporate capture of native seed systems that rightfully belong to women.

We wrap up this months edition here. If there are any important updates we have missed, please send the links to communications@viacampesina.org so that we can include them in the next edition. We only include updates from La Via Campesina members. For a comprehensive update on various initiatives from November 2024, please visit our website. Previous editions of our news wrap are also available on our website, and condensed versions are accessible as a podcast on Spotify.

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December 3 – International Day of Action for Life and against Agrotoxics

Today, December the 3rd, La Via Campesina continues its campaign to ban agrotoxics. The intense use of agrotoxics by the industrial agri-food system is one of the primary causes of biodiversity crisis facing the world today. The world’s pollinator and bee populations are declining at an alarming rate directly affecting the biological and cultural diversity that sustains all forms of life in the fields and cities. It is therefore imperative that on this day, we affirm to the world that Peasant Agroecology and Food Sovereignty are the urgent and necessary transformations if we want to sustain life.

The use of agrotoxics in the world continues to be a practice encouraged by agribusiness. In recent years, global use reached 3.54 million tons, 4% more than in 2020 and twice as much as in 1990. Asia is still the largest consumer of pesticides, accounting for more than 50% of the global total. The Americas are in second place, with a steady increase in the use of these chemicals since 1990.

The big business of the agrotoxics market is estimated at 253,000 million United States dollars in 2024. The largest producers of agrotoxics include companies such as Monsanto-Bayer, DowDupond, Syngenta-ChemChina, BASF and Corteva, which dominate global sales.

The urgency of abandoning agrotoxics lies in their negative impacts on human health, the environment and agricultural sustainability. Their use increases the loss of biodiversity, contaminating water and soils, affecting communities, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and aggravating the climate crisis. About 385 million peasants suffer from agrotoxics poisoning each year, with more than 11,000 deaths.

Faced with this situation, we La Via Campesina promotes peasant agroecology as a model of healthy food production, which guarantees Food Sovereignty and prioritizes the defense of life, for the survival of our humanity and the planet. Peasant Agroecology not only poses a solution to the problems of the climate and health crisis, but also reinforces a fairer and more sustainable economic system that allows peasants to become independent and succeed in fighting against transnational corporations. It also decreases the risk of diseases by also protecting the health of the land, the protection of fauna, pollinators and natural pest controllers.

The practice of agroecology promotes the diversity of crops by making them more resilient to climate change, increasing the independence of the peasant world and improving income stability and access to food. In this #3Dic it is important to affirm to the world that Peasant Agroecology and Food Sovereignty are the urgent and necessary transformations if we want to sustain life, as stated in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, specifically Art. 14.2 “Peasants and other people working in rural areas have the right not to use hazardous substances or toxic chemicals, such as agrochemicals or agricultural or industrial pollutants, and not to be exposed to them.”

#AgrotoxicsKill

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Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) and Anjuman Mazareen Punjab (AMP) held a joint press conference at the Lahore Press Club following a meeting with over 50 leaders from different farms associated with AMP. The meeting was attended by small farmers and landless peasants who are fighting for their survival and against land grabbing. Allied trade and labour unions, as well as civil society organizations, joined in solidarity.

In the meeting, PKRC and AMP demanded immediate and comprehensive agrarian reforms across Pakistan, emphasizing that land should be distributed to landless peasants, agricultural workers, and small farmers as their legal right. “We know how to take our rights,” they said. “We are also fighting a legal battle against these injustices in the Lahore High Court and Supreme Court. We stand with all small farmers, including those in Sindh opposing the Cholistan canal projects that threaten their lives.”

Small farmers and landless peasants declared that they would not leave their lands and are prepared to resist the government’s attempts to forcefully take over their land. “We reject corporate farming, which is a deadly poison for peasants, agricultural workers, and small-scale farmers,” they said. “This policy is designed to destroy our lives, to fill the pockets of the capitalist class and military who are leading this initiative.”

The government’s Green Pakistan Initiative and corporate farming policies have led to the allocation of lands to private companies and investors. This has led to more transnational agribusiness corporations are entering into different agricultural ventures. So far, 4.8 million acres of land have been identified, with 0.9 million acres already allocated to private companies. This land includes 811,619 acres in Punjab, 52,713 acres in Sindh, 47,606 in Balochistan and 74,140 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. These projects displace landless peasants and small-scale farmers under the pretext of agricultural modernization. Green Pakistan Initiative is a threat to the livelihoods of peasants and small-scale farmers, as it promotes corporate farming and land grabbing.

PKRC criticized the military’s involvement in land grabbing, citing ongoing massive acquisitions in Cholistan, Thal, and other regions of Punjab under the guise of corporate farming. Corporate farming has started in Cholistan with two hundred thousand acres of land contracted so far. In Punjab, beyond Okara, 27,000 acres of land at Muhammad Nagar Seed Farm in Arifwala have been allocated to private corporations. This land grabbing is now spreading to other districts, threatening the livelihood of thousands of peasants. Many peasants in targeted areas face intimidation from state authorities, the deputy commissioners and the police, in an attempt to forcibly evict them from their lands. However, resistance remains strong. Recently, in Arifwala, over 700 farmers stood their ground, blocking the police attempting to seize their land.

PKRC General Secretary Farooq Tariq said, “The government is reinforcing the feudal system with corporate farming instead of empowering small farmers through land reforms. This policy directly targets the livelihoods of peasants and benefits the ruling elite.” Tariq also highlighted the environmental and agricultural damage caused by previous policies, such as the Green Revolution, and condemned corporate farming as a deceptive extension of these failed initiatives.

Mehr Ghulam Abbas, President of AMP, declared, “Our ancestors made these lands cultivable over a century ago. The government is now trying to erase our history and rights to serve capitalist interests. We will not allow this injustice to continue.”

Peasants vowed to continue their resistance, stating, “We will not back down. Our sacrifices will protect our land and our rights.” The widespread opposition to corporate farming underscores the urgent need for agrarian reforms to support small farmers and peasants who are feeding the people of Pakistan and form the backbone of Pakistan’s agricultural economy.

Issued by Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) and Anjuman Mazareen Punjab (AMP)

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Week of Mobilization in Solidarity with Palestine : 20 – 29 November 2024

Join us on Friday, November 29 for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People!

For justice, for dignity, and for the right to life of the Palestinian people, we, social movements, civil society organisations and our allies around the world, refuse to remain silent. Together, we demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire NOW and accountability for the war crimes of the Israeli occupation!

We will never remain silent in the face of genocide and the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For over a year, the Israeli occupation has been waging a systematic campaign of mass murder that has resulted in the deaths of over 44,000 Palestinians, more than 104,000 wounded and more than 10,000 missing persons, a staggering testimony to the inhuman siege and atrocities committed. The death toll continues to rise, particularly among children and women, as the brutality of the occupation continues unchecked.

The use of heavy weapons, internationally banned white phosphorus, bombs, and relentless airstrikes has deliberately targeted civilians, healthcare infrastructure, schools and residential buildings. These attacks have also led to the destruction of farmlands, the salination and pollution of waters, and the ecocide of Palestine. Severe restrictions on the entry of food and medical supplies have caused Gaza’s food systems to collapse, plunging Gaza into a famine zone, according to recent IPC reports. Already, 133,000 people have been classified as facing catastrophic food insecurity, resulting in widespread malnutrition. Furthermore, the risk of famine has been declared for the entire Gaza Strip between November 2024 and April 2025.

Now, with 87% of housing units destroyed in the midst of winter, the humanitarian situation is dire. The population faces heightened risks of illness and worsening health conditions, compounded by a lack of shelter and essential resources.

The situation in the West Bank is also extreme. In recent months, attacks by Israeli settlers against the Palestinian population have intensified, especially in rural areas, under the protection and defense of Israeli security forces.

Arbitrary and unfair detentions, without charge, are increasing in the occupied territory, as are reports of ill-treatment, torture and inhumane conditions of detention. Humanitarian access is increasingly limited, and civil society and solidarity with the Palestinian people are persecuted, repressed and criminalized.

This situation deepens the settler colonial project and apartheid over Palestine, amid great impunity. It is urgent to continue to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian people until their liberation. We will never be silent.

Together, we must stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state justice and demand for the prosecution of the Israeli occupation for crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

We also support the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. We demand all countries to respect their commitment towards the ICC and do their best to implement this ICC’s decision.

We, La Vía Campesina, the World March of Women, Friends of Earth International, FIAN, Focus on the Global South, Bizilur and Mundubat, call on all free peoples around the world to join the week of mobilization (from 20-29 November) in solidarity with Palestine by carrying out actions online. On the 29th of November, the last day, let’s organise mass actions in our localities. Here are some ways you can show your support:

• Join street protests in your respective communities.
• Participate actively in various initiatives and activities related to the Palestinian cause.
• Use the communication toolkit for Palestine by sharing online this week (and after 29 November) the compilation of communication resources and materials on Palestine on different social media platforms.
• Write and share messages of solidarity and demands for justice for Palestine on a placard, take photos, and share them on social media. Tag your posts with #EndStarvation #EndGenocide #FreePalestine or send it to us so we can help in the dissemination.
• Write solidarity letters for women prisoners in Israeli jails

End colonization and occupation NOW !

#EndStarvation #EndGenocide #FreePalestine

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LVC Statement – COP 29

Baku, 21 November 2024 | As COP29 unfolds in Azerbaijan, the world faces a defining moment in the climate struggle, with global temperatures shattering records, increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather events, the looming risk of surpassing the 1.5°C warming threshold, and profound economic and social repercussions. 

Over the past decade, powerful neoliberal governments, transnational agribusinesses, and multinational corporations have been pushing market-based and technology-driven solutions, falsely presented as the only way to save humanity. These solutions, cloaked in the rhetoric of a ‘green economy’, continue to perpetrate a capitalist-colonial-patriarchal vision that seeks to exploit the planet and its peoples for profit, commodifying nature and deepening social injustices. At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), these forces—bolstered by the Paris Agreement—have sought to evade responsibility for the ecological destruction they have caused, while enabling further exploitation.Therefore, the UNFCCC, has increasingly become a space dominated by corporate interests and the Global North, which are more focused on protecting their own economic interests than on pursuing real solutions. They are burning down our house and no one else is coming for us, but ourselves. Solo el Pueblo salva al Pueblo, only the People saves the People that is why we maintain our commitment with discipline, militancy, rigor and unity

For La Vía Campesina and the communities we represent—peasants, rural workers, agrarian organizers, traditional rural and coastal communities, Indigenous peoples, and all defenders of Mother Earth—the current climate agenda is nothing short of disastrous. False solutions, including carbon markets, offset schemes, genetically engineered crops, geoengineering megaprojects, ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture,’ and ‘Nature-Based Solutions,’ are promoted as climate mitigation tools but fail to address the root causes of the crisis. These approaches reinforce an imperialist development agenda, deepening colonialism, patriarchy, and environmental degradation. Consequently, they fuel land grabs, human rights violations, and the erosion of cultural, ancestral, and territorial rights, threatening the very existence and culture of Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities, and peasants. All of these false solutions are a reflection of the devastating impact of capitalism; an economic model that extracts from Mother Nature as if there were no limits and exploits every form of life. 

As emphasized in La Via Campesina’s Position on the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and all COP’s that have preceded, our communities lead the way in agroecological peasant agriculture, defending peasants’ rights, and advocating for food sovereignty, biodiversity preservation, and genuine climate restoration initiatives.  

We are in COP 29 to study, organize, strategize, agitate, mobilize, and practice international solidarity with the people’s of the world. We continue to this with discipline, rigor, militancy and unity. We promote and practice Agroecology as sustainable agrifood system that is capable of producing healthy food in harmony with Mother Earth for all the people, as a science rooted in ancestral and people’s knowledge, as a social movement where we organize collectively with discipline in the diversity that recognizes us, and as a way of life where we make sure we are grounded in principles and values that respect Nature’s ways and laws.  We practice this real systemic solutions on a daily basis producing 70 percent of the food worldwide in approximately 30 percent of the available arable land. We fulfill the sacred responsibility of feeding the world, sustaining life while we continue to defend and steward and defend the natural commons. Women farmers are at the heart of this struggle. They are the backbone of small-scale agriculture, responsible for up to 80% of the food we consume and representing around 43% of the agricultural workforce. They are the guardians of seeds and the keepers of ancestral knowledge that nurtures the Earth.

We resist the industrial agrifood system, extractivist models, and corporate “greenwashing” schemes that commodify nature, erode traditional knowledge, and exacerbate the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. We call for systemic and structural transformation: equitable policies that recognize the rights of frontline climate communities, reparations for those impacted by climate damage, and the creation of funds to support and implement a just transition to agroecological production and low-carbon economies rooted in social and climate justice. Furthermore, ambitious policies on land reform and the protection of the rights of peasants and Indigenous peoples over their lands, waters, and territories are essential to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions while addressing the basic needs of populations, including the right to food. In this context, convening a new conference on land reform and rural development (ICARRD+20) is crucial for tackling the climate crisis. Finally, strengthening the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants in climate governance is vital for the effective implementation of environmental and climate policies. Small-scale farmers, especially women, play a crucial role in cooling the planet. It is essential to uphold their rights so they can undergo a just transition and continue applying agroecological practices that sustain life and mitigate climate change. The knowledge and wisdom of women farmers and the agro-ecosystem experience of small-scale farmers are the solution to the climate crisis. Their collective experience and commitment are what the world needs to reverse the damage done by industrial agriculture and environmental exploitation.

At COP29, we reaffirm our commitment to this vision. While the UNFCCC and its associated bodies remain largely captured by corporate interests, our movement continues to expose the limitations and injustices of the current climate framework.To address the climate crisis in a meaningful way, there must be a radical shift in how global climate politics are organized. This means dismantling the corporate control of the climate agenda and ensuring that the voices of Indigenous Peoples, small-scale farmers, and other marginalized communities are heard and respected. Climate justice cannot be achieved without confronting the economic structures that enable the extraction of wealth from the Global South and the destruction of the planet. A just transition requires systemic transformation that goes at the root of the problem while  centering the rights of people and the planet over profit and market interests.

We remain united in the struggle for reparations for the climate and ecological debt, for meaningful actions to reduce emissions, for justice-based adaptation, and for a radical shift toward solutions that do not mortgage life to the market or technology. However, it is important to highlight that peasant agriculture develops and adopts technologies that are presented as viable alternatives to those used by capitalist agriculture, such as Agroforestry Systems, native seeds, and biofertilizers. Additionally, these systems are sustainable, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promoting the capture of these gases. It is also essential to emphasize that the structural problem of climate change is intrinsically linked to the capitalist mode of production.

The climate crisis is rooted in historical injustice, with Global North countries responsible for the majority of emissions since the 1850s. They evade their obligations under the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and continue to deny calls for reparations. This includes unfulfilled climate finance promises, failed carbon offset systems, and exploitative Debt-for-Nature deals. We demand grants, not loans, managed by local communities to fund a just transition based on food sovereignty, and a sustainable future that addresses the root causes of climate change.

As La Via Campesina and other grassroots organizations continue to affirm, food sovereignty, agroecology, and peasant rights are not only key to addressing the climate crisis but are also essential to rebuilding the social and ecological fabric of the world. By investing in the knowledge and practices of local communities, we can create a world where people and nature thrive together, rather than one driven by profit and exploitation. The fight for climate justice is inseparable from the struggle for food sovereignty, and it is through these interconnected movements that real solutions to the crises we face can be found.

The fossil fuel economy keeps fueling the genocide happening in Palestine and other places of the world. We maintain our daily actions in solidarity with all of the people that have lost their lives in this struggle. We read out loud all of the names of the thousands of Martyrs that have died because of this brutal genocide held by Israel and we will not rest until liberation, justice and peace is reached in Palestine.

Together with women, youth, men, elders, and gender-diverse people within farmers, peasants, Indigenous Peoples, rural workers, pastoralists, and coastal communities, we are cooling the planet through Food Sovereignty and Agroecology making sure that agriculture and food stays in the hands of the people and not in the hands of greedy multinational corporations and agribusiness. However, we need to scale this movement to halt the climate and environmental crises. The same forces that caused the crisis cannot be trusted to solve it! We demand that grassroots voices lead the way toward true justice and systemic transformation. Our fight is for a future that heals and cools the planet through agroecology and the power of the people!

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Declaration of LVC Asia Women’s Political School

From September 20th to 25th, 2024, following the 30th year of “globalizing the struggle and hope” of peasants worldwide, women from 14 Asian countries gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, for the first La Via Campesina (LVC) Asia Women’s Political School.

Over five days, we united in solidarity to learn about our shared struggles against capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, and colonialism—interconnected forces that uniquely impact peasant women across our countries. We delved into the roots of injustices faced by peasant women, including discrimination, false solutions, violence, microfinance, land grabbing, class and caste systems, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), and climate change. We discovered that a core issue impacting women in Asia is the corporate capture of native seed systems which rightfully belong to women.

As daughters of Mother Earth, we believe that saving and sharing seed is an intrinsic part of women’s role in the food system, and in many ways women are like seeds; we are nourished by the earth so that we ourselves can bloom and give birth to new life. We are the carers; we nurture and care for the land; we feed our families and care for the next generation. And yet, we are often taken for granted.

As part of the school, we explored the nature and power of land reform, agroecology and food sovereignty as interdependent pathways to our liberation and freedom from capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, colonialism and class/caste systems. We were empowered by past and present knowledge of popular and peasant feminism as a crucial tool to address the ongoing violence and discrimination faced by women under these systems of oppression.

We organised a masterclass on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and learned about its potential to guide governments and social movements in recognizing the rights of peasants and addressing historical injustices against us as peasant women. UNDROP is the culmination of over 20 years of struggle, but our work is far from over. We now need to keep working on better strategies to spread awareness about the Declaration as well as strategies to ensure our governments are implementing the rights of peasant women through national legislation.

Through the use of political pedagogies like mistica, theatre of the oppressed, and base groups, coupled with continuous invitations for participation and self-expression, we created a safe space for fertile, mutual learning. This included a sensitive yet important discussion on diversity. We agreed and asserted that we must not only recognize the rights of women and gender-diverse people but also stand in solidarity with our LGBTQIA+ siblings who face ongoing violence, oppression, and discrimination.

As we fight for the liberation of peasant women across Asia, we also acknowledge the struggles of our sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mali, and every country where women are subjected to physical and sexual violence during wars fueled by religious and cultural extremism under systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

With certainty, we reaffirm our fight:

• Anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, and anti-caste struggle.
• To keep popular and peasant feminism, as well as food sovereignty the centre of our struggle, we continue to organise and build resistance against all the violence and discrimination that persists in the world towards women, gender diversity, the entire working class, and our people;
• The subtle ways in which patriarchy impacts us as women, sometimes masked as freedom to decide on how to manage our households and fields, but in reality forcing women to unconsciously take on all the responsibilities and mental load. Women also need to rest and nourish themselves so in turn, they can better nourish the land, their families and communities.
• To create safe spaces for political educational pedagogies and mutual learning to support our journeys of liberation.
• Beyond the challenges posed by religious and cultural extremism and fundamentalism across the Asia-Pacific region, we must continue to fight for diversity within our movement, particularly recognizing the rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals;
• Against the criminalisation and imprisonment of peasant women who are fighting to retain their rights to land, their bodies and their seeds;

With collective strength and conviction, we commit to continue the fight:

• For an anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, anti-neocolonial, anti-racist and anti-caste society
• For a Popular Agrarian Reform that guarantees land for women and join land titles with life partners for women in South Asia;
• For public policies that support the rights of women and gender diverse people;
• For political participation without exclusions of rural women and gender diverse people, from ensuring our right to vote to being invited to play an active role in policy development that impacts rural women and gender diverse people;
• For agroecological production and for peasant women to be the custodians and caretakers of native and peasant seeds;
• For the empowerment of peasant women to build localised food systems and alternative international trade framework based on solidarity economies.

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The Organisation of Peasant and Indigenous Women (Conamuri) in Paraguay celebrated 25 years of history and the construction of a popular, rural feminism and food sovereignty. It has a school of agroecology, hundreds of hectares in the hands of women and its own organic yerba mate. This article is an interview by Maria Sol Wasylyk Fedyszak with Alicia Amarilla, national coordinator of Conamuri.

The Organisation of Peasant and Indigenous Women (Conamuri) is a powerful voice in Paraguay in the struggle for food sovereignty, against the advance of agro-toxins, equal rights and a life free of violence, and this year it celebrated its 25th anniversary. What is the scope of action for a popular organisation in a country that has been governed for almost 80 years by the same political party? What are the nuances of indigenous and popular peasant feminism? What progress and challenges have been made in this context? Alicia Amarilla, national referent of Conamuri, answers and takes stock of a quarter of a century of struggle.

Alicia Amarilla is 43 years old and was born in the department of Caaguazú, 180 kilometres from Asunción, and has been a member of Conamuri since the age of 19. The struggle for land is a mark in her life, not by choice but by imposed tradition, from the moment her grandmother was evicted by the Colorado party, like thousands of others, during the time of Alfredo Strossner (military and dictator who was in power from 1954 to 1989). She was also evicted because she was a woman: in Paraguay, until a few years ago, land ownership could only be held by men. If a woman was unmarried and had no older sons, she had no right to the land. Alicia’s grandmother had five daughters. Today she is 95 years old.

Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

Conamuri was one of the first organisations to denounce agrochemicals in 2003 with the death of Silvino Talavera, an 11-year-old boy who was a victim of agrochemical spraying in Itapúa (300 kilometres from Asunción). At that time, they were discredited by saying that they did not understand the national reality and that they were “crazy”. They were told that agrotoxins were secondary issues. They were also branded as crazy when they proclaimed themselves feminists.

Today, Conamuri is made up of around a thousand women from almost every department. The organisation has a Human Rights Secretariat, a Land and Territory Secretariat and an Agroecological Production Secretariat. Through agroecological production, they make women’s work in the countryside visible and have a school where women and men are trained to raise awareness against the advance of agrotoxins, promoting the rescue and conservation of seeds. They also have community gardens for self-consumption. They promote different campaigns against violence against women, creating networks in the territories to accompany these cases and promote the training of indigenous leaders through their space Escuela India Juliana.

A history of organisation. Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

How was the work in these 25 years?

It was up and down. There were difficult moments. First, to be recognised as political subjects. Not only by the government, but also within the social movements themselves. When Conamuri started, there was a smear campaign by our own comrades, who said that we were dividing the forces. Over time, Conamuri was recognised for the real struggle, the struggle from the grassroots, we had large mobilisations and detailed work on food sovereignty. Since 2003, after the death of Silvino Talavera, we began to work against agrotoxics, and I remember that they told us that these were secondary issues, that they were not issues to fight. They said we were crazy, that we didn’t understand the national reality. And after ten years everyone started to fight against agrotoxins. That’s when we started to work with the rescue of native seeds with young people. Then there were 20 or 25 young people working on the campaign at the national level, going to the church, to the community to talk about GMOs when they were just entering the country. Then we started to work on the seed law. And that debate led us to draw up a proposal. We presented a maize defence bill to the Senate. It was rejected and, instead, the big producers introduced the transgenic maize seed law.

What effect did this process have on the organisation?

And throughout this process in Conamuri we matured the issue of agroecology. Then in 2010 we started the School of Agroecology and we opened our premises in Caaguazú. The School of Agroecology had training on gender, agroecological techniques, the history of Paraguay, community history and our history of seeds, which has to do with the close experiences of safeguarding that each family has had. For example, there are families that have been saving a certain type of maize for years. And that is how we were able to establish the issue at the national level.

Who attended the Agroecology School?

When we started we only worked with women, because we are used to producing. Around our little house we planted fruit, vegetables, cassava, everything for our own consumption. What happened is that when we left school we went home and there was a fierce contradiction with our son, with our husband, because the state structure, the Ministry of Agriculture, went to the territory and set up an association of producers and took the whole package (of the transgenic model) and gave courses on the use of agro-toxins for those colleagues who were more permeable to the capitalist production system. So it is much more difficult with men. After seeing this, we began to think about another agroecological school. So the woman who has children comes with her child. And so we opened up one percent for men to participate as well. And so we accompany the family in agroecological production.

Conamuri: feminist organisation. Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

How many people make up Conamuri?

There will be about a thousand of us. From almost all the departments. Because the other organisations have also been disappearing. There is only one Conamuri, thanks to the fact that we don’t get involved in political (party) disputes. Because that is another way of dividing. In the time of Fernando Lugo (president from 2008 to 2012. His mandate broke with the 60-year continuity of the Colorado Party, until he was ousted) other social organisations began to enter the government and there is an economic dispute, or disputes about everything… And they began to demobilise. We also had big problems because one of our comrades, for example, ran for vice-president without consulting the organisation. Then we decided that Conamuri was going to be a trade union organisation. Most left-wing parties have their arm in the social movements. And we don’t want to be the social arm of any party. So what we decided was that Conamuri was going to continue to be a trade union organisation for struggle, for women’s demands, whoever is in government. And I think that saved us at that moment, at that critical moment.

What is it like to be a feminist in this political context?

In a process as difficult as ours and as sexist as ours, there has to be a deeper debate with the grassroots, with the people. Whether we like it or not, women’s votes are still dominated by men. Yes, there is a greater presence of women, there is more movement, stronger mobilisations, more visibility for women’s problems. But in concrete terms, there are still problems with the issue of shared responsibility for childcare. It is still an issue for Conamuri because it is difficult to sustain a national organisation, because the young women leaders, at least when they are young, everything is calm, but when they get married, they stay at home. And when they have children, for example, they can go out less. We still have a long way to go, but we are holding our own.

How do you define feminism in your organisation?

It is not so long ago that we defined ourselves as feminists. Because before in Conamuri we hardly talked about gender. And then in the process we started to talk. We debated from our territory. We have always worked for food sovereignty in the community, in our family. Our village. So why not politicise and make women visible in this, in the issue of agroecological production, in the issue of caring for the seed, we have always saved the seed for sowing. So why not politicise this and make this work we have been doing visible?

Mural at Conamuri headquarters in Asunción

For us, feminism is the feminism of our work. From what we are, from being peasant women or indigenous women, and how we can politicise our work on a daily basis. For example, the kitchen can be for some people a place of oppression for women, but for us it is something else. It is not oppression. In our kitchen there are conversations with other women colleagues, with your friend, with your mother-in-law, with your people, with your daughter making chipaguazú. That’s where you talk about violence. And as well as talking about the recipes, the soup, it is a permanent form of teaching. The kitchen is the place of power for peasant and indigenous women. It is also where men are not present.

Do you feel that some of the agenda of other, perhaps ‘more urban’ feminisms can nourish your struggle?

The “more urban” feminism also makes a contribution for us. We see that for Conamuri, for example, to deal with the LGTB issue, we realise that in our organisation there are also lesbian comrades. So we started to look at the communities. And we started to look at why they have to leave their community to live their lives. Why they can’t be there. Why can’t we look for land for her. Why we can’t produce with it. And why she has to go out to the city. We started to discuss. And on the other hand, the issue of abortion. We started to talk about us, and it had been that everybody had had an abortion. Although it’s not mentioned on that letterhead but they talk about the use of natural medicines or someone says that “I missed 15 days and I took this”. So we started to write prescriptions with the indigenous women and they know a lot more about natural medicine. So, when there is trust and when we talk about natural medicine, many things come out.

Conamuri has the Juliana Indian School, a school for indigenous women, inspired by Juliana, the first woman to rebel against the invaders. One of the main areas of training is indigenous rights, the good life of women and the fight against violence. Indigenous women suffer more violence than peasant women.

And how do you deal with such situations of violence?

We are committed to training. Because it is the only one that gives us freedom. And on the other hand, we create a nucleus of women in the territory. We have at least ten or twelve women with whom we work on the issue of violence, and we build a network of trust so that our colleagues who suffer go to them, whether or not they are members of the organisation, at least to talk about the situation. So that was the way we found to organise ourselves at the territorial level, to protect ourselves, at least to report situations of violence and to accompany the woman who is being abused, going to her house, working there. If she doesn’t go to her husband or if the situation improves or not, we make a commitment, we try to find a way. We don’t agree with the way the Ministry of Women’s Affairs works, which victimises women even more. There is no close accompaniment, but rather a fierce propaganda and then the victim is left again because there is no women’s home where she can take shelter.

Land in the hands of a few and pesticides for all. Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

Is it true that two percent of landowners own 85 percent of the land in Paraguay?

It remains so.

You would be in the remaining 15 per cent or less of the territory.

It is the same, because nowadays the countryside is without peasants, without indigenous people, they are in the city. And now that the peasants have practically nothing at all, they don’t have any land, so they start to evict indigenous peoples who are the only ones who have large territories. But today there are also large indigenous organisations against evictions. We accompany landless communities in order to be able to recover a little piece of land, but the advance of agribusiness in the countryside is terrible. Most of us women are landless. We don’t own land. After the fall of Strossner there was an Agrarian Statute that allowed women to be subject to agrarian reform. Before, we could not own land, but only in the name of men. So most of the women don’t have any land, unless it’s by inheritance or something like that. And it is very difficult for a single mother to pay for her land, for example, if they don’t help her, if they don’t give her land.

Do you go around villages to see the effects of spraying?

I am now visiting fumigated schools, we are investigating, it is terrible (Alicia shows a photo of the short distance between a school, without a green barrier, and a crop. The green barrier is the vegetation that is used to stop the effect of agrotoxins) Many schools are next to plantations. There is no living barrier and when they are spraying it is terrible. Impressive. Imagine the children nearby. And the smell is very strong, unbearable. And people have allergies and other health problems.

Do you have a record of diseases caused by pesticides?

We had signed an agreement with a medical school to carry out data collection in a community around soybean crops and other communities that are still protected. And there we realised that in this community there were ten children with leukaemia, people with cancer, with eye problems, skin problems, and there were four or five deaths from cancer. And in another, where there is no soya, there was practically nothing. This gives us to analyse that agrotoxins are really killing people little by little. I live in a place where we are mobilising to stop large-scale agribusiness production from entering, but elsewhere you go to that field and you get dizziness, diarrhoea, the water you drink makes you sick…

Paraguay: a limited democracy. Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

Since 1946, except for the period between 2008 and 2013, the Colorados have ruled the country. How do you interpret this monopoly?

The Colorado Party is a historical dictatorship. It is a super macho structure. It is a violation of all rights. In our whole process of feminist struggle we are inspired by Argentina, and we try to replicate it here as well. That’s why there is also too much retaliation from the state. Here it is forbidden to talk about gender in school. At university it is a word that is not used. By law they took that out. All the progress we had now is starting to go backwards.

Right now the government is presenting a law that implies that, for example, if Conamuri is going to receive resources we have to present a work plan to the government so that they give us some resources and they will decide who continues and who is not fulfilling their objective. And this has half a sanction already. It’s a whole situation for NGOs. They want to put an end to the organisations. We are an advocacy voice and they want to end that now.

Why was the Colorado Party able to sustain itself for so many years?

The issue is that people here don’t know their rights. For example, in a difficult situation you go to a Casa Colorada (of the party), tell them what you need and they will help you. Your relative died and they send an ambulance and bring you here… and the people are left with the feeling that they owe you. In other words, the Colorado Party knows how to work like that, it works from the bottom up. In each community, it has three or four operators who work and who help to address the situation of extreme poverty in which the people live. You go to our hospital, for example, which should be a service, a human right, but here everything depends on the Colorado Party, that’s how it’s organised. The Colorado Party always has a big advantage and people vote for the one who gives them things.

A life of activism. Photo: Hernán Vitenberg

Most of your life was within Conamuri. What is your assessment?

We make history. We believe that in spite of everything we were always present, in the mobilisations, accompanying in cases that others do not dare to do, such as the case of Curuguaty (In 2012, 11 peasants were murdered and 6 policemen died in an eviction). We took out the dead, we buried them. We were threatened. Conamuri suffered a lot because of this situation. We accompanied the six political prisoners very strongly. And at one point the public prosecutor’s office raided our premises. They took all the organisation’s documents. So these are blows and we understand that it was the government, they are striking us a blow for all our daring to support very strong things. I think that many times left-wing parties don’t dare to show their faces or talk about certain things. We are not a party. That also identifies us with the strength we have as women. We denounce, we don’t keep quiet. And we also have that strength that we didn’t have before, for example, to denounce violence, harassment, which we didn’t see before. About ten years ago we defined ourselves as feminists. And that, at least in our social, peasant, indigenous sector, sparked a debate. They say that feminists are what destroys, that they are I don’t know what, the left-wing parties themselves say it, that they are chauvinists, they campaign with that. But for us, our line is very clear, our way. We don’t depend on a man to communicate, we think and we do. There was a time when there was a lot of attack on social networks, but we always came out on top, against the tide, moving forward. And on the other hand, the alliance between women. That in Conamuri. It sustains us. With comrades from other organisations, urban, in different parts, articulating. This permanent alliance that we make also sustains us.

How do you deal with fear?

(Alicia smiles nervously) We are not afraid anymore. We’ve been through a lot of threats. So we don’t give it a thought anymore. I think the solidarity of knowing each other, of talking, of knowing our goal and we fight against this oppressive system. That’s where our arrow is pointed and we’re going to move forward little by little.

At the end of the interview, at the organisation’s headquarters in Asunción, he offers half a kilo of Oñoirú yerba. “It means comrades. It means we are together”, he explains. It is agroecological yerba, produced by Conamuri, which formed an association of producers.

“It is a committee that has been working for many years with yerba de bajo monte. We started working on a small scale and then we got support from the Basque Country, and then we started to set up a factory and that’s where we’re working,” he says. Today it can be found in the markets of Asunción.

In the midst of their work and struggle, to commemorate their 25 years of struggle, they held a mobilisation on 15 October and a fair of agroecological products on 16 October, the Day of Food Sovereignty. In addition, this November 25th they will march together with the compañeras of the city of Asuncion – a demonstration to commemorate their 25 years of struggle.

By Maria Sol Wasylyk Fedyszak

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On 28 July 1967, Chile’s official gazette published laws n°16.640 on Agrarian Reform and n°16.625 on Peasant Unionisation. Thus began an act that would revolutionise the countryside. Unfortunately, it was short-lived: the coup d’état and the dictatorship put an end to these ideas, leaving the word silent and forbidden. It was a year that marked a transcendental milestone that we must remember. Thus, 57 years after 28 July, this process has grown in the collective memory, and much has been said about it. It has also been talked about how inconclusive it was.

For this reason, the significance of this historic event is being commemorated with greater force and by more voices. And despite the time that has passed, there are aspects of yesterday that are reflected in today’s world. If the concentration of land ownership was once part of the discussion, today we once again see a high concentration of land in the hands of a few. The same old story is repeated: the few have too much, the many have too little.

From 1967 to the present day, things have changed or have become more pronounced. To begin with, rurality is yielding to real estate pressure and the growth of industry. But there is not just one type of rurality. Forests and areas of conservation interest also give way to fires, agriculture and housing. Gender inequalities have also changed over time, but they are still present. In the times of agrarian reform, people spoke of the rural man, the tenant, the head of the household. Today, there are public programmes and representative organisations that focus on women. However, there are still gaps in terms of opportunities to achieve greater development and quality of life for women. Gaps in economic, productive, reproductive, social and even cultural conditions.

In this respect, the current neoliberal rural development model, consolidated during the dictatorship during the so-called agrarian counter-reform, has intensified new forms of dispossession, such as affecting the identity and diversity of the peasant world. Attempts have been made to homogenise agriculture, to generate large mono-productive estates (a single production) and to promote their exportation. If before there was the tenant, today it is the seasonal worker: a migrant worker who is losing her territorial belonging.

But if large monocultures have not stopped spreading, it is because there are peasant women who care for and protect native seeds. This has implications for families and communities, in rural and urban areas. This care is part of Food Sovereignty. It is the promotion of diversity, both biological and cultural. Of that richness that Chile is so often said to have.

Las semillas que cuidan (Seeds that care) is also an act of rescuing memory. Both collective and historical memory, because this heritage is projected over time. The way in which seeds are produced or acquired is part of the discussion on the development model to be promoted. It is therefore important to have a gender perspective, because it is mainly women who take care of the seeds.

If the land is diverse, peasant and indigenous family farming will also be diverse. If the land is diverse, so will be the seeds and memories that are built on it. It is this diversity that sustains Food Sovereignty, so that territories, communities, peoples and countries can define the food system they want to realise.

When the discussion of agrarian reform began in Chile, back in the 1930s, land began to be considered not only as having a productive role, but also a social role. Thus, tenants who had nothing began to be part of the concern about property. If private property was considered a natural right, how was it possible that there were people without any property at all? Nowadays, the environmental aspect is incorporated. Today it is more important to talk about healthy, sovereign and diverse food. When we talk about the triple climate crisis, one of them is the loss of biodiversity. It is precisely peasants who protect and promote biodiversity, as stated in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (adopted at the United Nations in 2018).

Memory is cultivated, as are native seeds. Women play a crucial role in this. 57 years after the Agrarian Reform and Peasant Unionisation Law, we want to state that any development, reform or law that is proposed must come hand in hand with the women of the countryside.

By Viviana Catrileo Epul and Iván Cano Silva*

*Viviana Catrileo Epul, National Director of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI); Advisor to the Chair of Peasant Agriculture and Food and Iván Cano Silva, Executive Coordinator of the Chair of Peasant Agriculture and Food; Professor FAVET.

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San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic – From 18 to 20 October, the National Confederation of Rural Women (CONAMUCA) held its 9th National Congress at the Mama Tingó Training and Education Centre (CEFCAMATI), located in the community of Dios Dirá, San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic. This significant event brought together more than 300 women delegates from 24 federations, representing 227 rural communities representing the different regions and provinces of the country.

The official opening took place with an inaugural ceremony with the participation of, Manuel Alba, Representation of the Ambassador of Spain Antonio Pérez y Torra, Syra Taveras executive director of the Research Centre for Women’s Action (CIPAF), Guadalupe Valdez (FAO Representative), Jorge Ortiz Carela (Mayor of the Municipality of Nigua), Jorge Ortiz Carela (Mayor of the Municipality of Nigua) and the participation of representatives of public institutions, embassies, international organizations and feminist and peasant movements, as well as cultural presentations that highlighted the traditions and heritage of rural communities, and of the women who were the protagonists of this important event.

The main objective of this congress was the defense of rural women’s rights, the eradication of gender violence and the promotion of Food Sovereignty. During the three days, actions were carried out that included: working tables, panel discussions, training workshops and the construction of CONAMUCA’s political agenda, with a view to the Beijing+30 anniversary, focused on public policies that promote gender equality and rural development. The 9th Congress found them with limited participation in political and public life and in the labour force of women in the country. Therefore, they bet on the recognition of the contributions they make as an organization to productive development in their territories, family and care responsibilities.

With more than 38 years of experience, CONAMUCA continued to reaffirm its commitment to the defense of rural women’s rights. The organization has been fundamental in promoting changes that favour better living conditions for women, girls and the elderly in rural areas of the country, through training programmes, productive projects and political advocacy actions in which women have assumed their roles and played a leading role.

The National Confederation of Rural Women is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the integral development of rural women in the Dominican Republic. Through education, the defense of rights and the promotion of participation in society, CONAMUCA at its 9th Congress pledged to continue accompanying the work process to build more equitable and sustainable communities with the participation of women, specifically the new generations.

All rights for all women!

With feminism, we build socialism!

Neither women, nor the land, are territories of conquest!

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From November 21, 2024 to January 13, 2025, a large-format photography exhibition will be held on the grounds of the Saint-Jacques Tower (39, rue de Rivoli, 75004 Paris) to raise awareness of La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, among Parisians and visitors from around the world during this time of year.

Since November 2021, the international secretariat of La Via Campesina has been located on the premises of the Confédération paysanne in Bagnolet (France), but the movement and its actions remain little known to the general public.

Organized in partnership with the City of Paris, the exhibition ~ La Via Campesina: The Diversity of Peasants Who Feed and Protect the World ~ highlights the central role of us, the peasants, and our work.

Whether in the fields, on the farms, in the markets, in social mobilizations or in advocacy in international bodies, we peasants, landless workers, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, fisherfolk, migrant workers and small and medium farmers play a fundamental role in maintaining and defending peasant agriculture. Through this work, we fight poverty, hunger and climate crises every day.

The portraits and scenes presented in this exhibition, taken between 2003 and 2024 by activists and allied photographers of La Via Campesina, illustrate the richness of our movement and the diversity of its 180 member organizations spread over five continents.

From the coffee fields of Honduras, to the vegetable gardens of Brazil and Mozambique, through the olive groves of Palestine, the rice fields of Bangladesh, the meadows of France, and the food plots of Indonesia, a wide variety of situations and production systems are juxtaposed along these grids.

These images also bear witness to our protests against the World Trade Organization and in favor of food sovereignty, the preservation of the commons, peasant seeds and life in general. The common thread of solidarity and unity, which is present in the background of all these struggles, connects all these photographs.

Finally, with these faces we want to celebrate those who defend peasant agriculture on a daily basis and ensure its continuity, especially young and older generations, as well as women and people of diverse genders who are setting up in agriculture.

WHEN? WHERE?

THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition opens on November 21 at 14:00 on the Saint-Jacques Tower Square, in the presence of several representatives of La Via Campesina and leading figures from the City of Paris.

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THE PRESS CONFERENCE

The opening will be followed by a press conference at 15:00 at the CCFD-Terre Solidaire office (4 rue Jean Lantier, 75001 Paris, salle Monseigneur, 2nd floor), which will end with a snack at about 16:30.

This press conference will be an opportunity to understand the values that unite the members of La Via Campesina and celebrate our diversity.

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You will be able to ask members of the International Coordinating Committee of La Via Campesina, as well as the national secretariat of the Confédération paysanne and the Mouvement de Défense des Exploitants Familiaux (MODEF), about the importance of our global movement, our demands for food sovereignty and a new framework for international agricultural trade, especially in this final stages of the EU-Mercosur agreement.

We will also present the role of peasant agriculture in the struggle against the effects of climate change, and La Via Campesina’s struggles for access to the commons and land, the protection of seeds, the struggle against imperialism, for justice and peace.

For more information and interview requests:

• press@viacampesina.org
• Caroline Nugues, communications officer of Confédération Paysanne : 06 95 29 80 78
• Alexis Vanypre, National Coordinator of MODEF: 06 40 18 83 12
  

Members of the International Coordinating Committee of La Via Campesina and the national secretariats of Confédération Paysanne and MODEF, who will be present at the inauguration and press conference:

• Khadija Rhamiri – International Coordination Committee of La Via Campesina / National Confederation of the Agricultural Sector (Morocco).
• Nury Martinez – International Coordination Committee of La Via Campesina / FENSUAGRO (Colombia)
• Morgan Ody – General Coordinator of La Via Campesina / Confédération paysanne (France)
• Laurence Marandola – Spokesperson, Confédération paysanne (France)
• Sylvie Colas – International Commission of the Confédération paysanne (France)
• Pierre Thomas, co- President of the Mouvement de défense des exploitants familiaux – MODEF (France)

The post Paris: 32 perspectives, fragments of humanity, to celebrate the diversity of the peasants around the world appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

First published by Brasil de Fato November 13, 2024

For two days, the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) met in the central region of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) to discuss the proposals that will be taken to the heads of state who will participate in the G20 Summit, which takes place in the capital of Rio de Janeiro between 18 and 19 November. Within the synthesis of proposals that the movement is preparing, the materialisation of popular agrarian reform and the massification of agroecology stand out as central points to guarantee healthy food for the Brazilian population and to combat the climate crisis.

“The massification of agroecology is linked to increased cooperation within our areas, to the debate on the organisation of food and agroecological production chains, so that each region of Brazil, each state, can bring together its specific problems, without renouncing diversity. Understanding that we need to achieve technologies to reduce hardship and increase productivity, in this case, mechanisation, inputs, renewable energies, which contribute in this sense. In addition to the importance of planting trees and producing food”, Bruno Diogo, from the national leadership of the MST, told Brasil de Fato.

The movement’s proposals were systematised during the seminar Technology and innovation: agroecology in agrarian reform. The seminar began last Tuesday (12) and ended on Thursday (14), sponsored by Finep.

“In these three days we are talking about technology and agrarian reform, the climate crisis and the impacts on agriculture and new technologies in the countryside. The idea is that we can bring these discussions together in synthesis, to be transferred to the G20 spaces, so that we can add reflections from other organisations and influence world leaders towards the necessary changes in relation to agroecology,” said Diogo.

On Tuesday, the issues of economic development and the climate crisis and the challenge of producing healthy food were discussed. On Wednesday (13), the participants of the meeting were divided into groups to systematise the movement’s proposals. They discussed issues related to food production, agroecology, reforestation, as well as education, health and culture.

“The idea is that each group has a report, a systematisation, and that we can, after the results of these discussions, put everything together in a single material, which will also be sent to the leaders who will be here discussing the G20,” explains Diogo. explains Diogo.

The final document with the notes and reflections of the MST in relation to the challenges posed for popular agrarian reform were presented on Thursday, on the first day of the Social G20. “The G20 has the Social Summit that fulfilled the role of bringing together our reflections, from this field of agrarian reform, with other publics that are participating, other social organisations, to then be transferred to the leaders of the nations,” he says.

Maíra Marinho (PT-RJ), an elected councillor known as Maíra do MST, stressed the importance of the event for the accumulation of forces of the popular movement in order to influence the meeting of heads of state.

“This moment of the social G20 presented us with the task of bringing together our activists from all over Brazil, proposing this space for reflection, for training, to accumulate strength and face the challenges that lie ahead. I am sure that, from this accumulation, we will be able to think collectively, within the framework of the MST organisation, the proposal to combat hunger, valuing the environment and all that we produce in our territories”.

Popular agrarian reform and agroecology

In 2024 it will be 10 years since the conception of popular agrarian reform as the central banner of the MST, defined at the movement’s VI National Congress, held in 2014. Débora Nunes, from the national coordination of the MST, points out that, during this period, the movement sought to build “unity to understand what a popular agrarian reform is, building experiences that could materialise our proposal”.

“These 10 years have given us the understanding that popular agrarian reform, the struggle for land, remains an essential pillar. Popular land reform is also a transitional proposal and requires a popular government to carry it out, this is still on the agenda”.

Débora affirms that the MST’s understanding of this process points to the construction of a popular agrarian reform, and that the current moment requires the massification of agroecology as a way to confront the advance of capital in this sector, represented by agribusiness.

“Reversing what capital has done to agriculture requires confronting this capital with the massification of agroecology. For this massification we need to achieve material and objective conditions such as access to credit, bio-inputs and irrigation. We need to return to issues from other phases of this construction of SLM agroecology. The construction of agroecology is not something that emerges from a step forward. Confronting the hegemonic model and building an agroecology has been a constant task from the beginning.

By Leandro Melito and Leonardo Fernández

The post Brazil: Popular agrarian reform and the massification of agroecology are central proposals of the MST to the G20 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

How, in a few short years, did we get from a world order dominated by the United States and characterized by economic globalization to one of great power rivalry and global economic fragmentation? This commentary, the fourth in a series on “The Polycrisis and the Global Green New Deal,” sketches that transformation.

At the end of the Introduction to Globalization from Below (2000) my colleagues and I wrote,

Globalization is both irreversible, and, in its present form, unsustainable. What will come after it is far from determined. It could be a war of all against all, world domination by a single superpower, a tyrannical alliance of global elites, global ecological catastrophe, or some combination thereof.[1]

This commentary attempts to characterize what has come after unipolar globalization – namely, polycrisis.

Unipolarity — its rise and decline

Medieval Europe was governed by a multi-level political system in which monarchs shared law-making power and legitimate allegiance with feudal lords below them and the Holy Roman Emperor and the Roman Catholic Church above. A “patchwork of overlapping and incomplete rights of government” were “inextricably superimposed and tangled.”[2]

Within this system, monarchs began to assert a monopoly of power within their realms. The budding capitalists found a territorially centralized organization increasingly useful for protecting property rights at home and abroad, while monarchs found growing capitalist wealth an important source of revenue for their emerging states. By the 17th century, the medieval multi-layered patchwork of political power had been replaced by a system of territorial states exercising a monopoly of power against church and feudal authorities within their territories and sovereignty against emperor and Pope. This system is sometimes referred to as the “Westphalian Model” after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 which incorporated some of its principles. This system of territorial states whose rulers assert absolute sovereignty and independence has dominated international relations ever since.

From its origins at the end of World War II, The Cold War embodied economic, political, military, and ideological conflict between two international blocs superimposed on the nation state system. The Cold War reflected a world system of nation states and blocs based on clearly defined national territories. Each state controlled its own territory, and one could only increase its rule by infringing on that of another. Notwithstanding international trade, national economies were bounded units whose internal development and relations with the outside world were largely regulated by the state. Rivalry between the “Western” and “Soviet” blocs was pervasive, but their economies were more isolated than interactive, and the established territories of the rival blocs were in practice largely accepted by each other.[3]

With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the US was left as the sole global superpower. The post-Cold War period was marked by a reduction of direct conflict among major states over territory, economy, and ideology.

At the same time, corporations were promoting an agenda of economic globalization that would allow them to move their operations to any place in the world where labor, environmental, and subsidy conditions were most favorable for profit-making. The US used its dominant position to promote such globalization and to create or use international institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization to institutionalize globalization and US hegemony. With barriers to transnational economic activities diminishing, corporations turned to globalizing networks of finance, manufacturing, technology, and information.[4] As Bennett Harrison wrote in 1994, the “signal economic experience of our era” was “the creation by managers of boundary-spanning networks of firms, linking together big and small companies operating in different industries, regions, and even countries.”[5] “Global supply chain” and “global assembly line” became buzzwords of the era.

Into the vortex

The Great Recession that started in 2007 marked the beginning of the end for this “new new world order.” The hegemony of unipolar globalization began to meet resistance and by 2014 Russia and China were openly competing with the US and challenging the international order it had established. [6]

But what followed was not a new geopolitical and geoeconomic pattern, but a multilevel vortex of superimposed and conflicting patterns – what has come to be known as the “polycrisis.” These incomplete and jostling patterns form less of a new order than a kaleidoscopic, often vertigo-producing turmoil.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the US, China, and Russia all launched “revanchist” programs — aiming to recover real or imagined lost territory or status. For Russia, the prime expression was Putin’s notion of reannexing historic territories of the Russian empire, notably Ukraine. In China, Xi Jinping called for a “national rejuvenation” that would restore China’s traditional power and prestige. In the US revanchism was embodied in the Trump slogan “Make America Great Again”; substantially the same policies were continued by the Biden administration. As “The Second Cold War,” a study of the evolving relation between China and the US, put it, these projects “enthrall political imaginations around the world” and “animate contemporary geopolitics.” [7]

Ultimately Xi’s ‘national rejuvenation’ and Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ entrenched antagonistic foreign policy in both countries, leading to a consensus that the two are locked in zero-sum competition – in other words, a clash of restorative projects.[8]

The same could be said of Putin’s efforts to restore Russia’s dominance in the lands of the USSR and, indeed, of the Russian Empire.

Because they embody mutually incompatible aspirations, these projects have led to direct conflict among the great powers and wars around the world. Many powers – great and not-so-great — aim to resist US hegemony in their vicinities, but so far none realistically aspire to replace the US as the global hegemon. And so far, no power has succeeded in constructing a geographical contiguous bloc like those of the Cold War era.

While this great power rivalry marks the end of the era of globalization as we knew it, the result is not re-nationalization. Global economic integration fragmented but also persisted. It became neither a system of national economies nor of regional territorial blocs. National economies continue to be economically interdependent – even among arch-rivals like the US and China. One indication of this is that world trade continues to increase, notwithstanding the rise of economic nationalism.

As “The Second Cold War” notes, the result is “a struggle by all competing powers to hegemonize global networks within a still globalized political economy.” They add that “the drive to hegemonize global networks” has not prevented “the move toward more conventional military preparation and even confrontation.”

Disalignments

Unipolar globalization has been replaced by ongoing polycrisis. Its diverse power centers attempt to build blocs and alliances, but so far have not been able to consolidate them. These aspirational structures are unstable, shifting, overlapping, and in conflict. For that reason, it is not possible to provide a credible structural analysis of the current era. But we can single out four axes of conflict that are playing significant if ambiguous roles in the maelstrom of the polycrisis:

• US hegemony and its resistance: The US remains by far the world’s most powerful country, deploying the greatest economic, political, and military forces. While no other country can contest with it to be the global hegemon, countries throughout the world are resisting its domination over them and attempting to establish various kinds of blocs to lessen its influence.

• The three Great Powers: Russia, China, and the US are engaged in a three-way struggle for power. Like the three alliances portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 (inspired perhaps by the antagonism-friendship-antagonism of Germany and the Soviet Union in the early days of World War II), these alliances can shift rapidly and unpredictably. US-Chinese cooperation, for example, has broken down, while Russian-Chinese rivalry has turned into a degree of cooperation – though how far that cooperation will extend remains an open question. (If Donald Trump were to become President, it is not hard to imagine a new alignment of Russia and the US.) These three nations do not have a monopoly on power: They face dozens of “lesser powers,” and even “non-state armed groups,” that can act independently outside of Great Power control.

• The West against the rest: The former European colonial powers and white settler colonial states often function as a bloc. They often characterize themselves as liberal democracies, but they include many countries that are authoritarian; conversely, many countries excluded from this select club are at least as democratic as countries in “the West.” Their heritage of white colonialism is what they have most in common. “The rest,” which includes Russia and China as well as regional powers like South Korea and Iran and the less developed and developing countries of the Global South, are highly diverse in interests, ideologies, and political and social structures and are hardly consistent in their attitudes and actions toward the West.

• The non-aligned: In the Cold War era, many nations resisted pressures from both sides to align with one superpower or the other. A large number of them joined a formal bloc of Non-Aligned Nations. That bloc promoted nuclear disarmament and a New International Economic Order that would allow less developed countries to develop their economies through favorable trade arrangements. In the era of unipolar US dominance, such non-alignment largely faded from relevance. In the face of renewed great power rivalry and the polycrisis, however, many countries are proclaiming their non-aligned status and pursuing some degree of cooperation. This is seen, for example, in Great Power-defying actions in the UN General Assembly in response to military aggression, war crimes, economic hegemonizing, and climate change.

These multiple, overlapping, non-congruent alignments make it dubious to reduce polycrisis dynamics to simple dichotomies like the US vs. the Global South or tripartite rivalry.

In the Cold War era, an understanding gradually developed that the opposed nuclear powers were actually part of an interactive system which at any point might go out of balance and lead to nuclear Armageddon. Detente and partial nuclear disarmament were in large part a result of this realization. That learning has apparently now been lost. What is largely missing in the era of polycrisis is an understanding of the world order as an interactive whole and the nation-state and Great Power systems as composed of competing elements jostling each other toward mutual destruction.

We need a similarly systemic but more complex understanding of today’s polycrisis. Instead, geopolitical discourse is dominated by a “blame game” in which parties accuse and threaten each other with apparently no recognition of the ways they are thereby aggravating the very results they purport to forestall.[9]

Folly indeed!

[1]   Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith, “Globalization from Below,” South End Press, 2000. P xiv. https://www.amazon.com/Globalization-Below-Jeremy-Brecher/dp/0896086224

[2] John Gerrard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” International Organization, vol 47, No. 1, Winter 1993.p. 149. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/territoriality-and-beyond-problematizing-modernity-in-international-relations/4AB6ACDA3A2D435465AC7918DB9CE1D2

[3] I have drawn throughout this commentary on the analysis in Adam Tooze, “The Second Cold War”; Lockdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, Viking, New York, 2021, and in Gilbert Achcar, “The New Cold War ,” Haymarket, Chicago: 2023.. https://www.spsonline.it/Corsi/Agora/Letture_libri/Tooze_Shutdown-How-Covid-Shook-the-World_s-Economy.pdf and https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2053-the-new-cold-war

[4] For a review of the early stages of this process see Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, “ Global Village or Global Pillage,” South End Press, 1999, p. 53ff. https://www.amazon.com/Global-Village-Pillage-Second-Reconstruction/dp/0896085910

[5] Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility, Basic Books, New York: 1994, p. 127. https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Mean-Landscape-Corporate-Flexibility/dp/0465069428

[6] Ronald O’Rourke, “Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense – Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, updated February, 2024, P.4.   https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43838. Also, Seth Schindler et al., “Second Cold War:  US, China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks,” Geopolitics, Vol 29, 2024 – Issue 4. US, China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks,” Geopolitics, Vol 29, 2024 – Issue 4 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2023.2253432?src=

[7] Seth Schindler et al, “The Second Cold War”, Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] This interpretation draws on the heuristic presented in Jeremy Brecher, “Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction,“ PM Press, Oakland, 2021. https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1095

 

 

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The post From Unipolar Globalization to Polycrisis first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

“Polycrisis” is a word being used to describe the current confluence of military, geopolitical, economic, political, climate, and other crises. This series of commentaries on “The Polycrisis and the Global Green New Deal,” probes the dynamics of the polycrisis and what alternatives there might be to its race to destruction. This commentary, the third in the series, examines the stunning expansion of armed conflict in the polycrisis era.

The most blatant marker of the polycrisis is the burgeoning of war and preparation for war.

At the end of 2023, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London in its annual Armed Conflict Survey documented 183 armed conflicts around the world in 2023, the highest number in three decades. Fatalities increased by 14% and violent events by 28% compared to the previous year. The numbers of refugees displaced by war are stunning: more than six million refugees in Syria, five million in Afghanistan, and a million in Myanmar have been displaced by war.

The Survey describes a world “dominated by increasingly intractable conflicts and armed violence amid a proliferation of actors, complex and overlapping motives, global influences and accelerating climate change.” In fact, it portrays “intractability” as the “defining feature of the contemporary global conflict landscape.”[1]

The Uppsala conflict data program reaches similar conclusions.[2] The past two years have seen more violent conflict than at any time since the end of World War II. As summarized in the end-of-2023 review by Phenomenal World, a leading source for analysis of the polycrisis:

Conflicts have broken out in many continents. In Africa, there have been over half a dozen coups, with combat fighting in the Congo and Sudan, and now a teetering cease-fire in Ethiopia. In the Middle East, Israel’s assault on Gaza threatens to expand into a regional war. In Europe, Russia’s brutal war of attrition in Ukraine has strikingly altered the political scene.[3]

The IISS emphasizes “the current complexity of contemporary wars, which often feature a large number of diverse non-state armed groups as well as external interference.” These groups are showing an “unprecedented degree of fragmentation, with a myriad of small-scale groups competing for control and influence in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, among others.”

This, coupled with the diminished leverage of traditional resolution actors and processes, makes progress on their settlement a daunting task, contributing to their protractedness and resulting in little prospect for durable peace. The average duration of conflicts has increased over the last three decades amid an accelerated internationalization of internal wars.

As Adam Tooze observes, the fastest growing category of conflicts is neither inter- nor intra-state wars, but “internationalized intrastate conflicts.” They are largely fueled by “the new rivalry between the US, Russia, China and regional players like the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.”[4]

The respected International Crisis Group recently warned that “peacemaking” is “in crisis.”

Worldwide, diplomatic efforts to end fighting are failing. More leaders are pursuing their ends militarily. More believe they can get away with it. In Sudan, Myanmar, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tigray, Syria and potentially Taiwan, the story was the same, the ICG said. “Around the globe, more people are dying in fighting, being forced from their homes, or in need of aid than in decades.[5]

War and preparation for war are absorbing growing amounts of the world’s wealth. Total military spending by nations reached a record high of $2.443 trillion in 2023, according to an April, 2024 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Worldwide, military spending grew by 6.8% in real terms over 2022, the steepest rise since 2009. The US spent $916 billion; China spent an estimated $296 billion; Russia spent an estimated $109 billion. Every region saw an increase, but Europe, Asia and Oceania, and the Middle East saw the greatest growth. According to the report’s senior author, Nan Tian, “The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security. States are prioritizing military strength but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape.”[6]

War preparation is vividly illustrated by the escalating nuclear arms race. As the statement on the 2024 “Doomsday Clock” recounts,

February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to “suspend” the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In March, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. In June, Sergei Karaganov, an advisor to Putin, urged Moscow to consider launching limited nuclear strikes on Western Europe as a way to bring the war in Ukraine to a favorable conclusion. In October, Russia’s Duma voted to withdraw Moscow’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as the US Senate continued to refuse even to debate ratification.[7]

Shortly thereafter, Russia’s military conducted a drill with a simulated nuclear strike. Russia’s minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, said the purpose of the drill was to practice “dealing a massive nuclear strike with strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy.”[8]

Under the 2010 New START accord, which expires in 2026, both the United States and Russia have deployed 1,550 nuclear warheads on strategic or long-range delivery vehicles. According to the Washington Post, China, which for many years kept a nuclear arsenal in the low hundreds of warheads, “now appears to be heading toward at least 1,000 by the end of this decade,” and is “building a land-sea-air triad of delivery vehicles similar to that of Russia and the United States.” The Post editorial board warned, “Without arms control treaties, verification and crisis management channels, the United States might find itself in a dangerous three-way nuclear arms race.” Indeed, with the plans of all three great powers for nuclear “modernization,” such an arms race seems to be well under way.[9]

The new nuclear arms race has been made possible by a tit-for-tat demolition of the architecture of strategic arms control. In 2002 the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty; in 2019 from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty; and in 2020 from the Open Skies treaty. In 2023 Russia withdrew from both the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty and suspended participation in the New START treaty.

According to a study released in June 2024, over the past five years nuclear weapons spending has grown by an estimated 34%. For the US it was 45%. All nine of the world’s nuclear armed nations are increasing their nuclear budgets. Global spending increased by 13% during 2023. On current trends, nuclear weapons spending will surpass $100 billion in 2024.[10]

After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union both recognized how close they had come to a nuclear holocaust that would have obliterated both of them. This learning drove a process of détente and arms limitation, which helped generate the first ban on nuclear testing and a series of subsequent agreements limiting nuclear-armed missiles and other weapons of mass destruction. The limits placed on the nuclear arms race represented a shared recognition of the self-defeating folly of the quest for nuclear superiority. The renewed nuclear arms race represents a loss of that social learning – a loss of learning that is one of the hallmarks of the Polycrisis.

[1] Irene Mia, “The Armed Conflict Survey 2023,” International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS),Routledge, 2023. https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/armed-conflict-survey/2023/editors-introduction/

[2] “Uppsala Conflict Data Program,” Uppsala University. Accessed June 14, 2024. https://ucdp.uu.se.

[3] Tim Sahay. “A Year in Crises,” Phenomenal World, December 21, 2023. https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/a-year-in-crises/

[4] Adam Tooze. “Chartbook 258 War, peace and the return of history in 2023,” Chartbook, January 01, 2024. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-258-war-peace-and-the-return?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=adik0&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.

[5] Simon Tisdall. “From Gaza to Ukraine, brute force threatens to triumph in 2024,” The Guardian, January 6, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/from-gaza-to-ukraine-brute-force-threatens-to-triumph-in-2024.

[6] Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva, Xiao Liang and Lorenzo Scarazzato. “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023,” SIPRI, April 2024. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_milex_2023.pdf.  See also, Jim Lobe. “Who needs butter when you got guns? World arms spending reaches $2.5 trillion,” Responsible Statecraft, April 23, 2024. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/global-military-spending/.

[7] John Mecklin. “A moment of historic danger:

It is still 90 seconds to midnight,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 23, 2024. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/.

[8] “Russia simulates nuclear strike after opting out of treaty.” theguardian.com, October 25, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/25/russia-simulates-nuclear-strike-after-opting-out-of-treaty.

[9] “The nuclear arms race grows from two to three major competing powers,” washingtonpost.com, November 11, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/nuclear-posture-review-three-powers/.

[10] Dan Sabbagh, “Global spending on nuclear weapons up 13% in record rise,” The Guardian, June 17, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/17/global-spending-on-nuclear-weapons-up-13-in-record-rise

 

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The post The New Hot Wars first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

“Polycrisis” is a word that has recently come into use to characterize the way crises in many different spheres – ranging from geopolitics and economics to climate and pandemic – are aggravating each other and even converging. This commentary, the second in a series on “The Polycrisis and the Global Green New Deal,” gives an overview of polycrisis dynamics. Subsequent commentaries in this series will look at some of these dynamics in greater depth and at how the polycrisis can be addressed by the development of a global insurgency and a multi-level Green New Deal.

“Polycrisis” is a buzzword, but one that, like “globalization” a few decades ago, captures something important about what is going on in the world. Crises can no longer be understood as crises “in” international relations, economics, governance, or climate. Rather, the crises in these different spheres are increasingly aspects of the polycrisis.

The key concept for the polycrisis is interaction. It cannot be understood by simple cause-and-effect models within a single sector or even within the world order as a whole. The interaction of forces, acts, and events determines its patterns and its course.

There are many dynamics operating within the polycrisis; this commentary focuses on some of the most important ones. Obviously, others could be listed as well – and still others are likely to emerge as the polycrisis proceeds. However, these should be enough to show why no single aspect of the crisis in the world order can be understood, let alone addressed, without regard to the others.

There are contradictory tendencies both within and among these dynamics. For example, there is a fracturing of globalization but at the same time continued growth in world trade and the concentration of global economic power. Such contradictions make it of limited value to extrapolate these polycrisis dynamics into longer-term trends, other than the probability of increasing conflict and chaos.

I will sometimes use categories like geopolitics, deglobalization, governance, and climate. These are meant merely as categories of convenience. They are simply loose groupings of loosely related phenomena. They are not intended as analytical categories for understanding the polycrisis. On the contrary, the polycrisis is defined by the extent to which its dynamics cross all such categories.

Many topics will reemerge repeatedly both in this Commentary and throughout this series. That is a necessary consequence of the intertwined, interactive character of the polycrisis. Here is a synopsis of some of them.

Unleashed warfare: The past two years have seen more violent conflict than at any time since the end of World War II, according to the Uppsala conflict data program.[1] Great power rivalry has rapidly moved from a period of relative détente and unipolar US dominance, through the rising tensions of “the new cold war,” to direct military engagement with great power surrogates in Ukraine, the Asian Pacific, and the Middle East. The three great powers, China, Russia, and the US, are cajoling and bribing lesser countries to join their blocs. Lesser countries are resisting, trying to support each other in that resistance, playing off great powers against each other, and trying to make a cafeteria of alliances with different powers in different arenas. The whole dynamic has the eerie appearance of choosing up sides for World War III.

Vicious circles of conflict: While great powers may perceive their own actions, such as augmenting preparation for war, as defensive, they are often perceived by their opponents as aggressive and threatening. They may therefore be met with actions that further escalate conflict. The result is an interactive “vicious circle” of escalation. This process can often lead to results that are intended by nobody but that have devastating consequences for the protagonists as well as for bystanders – World War I is often held up as a classic example. The current arms race and expansion of weapons production is another obvious example. Threats to use nuclear weapons from officials in Russia and Israel, along with the termination of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty — the cornerstone of the transition from the Cold War to an international arms control regime – indicate where such uncontrolled escalating conflict is headed. The cycle of escalation can be seen in the threat by France that NATO troops might be sent to Ukraine, followed by Russia’s counter-threat that NATO troops in Ukraine would mean war with Russia with a high risk of nuclear war that would destroy Europe.

Breakdown of international cooperation: The world’s great problems can only be addressed through international cooperation. Such cooperation has never been strong but it has been real, operating through the various branches of the United Nations, through cooperation among governments, and through international organizations of many kinds. But even this weak cooperation has been undermined by the predominance of geopolitics and other aspects of the polycrisis. This is evident in the arena of security, where periodic attempts at international cooperation have been blocked by the ambitions of the great powers. It is obvious in the failure of international cooperation to protect the earth’s climate. It is apparent in the decline of economic cooperation and the rise of economic nationalism and rival blocs. It is clear in the failure of global public health cooperation in the face of the COVID pandemic and the weakness of subsequent cooperation to prevent or contain future pandemics. And it is revealed in the failure to control the widely recognized threats of new technologies, such as nanotechnology, drones, and Artificial Intelligence.

Thucydides trap: At the end of the Cold War the US had its “unipolar moment” of global hegemony, but now faces economic, political, and military challenges from countries around the world. While no power currently seeks to replace the US as global hegemon, many countries and regions are resisting the efforts of the US to control them. In a pattern well-known in history and often characterized as the “Thucydides trap,” the rising wealth and power of China is coming into conflict with the desire of a hegemonic United States to maintain its global dominance. The polycrisis is greatly aggravated by the US belief that the loss of US domination is the cause of the polycrisis and that restoring unipolarity and global domination is both feasible and the key to overcoming the polycrisis. In reality, no increase in US geopolitical and military power is likely to contain let alone reverse the polycrisis. Conversely, there is little reason to believe the polycrisis can be resolved simply by weakening US power and replacing it with a polycentric world order of less great but still self-aggrandizing states.

War crime wave: Mass atrocity violence has grown rapidly, due to the proliferation of wars, the support by the geopolitically motivated great powers for their own and their allies’ war crimes, and the abandonment of UN and other international implementations of the “duty to protect.” The killing of 1,200 Israelis, followed by the killing of more than 36,000 (and counting) Palestinians. These war crimes followed the mass killing of civilians in Syria and Ukraine, the internment of one million Uyghurs and other Muslims in China, war crimes in Ethiopia, ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province, and the displacement of two million Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar. Kate Ferguson of the NGO Protection Approaches says, “We face the likelihood that this violence is going to characterize the next political era. In fact, I wonder if we’re not already in that era.”[2]

Fragmented globalization: For the four decades after 1980 a process of economic globalization increasingly integrated the global economy. Soviet, Chinese, and US trade blocs largely dissolved. Companies moved production around the globe to wherever labor, environmental, and other costs were lowest. Production developed into a transnational “global assembly line.” Huge financial flows raced around the globe – often producing global financial crises. International trade agreements and institutions like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization moved the world toward a single little-regulated market. But, largely as a result of growing economic nationalism and burgeoning great power conflict, economic warfare has broken out among the great powers. The US is trying to hobble Chinese economic development, for example by its “chip war” intended to prevent China from accessing advanced computer chip technology. In the context of the Ukraine war, the EU and Russia have battled over energy trade. US industrial policy to subsidize “green” production in the US has been seen in Europe as the opening of a trade war to make European clean energy goods uncompetitive in the US market. While this process is sometimes described as “deglobalization,” in fact transnational economic activity continues to grow, but in the form of a struggle to control fragmented transnational economic networks.

“Deglobalization” is not, however, leading to a restoration of the integrated national economies that preceded the era of globalization; in 2023 goods traded across borders reached an all-time high.[3] Rather, deglobalization is leading to bullying designed to line up countries in support of one or another superpower. For example, US semiconductor companies, at the instigation of the US government, recently coerced a Persian Gulf technology company to break off cooperation with Chinese manufacturers. While such coercive “friendshoring” could potentially lead to the re-emergence of trade blocs, at present it is creating more of an economic war of all against all. Lesser countries and businesses seek to “mix and match” their allegiances, but they meet heavy pressure to choose up sides.

Geopolitics trumps all: Deglobalization is part of a broader trend: the subsumption of the economic and indeed all else to the geopolitical conflict of the great powers. The slogan of the Clinton era, “It’s the economy, stupid!” is being reversed to read “It’s the enemy, stupid!” Whether in trade, health, energy, or political alliances, geopolitical “necessities” are increasingly overriding all other public, and even private, interests.

Inequality: The dynamics of plutocratic policymaking, crony capitalism, deregulation, detaxation, and subsidy of fossil fuels and the wealthy are driving more extreme inequality. Despite the fragmentation of globalization, global concentration and centralization of capital continue apace; consider, for example, Nippon’s pending purchase of U.S. Steel. Since 1995, the share of global wealth possessed by billionaires has tripled, from 1% to over 3%; 2020 marked the steepest increase in global billionaires’ share of wealth on record. The share of wealth of the global top 0.01% rose from 7% in 1995 to 11% in 2021. Over the past two decades the gap between the average incomes of the top 10% and the bottom 50% of individuals within countries has almost doubled. The share of income presently captured by the poorest half of the world’s people is about half what it was 200 years ago. The poorest half of the world’s people own just 2% of total wealth, while the richest 10% of the global population own 76%.[4]

Democracy deficit: Ostensibly most of the world’s governments are in some sense democracies. The great majority of them hold some kind of elections that purportedly select their national leaders. Historically the extent to which ordinary people have been able to influence the actions of their governments has varied from country to country and from time to time. However, everywhere at all times it has been quite limited, even in the most “democratic” countries. The ability of ordinary people to make governments serve their interests and wishes has sharply diminished throughout the world. The dominance of neoliberal practice has delegitimated action by government to serve public purposes. The capacity of governments to shape social realities has declined in tandem. With the worldwide concentration of wealth and the power it provides, most governments have moved closer to what can be described without exaggeration as plutocracies, in which actual power resides with a tiny minority of wealthy individuals and organizations. The inability of government to provide benefits for ordinary people has led to deep popular alienation from the institutions of government and politics. At the supranational level, there is little if any institutionalized opportunity for ordinary people to affect global governance and the world order.

Rise of fascist and para-fascist movements: Extreme right and fascist movements have arisen in many places around the world and have won governing authority or participation in governing coalitions in Argentina, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, India, and Israel – not to mention the once and perhaps future President Donald Trump in the US. While these movements vary somewhat from country to country, they have strong common themes, including fear of and hostility toward immigrants; anti-feminism, homophobia and transphobia; and a backlash against perceived progressive social change, such as the now worldwide “war on woke.”[5] All scorn democratic principles; encourage violence; scapegoat disempowered social groups; follow charismatic leaders; and whip up a mass base.[6]  These movements are linking up through international organizations and networks and are providing each other support.

Climate crisis: The last months of 2023 were the hottest in 125,000 years. Global warming is causing heat waves, disease outbreaks, floods, droughts, and melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. The longer-term business-as-usual structure of the world order, with its nation-state rivalry, great power dominance, drive for unlimited capital accumulation, domination of governments by fossil fuel interests and the wealthy, and pathetically inadequate capacity to represent global human interests, has been more than adequate to promote the continuation and expansion of fossil fuel extraction and burning. But the polycrisis is aggravating the climate crisis and making it more intractable. For example, after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, government financing for fossil fuels increased sharply and subsidies almost doubled from 2020 rates.[7] Meanwhile, the climate crisis is aggravating other aspects of the polycrisis. Drought in Panama, for example, has cut the number of ships that can go through the Panama Canal by half, aggravating supply chain pressures and therefore inflation.[8] Desertification has forced mass migration, which in turn has provided fodder for anti-immigrant fascist and para-fascist movements in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. The earth has recently passed a number of irreversible climate “tipping points” that will guarantee additional global warming even if fossil fuel burning is reduced.

Incoherence: In the complex, contradictory, chaotic world of the polycrisis, apparent trends and tendencies conflict. In that context, policies of nation states and other actors are likely to be incoherent and even self-contradictory, producing unintended side effects far different from their intent. For example, US interest in a two-state solution in Palestine has been combined with unwavering support for an Israel that has said it will oppose a two-state solution under all conditions. A purported commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been combined with a licensing of huge fossil fuel extraction projects in Alaska and the Gulf South.

Unpredictability: The polycrisis as a whole and the interaction of its different elements make rational anticipation of future developments extremely difficult. Consider the unanticipated eruption of the COVID pandemic; the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war; and the war and genocide in Gaza. The subsidies and trade barriers the US erected to block import of “green” goods from China also caused disruption in the economies of its European allies. European restrictions on Russian fossil fuel exports led to a boom in Russian energy sales in the rest of the world. US support for Israeli genocide in Gaza led to unanticipated attacks in the Red Sea by the Houthi.

While all these examples could to some extent have been predicted, they were no more certain than many other events that were just as reasonably predicted, but that did not in fact transpire. In 2023 escalating conflict between the US and China over Taiwan and massive currency defaults were both widely predicted, for example, but did not transpire. The policies of Donald Trump during his presidency were so self-contradictory and erratic that efforts at predicting them would have been absurd; the same applies to a possible future Trump presidency. (Such wild shifts and inexplicabilities have been normal in past fascist regimes.) Perhaps the only thing that can be confidently predicted in the polycrisis is the likelihood of intensified unpredictability.

Decline of social learning: Governments and societies can learn from the feedback from their actions. After the devastation of the Great Depression, countries around the world adopted financial regulation and Keynesian budgetary policies to stabilize the growth of their economies. After coming to the verge of nuclear holocaust in the Cuban Missile Crisis, US President John Kennedy backed away from Cold War belligerence and moved toward advocating a form of common security; the US and the Soviet Union began moving toward détente and arms control. After the string of financial crises that culminated in the Great Recession, many developing countries began accumulating financial reserves to protect against currency crises. But so far there is scant evidence of any social learning regarding the dynamics of the polycrisis. Military build-ups and aggression seem to be met with arms races and further aggression. The cascading evidence of climate catastrophe is met by doubling down on fossil fuel extraction and burning. No feedback loops seem to connect these actual results to the actors and actions that could correct their causes.

The folly factor: Perhaps the most pervasive dynamic of the polycrisis is folly. Rational pursuit of self-interest has become increasingly scarce in the polycrisis. This is evident in the incoherent, self-contradictory, foolish behavior of powerful institutions. Governments and corporations pursue expansion of fossil fuel extraction and burning even though they have every reason to know that it will lead to their own destruction. Countries engage in military build-ups, even though they have every reason to know that they will only provoke reciprocal build-ups among their opponents, leading to augmented mutual threat. Corporations fight to dismantle financial regulation, even though experience has shown that such deregulation will lead to greater financial crashes. But it is also folly for the people of the world to acquiesce or even participate in the destruction of our world. To engage in actions every day that may be intended to provide a better life, but that in practice are destroying the very basis of wellbeing for ourselves and our progeny. To allow ourselves to be sucked along by the blandishments of the powerful.

While folly has been an abiding feature of human life, today’s polycrisis grows out of and also augments the fundamental folly that, in today’s world, self-preservation can be attained without common preservation.[9]

Fixing one or another aspects of the polycrisis is unlikely to establish stability, let alone sustainability or justice. Nor is change – even revolutionary change — in one or another nation likely to long resist the dynamics of the polycrisis. There is little reason to think that the disordering of the world order will automatically lead to socialism or some other possibly more positive alternative. But the polycrisis does foreclose some old and open some new possibilities for collective action. We will explore these in later commentaries in this series.

[1] Uppsala conflict data program, Uppsala conflict data program. See also Paul Post, “Not a World War, But a World at War,” The Atlantic, November 17, 2023 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/11/conflicts-around-the-world-peak/676029/#

[2] Julian Borger. “World Faces ‘Heightened Risk’ of Mass Atrocities due to Global Inaction.” The Guardian, December 8, 2023, sec. Law. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/08/un-and-us-efforts-to-stop-mass-atrocities-have-waned-activists-warn.

[3] Tim Sahay. “A Year in Crises.” Phenomenal World. December 21, 2023. https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/a-year-in-crises/.

[4] World Inequality Report. “The World #InequalityReport 2022 Presents the Most Up-To-Date & Complete Data on Inequality Worldwide”: World Inequality Report 2022. October 9, 2021. https://wir2022.wid.world/executive-summary/.

[5] Walden Bello, “Fascism 101: Why We Need to Spell It out ” 2023. Portside.org. December 22, 2023. https://portside.org/2023-12-22/fascism-101-why-we-need-spell-it-out?utm_source=portside-general&utm_medium=email

[6] Alberto Toscano, “The Rise of the Far Right Is a Global Phenomenon.” In These Times, November 21, 2023. https://inthesetimes.com/article/global-far-right-meloni-milei-putin-bannon-orban?link_id=5&can_id=1058857240102273c369153e44c89a13&source=email-escalating-settler-violence-in-the-west-bank-dont-pave-paradise-your-neighbor-the-nuke-maker&email_referrer=email_2139925&email_subject=donald-trump-makes-a-mockery-of-populism-why-workers-are-dying-from-heat.

[7] Fiona Harvey, “World behind on almost every policy required to cut carbon emissions, research finds.” The Guardian, November 14, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/14/world-behind-on-almost-every-policy-required-to-cut-carbon-emissions-research-finds.

[8] Jonathan Yerushalmy. “Changing Climate Casts a Shadow over the Future of the Panama Canal – and Global Trade.” The Guardian, December 22, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/22/changing-climate-casts-a-shadow-over-the-future-of-the-panama-canal-and-global-trade.

[9] Jeremy Brecher, Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2021). Many of the systems concepts that underlie the interpretation in this commentary are developed further in this book.

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Jack Zhou works as a social scientist at the Climate Advocacy Lab, an organization that provides training, research support, and connections to climate, clean energy, and climate justice organizers across the US. Jack has a long-standing interest in bringing together green groups, environmental justice organizations, and organized labor to work in solidarity for policy solutions across lines of race, class, and political perspectives. He is the co-author of the Blueprint for a Multiracial, Cross-Class Climate Movement project, which produced a report and workbook with insights on how climate coalitions can be more effective, healthy, and resilient in their shared work. He recently helped organize a convening in Los Angeles that connected staff from LNS and other leaders from across the climate movement to expand on the Blueprint project’s multiracial, cross-class framework. The purpose of the convening was to help participants better understand each others’ perspectives, build relationships, define shared values, and explore alignment on strategic visions. Jack lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Liz and dog Starbuck.

The post LNS Spotlight: Jack Zhou first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

As the Chicago Teachers Union opened contract negotiations with the city this  June its “Green Schools Initiative” was a central demand. According to Stacy Davis Gates, president of the CTU, “This is Chicago Teachers Union’s demonstration of our accountability to our larger community. Our collective bargaining agreement and our coalition work, especially in communities of color, will be a net benefit to everyone.”

Following the model of last year’s successful UAW negotiations, CTU is opening their bargaining to the public for the first time, both online and in person. Union leaders are using the occasion to highlight the issues they think resonate most with the public — using the first session to bargain over “healthy, safe, green schools.” It included testimony from parents and community groups about environmental justice.

According to an article in E&E News, the negotiations illustrate the growing alignment between the climate and labor movements, which historically have clashed over the energy transition. Worsening climate impacts, such as the wildfire smoke that blanketed Chicago last year, have helped push some unions to embrace climate action as a workplace issue.

Demands of the Green School Initiative include:

• Net-zero emissions in schools district-wide by 2035.
• Solar panels, heat pumps, and composting programs in the 50 schools that most often experience extreme temperature problems.
• A fully electrified school bus fleet.
• A moratorium on new gas heaters.
• A “carbon neutral schools” pilot program at five schools — with a goal of cutting energy costs 30 percent by the end of the next school year.
• Windows that can open in every school.
• Removal of lead pipes from all buildings.
• A “climate champion” for each school to coordinate climate initiatives.
• Heating and cooling centers that would be available to the community during extreme weather.
• New clean energy education programs at every neighborhood high school, starting with those in environmental justice communities.
• At least three new carbon-free schools to replace the most outdated ones.

Source: https://www.eenews.net/articles/chicago-teachers-demand-climate-action-in-union-contract/

To contact the Educators Climate Action Network:  https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-the-educators-climate-action-network-2/

The post Chicago Teachers Union Demands Climate Contract first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

More than 30 labor, environmental, and health groups are urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to unlock crucial disaster relief funding for extreme heat and wildfire smoke, neither of which are recognized by FEMA as major disasters.

Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO, said,

 After the hottest year on record in 2023 and new heat records broken already this year, it is clear that labor protections aren’t keeping up with the escalation of the climate crisis. Too many workers are exposed to extreme heat and wildfire smoke on the job without adequate safety measures in place. Not only do we need to develop strong worker protection standards to meet the demand of the changing environment and intensifying climate disasters, we need the federal government to take action now to release resources. The AFL-CIO calls on FEMA to swiftly classify heat and wildfires as ‘major disasters’ under the Stafford Act to ensure workers and their communities — especially marginalized communities — have the resources they need to prepare for and respond to the ongoing threats of climate change. FEMA has the power to save lives — and we urge them to use that power to meet this emergency with the urgency it deserves.”

Jean Su, energy justice director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said,

It’s past time for FEMA to address the climate emergency head-on. That means unlocking crucial funding for local governments to build robust and resilient solutions like community solar and storage, cooling centers and air filtration. That’s a critical way we can protect workers and vulnerable communities from the ravages of the climate emergency.

The post Labor and Allies Demand FEMA Address Climate Emergency first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

The Labor Network for Sustainability recently co-sponsored a webinar on “Climate Justice at Work” with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. The panel featured Starbucks worker and union member Mad Austin, Washington State farmworker unionist Alfredo Juarez, Lauren Bianchi, head of the Chicago Teachers Union climate justice committee, and solar worker Joseph Salcido of the Green Workers Alliance. and Maria Brescia-Weiler of LNS and Mijin Cha, co-author of the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition: Report of the Just Transition Listening Project,” (March 2021) helped introduce the program.

To see the webinar: Here’s the link.

The post Climate Justice at Work first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.