Asia

By Raluca Besliu - Green European Journaly, May 3, 2024

In India’s ongoing elections, economic and social issues are intertwined with rising temperatures and declining agricultural harvests. While Indian farmers are the worst affected, the climate path of the world’s most populous country and third-largest emitter affects us all – and there are things the EU could do to help.

The world’s largest democratic exercise is currently underway, with Indian voters heading to the polls for nationwide elections. In this elaborate and lengthy process, spanning from 19 April to 1 June, nearly one billion Indians will elect 543 representatives to the lower house, known as the Lok Sabha. The outcome will define the country’s leadership: polls predict the incumbent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will win a clear victory, with the main opposition, the centre-left National Congress Party, trailing far behind. 

With the world’s fastest-expanding economy and a young and growing population, India grapples with a multitude of issues. Of key concern to the Indian electorate is the persistent challenge of unemployment, slightly higher than in 2014 when Modi came to power with promises of widespread job creation. The rise of an aggressive Hindu nationalism under Modi’s leadership, which promotes Hindu “values” as intrinsically those of the nation, has also stirred unease among religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. 

Yet while these important issues dominate the headlines, something else lurks beneath the surface: climate change. It subtly shapes voter demands through the lens of anxieties about livelihoods and welfare, as growing parts of the electorate experience its harsh consequences first-hand in the form of scorching droughts, heatwaves, and torrential rains.

India is the world’s third-largest carbon emitter. Given its critical role in global climate action, the implications of the election outcome extend far beyond the country’s borders. The EU and other global stakeholders should thus closely monitor its results not just for the impact they will have on domestic affairs, but for international climate efforts. 

By Sabrina Fernandes, Hamza Hamouchene, Miriam Lang, and John Feffer - Institute for Policy Studies, April 21, 2024

By Chayuda Boonrod - Capire, April 5, 2024

Chayuda Boonrod is a member of the Assembly of the Poor (AoP), a grassroots organization based in Thailand that struggles for self-determination and right to resources with both rural and urban communities. Her participation in the struggle comes from her family, who is involved in the struggle for land in the country.

Chayuda shared with us aspects of the current political context of Thailand, and the struggle of AoP against dams’ impacts in the country. The Assembly of the Poor is active in the struggle against dams since it was formed, on September 10th, 1995. “I was born on the 31st, so I’m 21 days younger than the organization. Growing up, I saw my family, my aunts, and uncles, everyone that I know, engaging in one way or another with our organization and La Via Campesina” said Chayuda.

This interview was conducted during the 8th International Conference of La Via Campesina, held in December 2023 in Bogotá, Colombia. Together with La Via Campesina, AoP members have participated in activities both in the country and abroad. About this relationship between these two organizations, she adds: “We have many people from LVC coming to visit and study the communities”. Besides that, AoP hosted the LVC Asia Youth meeting, held on Oct 2022 in Surat Thani, Thailand. Read the full interview below.

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 5, 2023

The International Peasants movement, La Via Campesina, opened its 8th International Conference on the 3rd of December in Bogotá, Colombia. Comprised of 182 farmers’ organizations from 81 countries, La Via Campesina holds its International Conference every four years, but the 8th was held six years after the 7th Conference held in Bilbao, Spain in 2017 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the opening of the plenary session, the Youth Assembly was held on the first day, and then the Women’s, Men Against Patriarchy, and Gender Diversity assemblies were held on the second day. The 8th International Conference is scheduled to run for eight days from December, 1 to 8.

From South Korea, Kim Jung-yeol, ICC member for La Via Campesina Southeast and East Asia, Yoon Geum-soon, former ICC member for Southeast and East Asia, Kwon Oh-hyun, Vice Chair of the Korean Peasants League (KPL), Yang Ok-hee, President of the Korean Women Peasants Association (KWPA), Lee Jun-kyu, secretary general of the Goesan KPL, and Kim Ji-young, secretary general of the Jeju Daejeong-eup KWPA are participating as delegates.

The 8th International Conference will mark the 30th anniversary of La Via Campesina, which was founded in 1993, and will focus on reflecting on its progress, sharing the experiences of peasants around the world in the face of climate change, war, and other threats, and outlining the activities of La Via Campesina’s affiliated farmer organizations around the world for the next four years. In particular, the Conference will consolidate the meaning of the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Peasants on December 17th, 2018, and will focus more on the need to strengthen international solidarity for the realization of peasants’ rights and the achievement of food sovereignty.

The opening ceremony, which took place on the 3rd of December, was led by the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations Council (CLOC), which played a key role in the preparation of the Conference. On that day, CLOC held a symbolic ceremony emphasizing solidarity, struggle, and unity, holding up signs on communication, agroecology, and land reform, and eliciting a response from the anticolonialist participants.

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 4, 2023

On the afternoon of Sunday, December 3^rd, La Via Campesina representatives from every continent and Palestine offered critical analyses of their regional contexts, drawing connections between the climate crisis, migration, and political instability. This is a critical component of building and advancing a global movement for food sovereignty to foster critical consciousness of disparate geographic realities, struggles and victories.

César Villanova, a LVC representative from El Salvador, shared that Latin America is one of the final critical battlegrounds in the struggle against neoimperialism. A war is being fought over the blood—that is the resources—of Latin America, and that war is not simply symbolic but very real, and felt in territories from Mexico and El Salvador, through Colombia, and to the south in Chile.

Building upon Villanova’s discussion of territorial conflict, Albert Bahana Manzambi (COPACO, Democratic Republic of Congo), next offered insights into the African experience, emphasizing that a number of multinational corporations are pushing to destabilize Africa. “We see the lack of security increasing,” Bahana Manzambi suggested, “taking the form of increasing coup d’états and contestation governments.” Importantly, this lack of security is deeply rooted in questions of food sovereignty, and its interconnections with the political context. Bahana Manzambi drove home the point that “there is no security, and no one is protecting peasants”. The question of political instability is driving an increasingly grave migration crisis. “People are fleeing to Europe, and are trying desperately to get there in whatever way possible, and are dying on the way, and when they die, whole families are lost, children, partners; everyone is losing.”

By staff - Equidem, November 20, 2023

Workers at the heart of the United Arab Emirates's renewable and gig sectors, and at the site that will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) have left homes in Africa and Asia because of climate change only to be subjected to physical abuse, heat stress, exploitation and discrimination, a new report from Equidem reveals. Serious labour violations have taken place at the site of COP28, Expo City, as well as at five renewable energy firms, including Siemens Energy. 

Based on correspondence with 248 workers, and interviews with 102, the expansive report offers unprecedented insight into the renewables, construction, security, and delivery sectors in the UAE, shedding light on both industrial and service sector working conditions for 9 million migrant workers. 

The shining facilities at Expo City Dubai boast internationally lauded solar and wind parks and a booming local gig economy. Underneath that cheerful exterior, however, women and men from some of the poorest countries on earth are falling victim to an unjust transition: Migrant workers from Africa and Asia are being subjected to serious human rights abuses in a nation whose oil and gas-powered economy is at the heart of the planet’s climate crisis. 

“Hosting this peak global conference in a climate and rights abusing state was bad enough. Equidem’s research starkly reveals that the UAE is failing on almost every metric of the UN’s own human rights benchmarks for addressing climate change through the COP process,” said Mustafa Qadri, CEO of Equidem. 

Abuses include workplace violence, wage theft, working in extreme heat and other occupational health and safety risks, nationality-based discrimination, exploitative hiring practices, understaffing and overwork, lack of opportunities for promotion, overcrowded accommodations, inadequate food allowances, and inadequate channels for workers to seek relief from these violations. 

Investigations by Equidem were carried out between February and October 2023 at Expo City Dubai and in the renewables and delivery sectors, including at Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Al Dhafra Solar Power Project, Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Plant, Sir Bani Yas Wind Farm Project; and in the delivery sector in the UAE. 

• Together, 57% of the migrant workers interviewed come from climate impacted areas of Asia and Africa.
• 41 % of the workers reported nationality-based discrimination.
• 77.% of the workers in renewable sector reported living in overcrowded accommodations, with up to 20 people in a room fit for six or fewer workers.
• 83% of the African and Asian workers interviewed reported being unable to afford nutritious and healthy food.
• 40% of the workers said they were skipping meals.

Equidem’s research found that African and Asian workers have migrated for employment based upon climate impacts in their own country, and then find employment in the industrial and service sectors in the UAE. These migrant workers are doubly impacted by the global climate crisis—they migrate in response to climate impacts and find employment in exploitative industrial and service contexts where they work long hours in extreme heat. These rights violations take place against a backdrop of racially delineated exclusion from labour rights protections, denial of freedom of association, and authoritarian suppression of dissent in the UAE. 

Download a copy of this publication here (Link).

By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes - EcoWatch, October 20, 2023

As participants and representatives from nearly 200 countries gear up for next month’s COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, some of the preparations have been found to be very dangerous and potentially deadly.

According to a new investigation, This Weather Isn’t for Humans, by nonprofit human rights research and advocacy group FairSquare, migrant workers were working outdoors in extreme heat last month to prepare conference facilities for the talks.

The work conditions they were subjected to posed serious health threats and were “in clear violation” of laws intended to protect workers from the country’s harsh climate, a press release from FairSquare said.

On two days last month, workers were working outside in high heat and humidity during the “midday ban,” a law that prohibits working outdoors during the hottest parts of the day in the summer in order to protect workers from dangerous heat exposure, according to testimonies and visual evidence gathered by researchers, reported The Guardian.

By Pramesh Pokharel - La Via Campesina, April 17, 2023

By Tuna Emren, Jonathan Neale and Ammar Ali Jan - Global Climate Jobs, September 19, 2022

By staff - Greenpeace East Asia, September 2022

US seafood company Bumble Bee, one of the leading companies in the canned tuna market with nearly 90% consumer awareness levels,1 and its Taiwanese parent company Fong Chun Formosa Fishery Company (hereinafter referred to as FCF), one of the top three global tuna traders, play an important role in the global tuna industry, and thus hold responsibility over the health of our ocean, the treatment of those working in the tuna supply chain and consumer choices. Both companies have policies on sustainability and corporate social responsibility that are supposed to extend through their supply chain, but according to the analysis in this report, neither are meeting their responsibilities.

This report finds that the information on Bumble Bee’s “Trace My Catch” website, which enables consumers to track the source of their tuna product from catch to can, is insufficient and in some cases incorrect. In a number of cases Greenpeace East Asia's analysis found that the company was sourcing fish from vessels that had engaged in or were suspected of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, forced labor, and/or human rights abuses. Therefore, Bumble Bee may not be fulfilling its responsibility and commitment to environmental sustainability and human rights, and without consumers’ knowledge seafood tainted with IUU and forced labor may have already entered the US market.

Based on 732 valid Bumble Bee tuna product codes, this report finds that Bumble Bee tuna was sourced from 290 different vessels, almost half of which are Taiwanese-flagged (119) or owned (22) distant water fishing vessels according to the information on Trace My Catch. In addition, some information on their Trace My Catch website contradicts official information from the Taiwan Fisheries Agency about where the supply vessel was authorized to fish. Verifying the vessel's location against a third data source- Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from Global Fishing Watch, revealed that 28 fishing vessels’ fishing area information provided by Bumble Bee’s traceability tool was incorrect. In addition, 13 fishing vessels that supplied tuna to Bumble Bee were listed on TFA’s website for IUU fishing.

Based on interviews with nine fishers on six Taiwanese vessels that supplied Bumble Bee, it was found that all nine fishers had experienced or observed at least one of the International Labor Organization (ILO) indicators of forced labor,3 and six out of those nine fishers had experienced or observed four or more of the 11 indicators. All of the fishers interviewed said they have experienced excessive overtime and retention of identity documents, and over two-thirds of them had their wages withheld.

Greenpeace East Asia research found that Bumble Bee canned tuna collected from Harris Teeter (a wholly owned subsidiary of Kroger Co.) in Arlington, Virginia on April 12, 2022 was sourced from DA WANG, a Taiwanese-owned vessel confirmed to use forced labor by US Customs and Border Protection.4 In April 2022, Taiwanese authorities indicted the vessel captain, first mate, and seven others for their involvement for forced labor and human trafficking. Bumble Bee's Trace My Catch website lists the source of this tuna as DA WANG on a trip in 2019, during which a fisher was reportedly beaten and died at sea. This leads to strong inference that seafood tainted with forced labor has already been sold in the US market.

On another Taiwanese fishing vessel, DE CHAN NO.116 evidence was revealed from Greenpeace East Asia interviews with fishers as well as Global Fishing Watch AIS data of suspected IUU fishing, including alleged shark finning and illegal transshipment at sea. The alleged illegal activities took place during a period when the ship was supplying tuna to Bumble Bee according to Trace My Catch.

Greenpeace East Asia urges immediate action from Bumble Bee and FCF, including issuing an apology to the exploited fishers, retailers and consumers, removing products suspected of IUU and forced labor-tainted tuna from the market, disclosure of their supplying vessels list, and establishment of an independent investigation committee for the flaw of Trace My Catch, to address issues of sustainability, legality and forced labor in their supply chain.

Read the text (Link).