Africa

By Jang Su-ji - La Via Campesina, January 10, 2024

Peasants around the globe find themselves at the forefront of the intensifying climate crisis, grappling with scorching droughts, heatwaves, torrential downpours, typhoons, and hailstorms. The adverse impacts of climate change is escalating rapidly, posing a direct threat to agriculture and food production worldwide. The 8th International Conference of La Via Campesina, held in Bogotá, Colombia, in December, provided a space for its members – small-holder farmers from more than 80 countries – to highlight the ongoing crises in their territories.

Chilean beekeepers, who spoke during the meeting, explained how they were among those who bore the brunt of this crisis. Extreme droughts had ignited forest fires, wreaking havoc on their livelihoods. In Turkey, according to peasant accounts, agricultural production plummeted by 50-60% in 2023 due to climate change effects, and the government’s responses, such as investing in solar panels on farmland and promoting electric vehicles, faced criticism for their inadequacy and unintended consequences – as they often came up on greenfield and fertile lands. In Sri Lanka, floods and droughts regularly disrupt farming, exacerbated by the government’s sale of natural resources to multinational corporations, leading to deforestation and hindering tea cultivation. Cambodian peasants explained how they grapple with the fallout of repeated typhoons, floods, and severe droughts, causing a 30% decline in agricultural production and forcing rural youth to migrate, jeopardizing food security.

Senegalese peasants also shared about their challenges. Fisherfolk and farmers are losing jobs due to flooding, prompting calls for international prosecution of transnational corporations responsible for climate impacts. Guatemalan peasants recounted how they are combating water resource depletion and forest loss, promoting agroecological farming to respond to climate change. Paraguayan peasants, facing deforestation and fires, are also advocating for agroecology as a solution. Those who came from Niger shared their experiences of severe food crises due to temperature increases, drought, and flooding, emphasizing the need to reduce carbon emissions and produce locally accessible agricultural products.

In Palestine, the combination of war and occupation accelerated climate change, diminishing agricultural production and food sovereignty. Palestinian peasants confront the accelerated impact of climate change under Israeli occupation, with olive trees being cut down, water resources seized, and high water prices imposed.

The Korean peasants who spoke at the Conference urged global unity against capitalist forces and multinational corporations to address the social and environmental aspects of the climate crisis. They also reflected on the global impact of the climate crisis, highlighting unpredictable losses for farmers and advocating against agrochemicals. This found echo among the French peasants who also called for international solidarity, prioritizing agroecology, and exposing false solutions and colonialist land grabs. Brazilian peasants who spoke at the event decried transnational corporations exploiting land and people, emphasizing the importance of concrete proposals and alternative solutions.

Congolese peasants asserted that the fight against climate change was a collective struggle, emphasizing biodiversity conservation and ecological agriculture for healthy food and planet protection. Honduran peasants stressed the importance of supporting agroecology schools and international aid to combat climate change. Peasants in the Dominican Republic emphasized the need to mobilize against neoliberal policies, capitalism, and imperialism in both rural and urban areas, advocating for large-scale campaigns to shift to ecological agriculture and achieve food sovereignty.

These testimonies of peasants worldwide revealed a shared struggle against the escalating climate crisis. From South America to Asia and Africa, the call for sustainable alternatives, such as agroecology, and the denouncement of inadequate responses and corporate exploitation echoed a united plea for global action to safeguard the future of agriculture and food production.

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 staff - La Via Campesina, November 2, 2023

On 27th October 2023, ESAFF Uganda, through the ESAFF Women Forum together with partners, organised the 5th Women in Agriculture (WiA) Conference, an annual event that empowers small-scale women in agriculture. This year, with support from Oxfam in Uganda, Humundi and GIZ, the 5th National Women in Agriculture (WiA) Conference was conducted under the theme “Equal access and control of agricultural resources for all”. Small-scale women from 54 districts under the ESAFF Women Forum, a platform set up by ESAFF Uganda to purposefully position women’s issues for policy and practice change in Uganda. Apart from small-scale farmers, the conference also attracted local leaders, investors, and farmer leaders, among others. The discussions focused on the constraints they face in accessing equal rights of agricultural resources and what should be done for them to have equal access.

The National Chairperson ESAFF Uganda Mr Hakim Baliraine, acknowledged that 88% of women in Uganda engage in agriculture, and from the majority of the ESAFF Uganda membership districts, women have been empowered in different capacities to enable them to achieve equal access to agricultural resources. “Over 70% of the women empowered by ESAFF Uganda know their land rights, and they have come to appreciate and believe that the resilient way of farming is agroecology. Women small-scale farmers can now fight for their resources for production.” Mr. Hakim added.

During the conference, women small-scale farmer leaders highlighted key agricultural resource challenges, including access to land, access to water, access to quality seeds and access to finance, among others.

By Jennifer Kamau - Berliner Gazette, October 16, 2023

Jennifer Kamau · Climate Proletariat from Berliner Gazette on Vimeo.

By Mamadou Goïta, et. al. - La Via Campesina, October 2023

African agriculture and food systems are evolving in an increasingly volatile context, impacted by climate change, conflicts, fragile and iniquitous globalised food systems, successive food crises, and unaddressed structural causes. Africa is one of the first victims of existing global inequalities, with a generally subordinate economic position, a limited voice in political decisions affecting the continent and its nations, and an extremely unequal distribution of the costs and benefits stemming from the exploitation of natural resources. In this context, the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), widely denounced by people’s movements around the world as undemocratic and illegitimate, sought to kickstart a global process towards “food system transformation” and urged countries to develop their own “national pathways” for achieving this goal. The Dakar 2 – ‘Feed Africa Summit’ in January 2023, sponsored by the African Development Bank, also enjoined countries to present “national compacts” emphasising private sector investment.

African governments are calling for an end to dependence on food imports. However, instead of supporting peasant agroecology and territorial markets, they often favour a “modernisation” approach, focusing on investment in specialised crops and zones, privileging privatised seeds and so-called modern technologies, relying heavily on foreign private investment and promoting export-oriented value chains. The national pathways designed by African governments within the framework of the UNFSS, like the national compacts presented at the Dakar 2 Summit, could further reinforce this trend. This is why African peasant’s organisations (POs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) have decided to conduct their own autonomous assessment of these developments.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, January 21, 2023

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation, November 21, 2022

Governments from the global south finally achieved a long fought for agreement to establish a fund to compensate “loss and damage” from climate change related events in developing countries.. The challenge is now to provide the necessary finance for the fund and to make it operational by COP28.

The trade union movement welcomes the establishment of a work program on just transition. The “Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan” asserts that Just Transition is founded on Social Dialogue.

Sharan Burrow, outgoing ITUC General Secretary, said: “Workers must have a place at the table for a transition that stabilises the planet, economies and our societies. Transition plans need to include both climate and employment plans. That requires unions to be involved and own the process, otherwise we risk stoking the fear of those who feel left behind and left out of decision making.”

Inclusion of social protection a major step forward

Eric Manzi, ITUC-Africa Deputy General Secretary, said: “To build resilience for workers, families and communities, comprehensive and universal social protection systems are needed. We need to see the funds to ensure those systems can deliver unemployment benefits and fundamental health services.

“In Africa, funds are desperately needed for transition skills training and ensuring informal jobs become formalised decent jobs with social protection. This is the way to deliver for workers in poor and rich countries alike.”

Unions regret the absence of commitments by countries to respect labour rights and human rights. The right to free trade unions, collective bargaining and occupational health and safety are essential to ensure a Just Transition.

The reluctance of countries to specifically guarantee the respect of human rights is a major concern for the labour movement. Ambitious climate policies can only be successful if there is trust that rights are respected for everyone.

On climate mitigation the result is very disappointing. Countries are backtracking on their commitment at COP26 in Scotland to phase down coal. The door is opened for “low-emission” energy instead of focussing fully on renewable energy.

Sharan Burrow said: “On market mechanisms we see the continuing undermining of the objectives of the Paris Agreement by proposals that allow double counting and unsustainable removal technologies. Stepping up mitigation ambition must be a major priority for COP28. The challenge will be how the incoming UAE COP28 Presidency will deal with that.”