. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from the Latin American Herald Tribune

The presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela agreed to speak for “Pachamama,” or Mother Earth, and civil society at the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP21, in Paris this December.

Presidents Correa, Morales and Maduro. Foto: ABI

Bolivian President Evo Morales, along with Rafael Correa and Nicolas Maduro, his counterparts from Ecuador and Venezuela, respectively, emphasized on Monday the role of society in defending the environment, at the closing of the II World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia’s Cochabamba.

The three-day forum, during which social organizations, trade unions and indigenous groups from several countries met to discuss climate issues, concluded with a series of proposals, which the presidents assured will be presented at the Paris summit.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also attended the first two days of the conference and was optimistic about a sound and credible global agreement on climate change at COP21.

Civil society representatives proposed the creation of an environmental justice court, recognition of indigenous ancestral knowledge, and demanded developed countries should recognize their climate debt as a legal and moral obligation.

Correa advocated applying the so-called “environmental justice” as a solution to climate change, so the “most polluting countries recognize the damage” they have caused in other nations through exploitation of natural resources and pollution.

He also suggested technology and know-how to fight climate change should be declared “global public assets” to ensure all countries have free access to them, and stressed the need for a “Universal Declaration of Nature’s Rights.”

“Our peoples are wise, they know exactly what they want, and what the path to follow is,” Morales said, expressing confidence in ancestral knowledge of indigenous people.

While Maduro made a call for being alert against “cheating” during the Paris climate summit, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez warned, his country won’t accept any new agreement that dilutes rich and developed nations’ existing obligations.

Rodriguez also demanded rich countries provide financial aid as well as clean and green technologies to help fight climate change.

Other notable figures who participated in the forum included the 1980 Nobel Peace laureate from Argentina, Adolfo Perez Esquivel; former Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon and Spanish MEP Estefania Torres, representing the European United Left group.

(Click here for an article in Spanish on this subject.)

Sustainable Development Summits of States, What are the results?

What is the relation between the environment and peace?

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from a Mecate Corto, November 2013

“The reality changes very fast in Aguán,” it is said near the end of the documentary Fertile Ground, which in the time of two hours documents three years of fighting, losses and victories of the peasant movement for the reclaiming of stolen land in the Aguán Valley of Honduras.

Certainly, things change quickly. Too often, women and children say goodbye to their husbands and fathers at sunrise, and when they do not return at sunset, they realize that they have been killed. That’s part of the changing reality for thousands of landless peasants in Honduras, especially for farmers who three years ago began to claim the land that had been taken and monopolized by large landowners in the Lower Aguán Valley. The crisis has already claimed the lives of some 60 farmers.

“To show the world that there are human stories behind the numbers, that is what led me to make this documentary. A written report does not do justice to what is happening in Honduras especially with regard to occupation of the land”, says the director of the film, Jesse Freeston. Jesse has worked in journalism for many years and has covered the news in Honduras, but now he gives us a new genre about the reality hidden by the daily news.

“In Honduras there will never be peace if there is no land for the poorest,” says a peasant captured by the Freeston’s camera. And the causes are profound for the war that the taken the lives of thousands of Honduran men and women on a daily basis.

Freeston believes there is fertile land in Honduras, but much of it is owned by only a few rich families which makes the country one of the most unequal and violent in the world. We have to understand this, says Freeston, if we are to make changes in the reality of violence that is seen and discussed by the rest of the world.

“The documentary has the power to bring the audience to Aguán in order to hear what the people there have to teach us” says the filmmaker.

The documentary Fertile Ground was premiered in Honduras last month and tells the story of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan, Muca; and the repression suffered by the farmers living in communities on land that they had recovered from the landowner Miguel Facussé. In this case, the attacks came from the armed guards hired by Facussé, but in other cases this repression was at the hands of the armed forces of the State and of the National Police.

(The article is continued on the right side of this page)

(Click here for the original Spanish version of this article.)

What is the relation between peasant movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

(This article is continued from the left side of the page)

Freeston managed to capture the brutality with which the peasants and children were evicted again and again, even though he had to travel to many different places. He caught and shows the raw images of peasants who have been killed, the cry of women who not only lost their husbands, but often, their children as well, in spontaneous abortions.

The film shows the strength of women leaders as the “Queen” of the community, El Elixir, who, despite the ever present threats, continues to believe that another Honduras is possible for future generations to live in dignity.

The director also shows us scenes of the big businessmen and politicians who promote a development that does not help the majority of the population. He leads us to understand that what happens in the Aguán is part of a state policy that focuses on delivering the country to the highest bidders, both local entrepreneurs and foreign governments and transnational entrepreneurs.

However, Freeston also shows us the victories that the farmers have obtained despite the obstacles.
“All the people you see in this documentary are suffering, but they are also advancing. Their emotions are mixed: loss, joy and sadness. We see the Aguán not only as a reservoir of sadness but also of victories.”

Among the victories are those of the Salama Cooperative, the Cooperative Prieta and the San Esteban Cooperative, which represent models of friendly production at the level of peasant life, and which provide the kind of dignified life that the State has failed to promote.

Freestone shows how the reality of Aguan is linked to the 2009 Honduran coup d’etat which caused a rupture in Honduran history. In the film Fertile Ground we can see how the coup brings the people to the streets in resistance and leads to a great social movement. We see how it is linked to the land conflicts in Aguan where the peasants are inspired to struggle.

In Honduras, the agrarian reform of 1960 ended 30 years later with the Law on Agricultural Modernization in which thousands of farmers sold their land because they had no access to the means of production. In the Aguán valley, people like Miguel Facussé were the big winners of this government law, but three years ago the peasants rose up to claim the injustice that 100,000 of them work on land that no longer belongs to them.

“We are not fish that live in the sea, or birds that live in the air, we are human who must live off the land”, this phrase not only opens the film Fertile Ground as the peasant’s slogan, but is also the demand that we hear in the desperate cries for justice, like seeds in the earth for the dream of a better Honduras.

. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

An article by Christin Sandberg in Upside Down World

On September 4th, after ten days of widespread street protests against the biotech giant Monsanto’s expansion into Guatemalan territory, groups of indigenous people joined by social movements, trade unions and farmer and women’s organizations won a victory when congress finally repealed the legislation that had been approved in June.

Nim Sanik, Maya Kaqchikel giving a press conference in Chimaltenango
Photo by Josue Navarro
Click on photo to enlarge

The demonstrations were concentrated outside the Congress and Constitutional Court in Guatemala City during more than a week, and coincided with several Mayan communities and organizations defending food sovereignty through court injunctions in order to stop the Congress and the President, Otto Perez Molina, from letting the new law on protection of plant varieties, known as the “Monsanto Law”, take effect.

On September 2, the Mayan communities of Sololá, a mountainous region 125 kilometers west from the capital, took to the streets and blocked several main roads. At this time a list of how individual congressmen had voted on the approval of the legislation in June was circulating.

When Congress convened on September 4, Mayan people were waiting outside for a response in favor of their movement, demanding a complete cancellation of the law –something very rarely seen in Guatemala. But this time they proved not to have marched in vain. After some battles between the presidential Patriotic Party (PP) and the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER), the Congress finally decided not to review the legislation, but cancel it.

protests as follows: “Corn taught us Mayan people about community life and its diversity, because when one cultivates corn one realizes that there is a variety of crops such as herbs and medical plants depending on the corn plant as well. We see that in this coexistence the corn is not selfish, the corn shows us how to resist and how to relate with the surrounding world.”

Controversies surrounded law

The Monsanto Law would have given exclusivity on patented seeds to a handful of transnational companies. Mayan people and social organizations claimed that the new law violated the Constitution and the Mayan people’s right to traditional cultivation of their land in their ancestral territories.

Antonio González from the National Network in Defense of Food Sovereignty and Biodiversity commented in a press conference August 21: “This law is an attack on a traditional Mayan cultivation system which is based on the corn plant but which also includes black beans and herbs; these foods are a substantial part of the staple diet of rural people.”

The new legislation would have opened up the market for genetically modified seeds which would have threatened to displace natural seeds and end their diversity. It would have created an imbalance between transnational companies and local producers in Guatemala where about 70 per cent of the population dedicate their life to small-scale agricultural activities. That is a serious threat in a country where many people live below the poverty line and in extreme poverty and where children suffer from chronic malnutrition and often starve to death.

The law was approved in June without prior discussion, information and participation from the most affected. It was a direct consequence of the free trade agreement with the US, ratified in 2005. However, recently the protests started to grow and peaked a couple of weeks ago with a lot of discussions, statements and demonstrations.

At first the government ignored the protests and appeared to be more interested in engaging in superficial forms of charity like provision of food aid while ignoring the wider and structural factors that cause and perpetuate poverty in Guatemala such as unequal land distribution, deep rooted inequalities, racism, to name but a few.

(Article continued in right column)

Question for this article

Indigenous peoples, Are they the true guardians of nature?

(Article continued from left column)

But soon enough they decided to act. Even though politicians claimed not to act on social demands, it is without doubt a decision taken after enormous pressure from different social groups in society.

Criminalizing the Mayan people – again

There was a great risk that the Monsanto Law would have made criminals of already repressed small farmers who are just trying to make ends meet and doing what they have done for generations – cultivating corn and black beans for their own consumption. The Monsanto Law meant that they would not have been able to grow and harvest anything that originates from natural seeds. Farmers would be breaking the laws if these natural seeds had been mixed with patented seeds from other crops as a result of pollination or wind, unless they had had a license for the patented seed from a transnational corporation like Monsanto.

Another risk expressed by ecologists was the fear that the costs for the patented seeds would have caused an increase in prices and as consequence caused a worsened food crisis for those families who could not afford to buy a license to sow.

Academics, together with the Mayan people, also feared that the law would have intensified already existing fierce social conflicts between local Mayan communities and transnational companies in a country historically and violently torn apart.

Mayan people and Mother Earth

Currently international companies are very interested in gaining control of the abundant and rich natural assets that Guatemala possesses. There is just one problem: the Mayan people – or actually most people – in Guatemala do not agree with a policy of treating nature like a commodity to be sold off piece by piece, especially when they receive nothing in return. It is very difficult to argue that it is a rentable business for Guatemalan society as a whole, and less the local communities, when it is a rather small but powerful economic elite which benefits on behalf of the environment, nature and society.

So what happens when the people organize in defense of their territory? The international companies call the government and have them use whatever means necessary to remove those standing in their way so they can construct megaprojects like mines or hydroelectric dams or extend monocultures in any region they see fit without much concern for those who might be affected.

Last month three men were killed when police used violent force to evict a community whose population had organized itself to protest against a hydroelectric megaproject in their community in Alta Verapaz. Hundreds of police officers were sent to the area on orders from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mauricio López Bonilla. It was not an exceptional case by any means.

Ongoing conflict

As for the Monsanto Law, for a chilling reminder of where this was most likely headed, one need look no further than the USA: according to information from Food Democracy Now, a grassroots community for sustainable food system, Monsanto’s GMO Roundup Ready soybeans, the world’s leading chemical and biotech seed company, admits to filing 150 lawsuits against America’s family farmers, while settling another 700 out of court for undisclosed amounts. This has caused fear and resentment in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy.

It is impossible to predict how this controversy might unfold, but the reality in Guatemala today is one marked by an ongoing conflict between the government and the Mayan people, who constitute over half of the population.

Nim Sanik, Maya Kaqchikel from Chimaltenango comments on the victory over the Monsanto Law: “The fight to preserve collective property of Mayan communities such as vegetable seeds, which historically have served as a source of development and survival for the Mayan civilization, is a way to confront the open doors that the neoliberal governments have widely open in favor of national and transnational corporations that genetically modify and commercialize the feeding of mankind. We have just taken the first step on a long journey in our struggle to conquer the sovereignty of the people in Guatemala.”