Solidarity with Climate Change Protesters
As many of you may know, the largest protest in Danish history, involving over 100,000 people supporting climate justice, occurred in Copenhagen during the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP15). Throughout the COP15 conference, Danish police detained over 2000 people and certain organizers of the climate justice protests are still facing a variety of charges. Via Campesina, one of the major organizers behind several of the COP15 protests just released this action alert below.
Those concerned about civil liberties and human rights are encouraged to contact the Danish Embassy in the U.S. and urge them to drop ALL charges against the remaining climate justice organizers, including Australian Natasha Verco and U.S. citizen, Noah Weiss.
Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehave St., Washington DC 20008 tel. 202-234-4300 fax. 202-328-1470
Feel free to use whichever points you wish to make from the Via Campesina letter - to read the full letter click here.
For more on Natasha and Noah's cases, visit:
http://www.aclimateforchange.org/profiles/blogs/something-is-rotten-but-not
Being an official Via Campesina observer to COP15 and having personally witnessed the heavy-handed police response, I would say this sordid episode does reflect very poorly upon the reputation of the Danish government in terms of respecting political dissent and freedom of expression.
Thanks for your solidarity - John Peck
Corporate Agribusiness Helps Scuttle Climate Justice
Published Capital Times (Madison, WI) Dec. 29th, 2009
also republished on Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/Tuesday, 29 December 2009
By: John E. Peck, executive director,
Family Farm Defenders, and member group of Via Campesina
As the old saying goes, with crisis comes opportunity, and that certainly was the mentality of the corporate lobbyists that descended in droves on the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. In fact, the largest nongovernmental organization there was the International Emissions Trading Association, a front group representing 170 companies and hosting 66 events. Sadly, many government officials and even some nonprofit groups have fallen for this sleight of hand, mistaking an old-style protection racket for newfound corporate responsibility. To read more, click here
Traders failed in Copenhagen
The future lies in people’s hands
Press release - Dec. 19th, 2009 - La Via Campesina
The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in
failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling
to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate
chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade “solutions”
that have so far proven useless and even damaging.
Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: “Money
and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead
a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what
was not discussed in Copenhagen”. The governments of the industrialized
and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle
the model of development which has created and economic and environmental
disaster. To read more click here
Reclaim Power March in Copenhagen - Dec. 16, 2009
Police Clash With Climate Justice Activists Seeking to Enter U.N. Climate Change Conference
Thousands of activists converged from several directions this morning in an attempt to enter the Bela Center where the U.N. Climate Change Conference is essentially under lockdown. Police used baton charges, guard dogs, and pepper spray to prevent people from entering. Three activists did manage to cross a canal using an improvised inflatable pontoon bridge, but were promptly pepper sprayed and dragged off to detention, as were many others trying to climb the perimeter barricade. Some 200 civil society representatives who were inside the Bela Center at the time of the march's arrival and attempted to leave to join their colleagues outside were also attacked by police. The U.N. has now restricted access to just a few hundred nongovernmental representatives, denying access altogether to accredited observers from some groups such as Friends of the Earth and Via Campesina. Over a hundred heads of state will apparently be "negotiating" more business as usual behind closed doors...
To read the Via Campesina press release supporting the Reclaim Power Action, click here
For various interviews with Via Campesina leaders in Copenhagen, visit:
http://www.openleft.com/user/Natasha%20Chart
Resistance is Ripe - Tues. Dec. 15th Day of Action for Climate Justice and Food Sovereignty
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The solutions being discussed by the UN Climate Conference continue to allow big energy consumers to pollute with impunity while paying others to implement projects supposed to capture carbon. They do not address the huge social and ecological depth owed by the industrialized countries to the countries of the Global South. The current food system is responsible for over 32% of the greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time the practices of agri-businesses make millions of small farmers loose their land and livelihood. It is unfair to use the benefits that small farmers provide to the environment as an excuse to keep polluting as usual. For the full declaration of the Climate Agricultural Day action click here?
Family Farm Defenders Joins Via Campesina Delegation at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark
Adds Voice to Other Grassroots Groups from Across the Globe in Demanding Real Climate Justice, Not False Solutions from World Leaders
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For Immediate Release:
Dec. 12th, 2009
Contact: John E. Peck, executive director
Telephone: (0045) 60-429-444
email: familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com
Close to 100,000 people participated in the “System Change Not Climate Change” rally today in Copenhagen, building grassroots pressure in anticipation of the arrival of over 100 heads of state, including U.S. Pres. Obama, next week for the final negotiation session of the U.N. Climate Change Conference. John Peck of Family Farm Defenders based in Madison, WI was among those who participated as part of the Via Campesina contingent, joining peasant farmers, fishing folk, and indigenous leaders from dozens of other countries to demand real climate justice and not more false solutions.
Since the leak of a draft text by the UK-based Guardian newspaper on Dec. 8th, which basically argued that the global north should have the right to pollute twice as much as the global south and should be allowed to evade domestic emission reductions through carbon trading, many observers here worry that the U.N. climate change negotiations have already been hijacked by corporate interests based in the wealthiest nations. Industry lobbyists are pushing for official approval (and taxpayer subsidies) for the likes of nuclear energy, biotech crops, agrofuels, hydrodams, factory farms, and biochar as supposed “solutions” to climate change, even though none of these would offset existing pollution sources and most would, in fact, make the crisis worse.
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In contrast, Family Farm Defenders along with Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network among many other allies, is calling for climate justice, with serious emission reductions by the global north along with financial reparations to the global south. In particular, greater support for smallscale diversified sustainable organic agriculture needs to be on the table at the climate negotiations.
For further updates from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen visit:
http://www.viacampesina.org
http://www.copenblog.wordpress.com
http://www.indymedia.dk/
http://climatevoices.wordpress.com/
Via Campesina Video Footage From Various Copenhagen Actions:
http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/focuspuller/videos/VIA_CAMPESINA_13dec_ACTION.mp4/view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kto3LduGyTo&videos=Y9Dc68SOBN8
http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/2009/12/hit-the-production-march-video-unprovoked-police-aggressionarrests/
http://www.silobreaker.com/climate-change--small-farmers-can-cool-the-world-5_2262810566865190918
La Via Campesina Takes Action Against the Agro-Export Industry
Dec. 13th, 2009 - 12:00 Noon - Axeltorv/Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen
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La Via Campesina will highlight the huge impact of industrial agriculture on the climate as well as on people's lives and lands all over the world at the Axelborg building in Copenhagen on the 13th of December. The Axelborg building at the crossroads between Axeltorv/Vesterbrogade in Copenhagen represents much of what is wrong with the world's food and agricultural system.
Axelborg is the headquarters of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council – which includes the Danish Meat Council who represent Danish Crown and Tican – the big players in industrialized meat production in Denmark.
Denmark exports over 85% of the pork it produces to markets all over the world. This excess is produced mainly by “putting...soybeans through pigs”, as the incumbent Danish Commissioner for agriculture Marian Fischer Boel has said.
This type of intensive production is based on imported soy which is transported thousands of miles, grown on lands in the south which have been cleared of forests and their inhabitants, which use huge amounts of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides - cannot be green-washed. It is part of a transnational system of production and distribution which has used up the worlds resources at an unprecedented rate in order to create huge wealth for a tiny minority.
Agriculture in Denmark has been driven by this philosophy for many years – leading to an unprecedented concentration of land ownership, industrialization of production and a clear orientation towards production for export. This process has been disastrous for many Danish peasants. Danish rural communities have been destroyed and the environment degraded and polluted. Danish peasants in Frie Boender want to send a clear message – that the policies of the Danish agro-export industry are a concrete example for Europe and the rest of the world of how NOT to manage your agricultural systems.
The agribusinesses which profit from these processes are heating up the earth, destroying livelihoods and eradicating the very kind of peasant agriculture which offers real solutions.
Sustainable peasant production and food sovereignty can cool the earth, protect biodiversity and relocalize production and consumption – reducing transport and energy use. The family farmers and peasants of La Via Campesina from all over the world are coming to Copenhagen to show that the time of the current model – endless growth, waste, profit and environmental and social destruction – is over: and that Food Sovereignty is the only just, sustainable and existing way to feed the world.
Information and Interviews with farmers' leaders from around the world:
Boaventura Monjane and Isabelle Delforge: + 45 50598325
Fergal Anderson: + 45 50598429
The Story of Cap and Trade
By Carol Schachet, Grassroots International
December 12th, 2009
As the Climate Summit in Copenhagen plods onward, various so-called solutions to global warming are being tossed around: Alternative energy, Cap and Trade, adaptation and mitigation, and many more. It can be hard to make sense of them, and even more difficult to unpack the myths from the realities. Fortunately, Annie Leonard, who brought us “The Story of Stuff” offers a new video to explain the Story of Cap & Trade.
The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.
To watch the video, follow this link:
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/story-cap-and-trade
Notes from Copenhagen: Panel with Secretary Vilsack Emphasizes Agrofuels, GM Os
Dec. 10th, 2009 blogpost by Anne Shattuck, Food First
At an event today at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, along with the Danish Minister of Agriculture, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, a representative from the Brazilian government and the president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, an industry group made up of mostly larger scale farmers, discussed food security in the context of climate change....Some of the most interesting commentary however came from US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. “We must be committed to technology,” he declared. Vilsack repeatedly referred to GMO technology, 2nd and even 3rd generation agrofuels, and incorporating agriculture into offset markets. To read more click here?
Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen
Speech of Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina -
Opening of Klimaforum - Copenhagen Dec 7, 2009
Tonight is a very special night for us to get together here for the opening of the assembly of the social movements and civil society at the Klimaforum. We, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, are coming to Copenhagen from all five corners of the world, leaving our farmland, our animals, our forest, and also our families in the hamlets and villages to join you all. Why is it so important for us to come this far? There are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, we would like to tell you that climate change is already seriously impacting us. It brings floods, droughts and the outbreak of pests that are all causing harvest failures. I must point out that these harvest failures are something that the farmers did not create. Instead, it is the polluters who caused the emissions who destroy the natural cycles. So, we small scale farmers came here to say that we will not pay for their mistakes. And we are asking the emitters to face up to their responsibilities. To read more click here?
