About Peoples’ comprehensive framework for action to eradicate hungerBelow you find the first very rough draft of the framework. In point 2 you will find some information about the background for the framework. We really hope that many organizations and people will contribute to develop this framework. This draft is available in English, French and Spanish.

This first draft is written by a small editing group. It is very rough and on some parts there is no text yet. Important issues are also missing in the framework. We will underline the need to find much more concrete proposals and demands on many parts. We also would like examples etc which could be in annexes. The final document will for sure be very different from this one.

The process to finalize the framework – revised plan by July 8:1. We ask you to send in comments, suggestions and other kind of input to this document – the sooner the better.

2. A second draft will be sent out in the last part of September. We also want comments, suggestions for changes etc on that.

3. The drafting committee (with about 30 members, mainly representatives from social movements in the South but also representatives from the North and from NGO’s) will finalize the framework. The committee will have a meeting on October 9th – 11th .

4. The final framework will be sent out in the end of October to organizations for signing on to the document (or to the key points in it – that has to be decided) before November 12.

5. The framework will be presented on November 15th at the Food Summit organized by FAO in Rome

6. Hopefully many organizations and people will use the framework to strengthen their own work and to influence governments and institutions.

Contact personsThe two following people will be contact persons for the process. Please send mails to both when you respond on this paper, send in proposals etc.Nico Verhagen, from the Via Campesina secretariat; nverhagen@viacampesina.org Aksel Naerstad, international coordinator of More and Better; aksel@utviklingsfondet.no

DRAFT 1.2 – 20.05.2009 (Point 11, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 25 added June 20.)

Peoples’ comprehensive framework for action to eradicate hunger

1. Executive summary / Key messages(Most of this has to be written when we have written the draft of the whole document)

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The world is now facing multiple crises; hunger, poverty, climate and other environmental crises, and the economic crisis. These crises are interlinked and they have to be dealt with simultaneously to be solved. Many of the actions taken by governments today to deal with one of the crisis are worsening other crises. Some of the stimulus packages for the economy will increase the climate and energy crises. Similar, the push for more use of chemical fertilizer and industrial agriculture to increase food production, will contribute substantially to worsen the climate crises, the loss of biodiversity, overuse of water and soil degrading.

This framework is about how to eradicate hunger, but it is in a context of the main crises humanity is facing now. The policies and actions we are promoting are aiming at eradicating hunger and at the same time contributing to substantial reduction of poverty, to the preservation of biodiversity and other natural resources, and for solving the energy and the climate crises.

The current crises are the results of an economic and political system …

A paradigm shift is needed. …

Peoples struggle and the responsibility of governments and international institutions…

There are many alternatives and options – we don’t want to replace the current dominating neoliberal political model with another single model. We are promoting diversity in nature and societies.

Our main recommendations: …

GENERAL PART

2. How this framework has been developed and the role it can play the coming years (This has to be finished by the end of the process)

The hunger and malnutrition situation has been totally unacceptable for many decades, and the food crisis in 2007-2009 brought the number of hungry up to one billion people. There has for a long time been an urgent need to strengthen the struggle against the policies and power structures which have been creating and upholding this situation. We, the social movements, NGO’s and individuals who have signed on to the main points in this document, hope that this framework will be a useful tool in this struggle to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, and to fulfill the right to adequate food. We also hope that this framework will be useful for governments and institutions which are committed to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. This framework is based on the peoples’ struggle and political work of social movements, non governmental organizations (NGO’s) and individuals all over the world. Without the rich experiences from decades of struggle

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and the work of social movement this framework could not have been developed. Also the valuable work of many institutions, scientists, intellectuals, activists and other individuals and organizations has contributed to the development of the framework.

Food sovereignty is the base for this framework. Food sovereignty has since the World Food Summit in 1996 been developed as the basic and most important political framework for many social movements and NGO’s working with agriculture, fisheries, food and related issues. Actions, political platforms and concrete proposals for policies to end hunger, malnutrition and poverty and to support sustainable food production and human rights have been carried out and put forward all over the world based on food sovereignty. This framework tries to synthesize some of this. We underline the important work to develop and strengthen the struggle for food sovereignty by the CSO/NGO parallel conferences to the World Food Summits in 1996, 2002 and 2008 organized by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) i, and the Nyéléni 2007 International forum for food sovereignty.ii

The initiative to develop this framework was taken by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and the More and Better campaign. iii A small editing group and a drafting committeeiv with about 30 people, mainly representatives from social movements in the South but also representatives from the North and from NGO’s , were established in March-May 2009. The first draft, in English, French and Spanish, was presented for the committee and sent out to other organizations and people in the end of May 2009. Based on input and comments a second draft was written and sent out in July for discussion and consultation. Organizations in about XX countries commented and gave inputs on the drafts. The drafting committee met in the beginning of September and finished the framework. In the short period from the middle of September until October 8th XX organizations and XX key people have signed on to the main conclusions of this comprehensive framework.

International institutions and governments have many times come up with plans and frameworks to reduce or eliminate hunger. Most of them have been developed without or with very little involvement of social movements, peasants, fisherfolks, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, other food producers and people who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. The last example is the Comprehensive Framework for Action developed by the High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis established and led by the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. The framework has many good points and policies, but at the same time it promotes policies which will increase hunger and poverty, worsen the climate crises and erosion of biodiversity and other natural resources. We therefore have found it useful to develop our own framework based on food sovereignty and the right to adequate food.

This framework will be presented to governments, international and national institutions and organizations. We hope that many of them will find it useful and will follow many of the recommendations in the framework. We want to cooperate with everyone with sincere interests and willingness to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and poverty. We are open for discussions and corrections of our viewpoints and proposals, and we want to learn from others. At the same time we will strengthen our struggles against those forces which are creating and keeping hunger, malnutrition and poverty.

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This framework will be used by social movements, organizations and individuals all over the world to propose concrete actions and policies locally, nationally, regionally and globally to reduce and eliminate hunger, malnutrition and poverty.

This framework has been developed during a very short period of time with very limited economic resources. It is a “living document” which must be further developed. Many more people, organizations and institutions have valuable viewpoints and proposals which have not been presented in the process to develop this framework. We will also get new experiences and knowledge, and the situation in the world is changing. There is therefore a constant need to improve a framework like this. We will continue to develop this framework as a tool for peoples’ movements in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.

3. Description of the hunger and malnutrition situation

(This text must be updated with the latest figures at the end of the process to write the paper.)

There are about a billion hungry people in the worldv even if there is enough food in the world today to fulfill the right to food and the nourishment necessary for a healthy life. The latest official figure from FAO (December 2008) is 963 million hungry people, and 907 of them are living in developing countries vi; 565 million in Asia and the Pacific230 million in Sub-Saharan Africa 58.4 million in Latin America and the Caribbean 41.6 million in the Near East and North AfricaThree-quarters of all hungry people live in rural areas. vii More than 60 percent of the chronically hungry people are women,viii and about 25 percent are children.ix About half of the hungry people in developing countries are farming families, about 20 percent belongs to landless families dependent on farming and about 10 percent live in communities whose livelihoods depend on herding, fishing or forest resources. The remaining 25 percent live in shanty towns of the biggest cities in developing countries. The numbers of poor and hungry city dwellers are rising rapidly along with the world's total urban population.x

According to FAO 25.000 people die every day from hunger and related causes.xi Other sources estimate that the figure is up to 36.000 people, and that 10.000 - 16.000 of them are children below the age of five.

From 1970 to 1997 the number of hungry people dropped from 959 million to 791 million, but from the mid 1990’ies until 2007 the number of undernourished people increased with almost 4 million per year. In 2007 the number of undernourished people increased with about 75 million, and in 2008 with about 40 million. xii The estimates for 2009 are an increase of …

In addition to the terrible hunger situation malnourishment is also seriously negatively affecting people who get enough calories. A malnourished person can no longer maintain natural bodily capacities such as growth, pregnancy, lactation, learning abilities, physical work as well as resistance and recovering from disease. Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to disease, according to the UN's Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN). Stunting, for example, affects more than 147 million pre-school children in developing countries.

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Micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiencies are affecting nearly two billion people. Approximately 25 percent of pre-school children in developing countries have a deficiency of vitamin A which is associated with blindness, susceptibility to diseases and higher morality rate. Iodine deficiency affects 780 million people and about 20 million children are born mentally impaired because their mothers did not consume enough iodine during pregnancy. Zinc deficiency weakens immunity in young children and results in about 800.000 child deaths per year. Around 50 per cent of pregnant women in developing countries are iron deficient. Lack of iron means 315 million women die annually from hemorrhage at childbirth.xiii

4. The Current ContextThe current global financial crisis and what is commonly referred to as the global food crisis are manifestations of deeper and longer-term structural crises in our economies, societies and environments. While these crises have resulted in severe negative impacts that need to be urgently addressed—such as rapidly rising unemployment, collapse of national banking and industries, and an alarming increase in the number of hungry people-- they are not root causes of world poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Despite the billions of dollars poured into development assistance, food aid and agricultural development over past several decades, the number of people who are cash and resource poor, hungry and under-nourished has continued to grow. [boom years and inequality] The current crises—as have other such crises in the past—are exacerbating and entrenching already existing hunger and poverty, bringing new population groups into the ranks of the poor and hungry, and creating new vulnerabilities by exposing a greater number of peoples and communities to economic shocks.

The crises also highlight some of the most glaring and shameful contradictions of our time. The year 2008 saw record levels of hunger for the world’s poor at a time of record global harvests and record profits for the world’s major agribusiness and agrifoods corporations [FN Food Rebs; pp 1]. As world leaders and global policy institutions declared a global food crisis, corporate grain traders, oil palm, animal feed, poultry and seafood producers and traders, suppliers of agricultural inputs (seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and machinery), and food processors and retailers made huge profits in both 2007 and 2008. Topmost among these are Cargill, ADM, Wilmar International, Charoen Pokphand, Potash Corp, Mosaic, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, BASF, Nestle, Casino and Wal-Mart (FN GRAIN)

The global food crisis is not an indication that the world's population is outstripping food supply. The problem is not that there is insufficient food in the world, but that this food is out of reach of those unable to pay the market price for it. Grain production in 2007 was a record 2.3 billion tons, 4% more than in 2006, and since 1961, although the world's population has doubled, world cereal production has tripled (GRAIN, October 2008). With the exception of regions mired in war or other violent conflicts, there is food in the local markets,but majority of those who are hungry do not have the means to purchase enough food and increasingly, any food at all. In fact, the global food crisis is more a crisis of food price inflation rather than actual food shortages, and a crisis of increasing cash and resource poverty. The food shortages faced by net food importing countries in 2007-2008 were triggered not by low production yields but by the manipulation of food commodity stocks through speculation and trading in unregulated global commodity markets.

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The problem then is not a global lack of food per se, but lack of access to food among almost one-sixth of the world's population. According to the WFP, Food has never before existed in such abundance and in purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 6.7 billion people. And yet, 963 million people in the world are going hungry. [FN WFP]

There is widespread agreement among policy analysts that the main triggers of the recent food price inflation were droughts in major wheat-producing countries in 2005–06; less than 54 days in global grain reserves; high oil prices; the diversion of 5% of the world’s cereals to agrofuels and 70% to grain-fed beef; and financial speculation [FN Food rebs] But even as food prices come down, food will not become more accessible to those who were already hungry before the onset of the crisis. On the contrary, we are likely to see even more hungry people as the financial crisis and its accompanying global economic recession plunge real incomes for millions.

In order to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in a sustained manner, we need to understand that the recent crisis of food price inflation and the longer, chronic crises of poverty and hunger, are faces of the same larger malaise: a global economic, food and agricultural system that is designed to facilitate the concentration of wealth and resources in the hands of transnational corporations and individual elites rather than distribute income, resources and food equitably to the world's peoples.

Our policy makers refuse to acknowledge that food price inflation, poverty and hunger are direct outcomes of several decades of neoliberal economic and financial globalisation, the globalisation of capitalist agriculture, and the commodification and financialisation of food itself. The roots of the real, global food crisis lie in the corporate friendly food and agriculture regime put in place by the world's major capitalist powers, willingly adopted by many Southern governments, and vigourously supported by powerful multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This regime has sought to commodify every possible component and dimension of food and agriculture, and indeed of human capability, the environment and geography through a capitalist development paradigm.

Today, our agriculture and food systems are dominated by a “globalised, highly centralised, industrial agrifoods complex” [FN Food rebs] that have made all of us—and particularly the cash and resource poor—extremely vulnerable to environmental and economic shock. This complex is made up of transnational grain trading, seed, chemical, fertiliser, food processing and supermarket/retail chain corporations that dominate local markets and increasingly control the world’s food-producing resources: land, labour, water, inputs, genes, and investments. Possibly the biggest tragedy is that this corporate complex and its accompanying regime of trade and investment agreements and treaties has been built over several decades, through national and international public policies and public funds for grain subsidies, foreign aid and international agricultural research [FN food reb]. Slowly but surely, each decade strengthened the power of capital over nature, human capacity and the collective resources of communities and societies.

The development era from the 1960s onwards sought to extend the economic development model of the industrialised countries of the North to the developing and newly decolonising countries of the South. A key component of this model was modernising Third World Agriculture through the Green Revolution, that entailed the application of new hybrid, high-yielding seeds, chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers, modern machinery and irrigation systems, and 'scientific' knowledge and technology. Through publicly financed

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agricultural extension systems, packages of modern cropping systems (which included seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and other chemical inputs) were distributed to farmers in the South along with loans and incentives to purchase these packages and 'progress' from traditional, multi-crop cultivation to modern, mono-crop cultivation. The Green Revolution paved the way for national and transnational corporations to acquire monopoly control over seeds, agricultural inputs, knowledge and technology... It also pulled numerous smallhold farmers into debt traps that led most to abandon their lands and farming altogether and many to take their own lives. The Green Revolution also resulted in the loss of local plant varieties and bio-diversity, chemical contamination of lands, watersheds and aquifers, and loss of soil fertility whereby agricultural yields started to decline without the application of costly chemical inputs.

As national and local agricultural systems were being “modernised” in the third world through the Green Revolution, the World Bank and IMF were modernising the financial and economic systems of developing countries through structural adjustment programs (SAPs). SAPs rolled back public supports and subsidies for the poor, privatised land, water and essential services, reduced tariffs, deregulated agricultural markets, dismantled national marketing boards, eliminated price guarantees, introduced privatised intellectual property regimes and destroyed national research systems in developing countries. They opened the doors for dumping of subsidised agricultural commodities by multinational grain companies into local markets through food aid and trade agreements. Through the enforcement of private property regimes, they facilitated the concentration of land, wealth and resources among national and transnational elites.

In the 1990s, when neoliberalism had firmly established itself as the driving ideology of all development, the power of transnational capital was cemented through the WTO and free trade agreements (FTAs) which give primacy to corporate profit making over national labour and environmental laws, local/domestic economies and local/national food systems. WTO and FTA rules give wealthy countries carte blanche to subsidise their agribusiness corporations at the expense of smallhold food producers and workers all over the world.

The neoliberal onslaught of the past several decades has wreaked devastation on rural communities and economies and resulted in deepening agrarian crises and rural and urban poverty. Smallhold food producers, agricultural workers and indigenous peoples have been hit the hardest, many of who fall into vicious cycles of multiple indebtedness, poverty and hunger from which the only escape oftentimes is death. Neoliberal policies have eroded the access of local communities to the crucial resources to ward of poverty and hunger, and dismantled local systems of resource stewardship, governance and production. Land, forests, water, plants, animals and other genetic resources have all been commodified and seeds and livestock breeds are being patented by private agribusiness and biotechnology firms. The store of indigenous and local knowledge built over generations by communities is being pirated by pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies. Agribusiness and other corporations, extractive industry, and large infrastructure projects are encroaching on communal and public lands, natural water bodies and indigenous peoples' territories and rural landlessness is increasing at a scale never seen before.

The consolidation of ownership over agricultural and forest lands, seeds, livestock breeds and other genetic resources by corporations and elite classes has displaced entire communities from their lands and traditional occupations. This has resulted in widespread outward migration of farming, pastoral and fishing families, the creation of new pockets of poverty and inequality in rural and urban areas, and the fragmentation of entire

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rural communities. Particularly disenfranchised and disempowered here are women and youth. Women, because because of their dual roles as productive and reproductive labour, and because they are often the keepers of seeds and of local knowledge about livestock and forest products, medicinal herbs and plants, and wild food sources. Youth, because the fragmentation of their families and communities leaves them with few options for personal development and employment.

Despite the disastrous track record of neoliberalism and capitalist development, their proponents show no signs of changing track or redressing past mistakes. In a bid to overcome persisting low yields from hybrid seeds, agricultural scientists are now promoting biotechnology as a tool for eliminating hunger, poverty and malnutrition through the “next green revolution.” Meanwhile, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is attempting to repackage the previous green revolution into a 21st century version in a stated bid to help Africa overcome poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Devised and promoted by (among others) the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, AGRA will seek to replace locally developed seeds with varieties suited for industrial monocultures, change national regulatory regimes to allow new commercial seed varieties into the market without sufficient testing in local conditions, and ensure smooth rides for agribusiness corporations. As in the first Green Revolution, the risks of crop failure are borne by the farmers while the corporations get their financial returns.

As hunger and poverty threaten the lives of almost a billion people, some of the world's wealthiest and most influential actors see them as opportunities for renewed applications of policies and strategies that will only create more misery and suffering.

5. Governments and international institutions have not fulfilled their legal obligations and international commitments

The human right to adequate food is implicit in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights agreed on by the member states of the United Nations in 1948, and more explicit outlined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which came into force in 1976, and further outlined in General Comment no 12 to the covenant. This means that each government has the legal obligation to fulfill this right to adequate food for every inhabitant in their countries. They have had plenty of time to fulfill this right, and it is totally unacceptable that they have not.

Governments have also in many international conferences underlined the urgent need of drastically reducing or ending hunger, malnutrition and poverty. The Word Food Conference in 1974 declared that “Every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties.”xiv The report adopted by the conference also stated that “Time is short. Urgent and sustained action is vital. The Conference, therefore, called upon all peoples expressing their will as individuals, and through their Governments and non-governmental organizations, to work together to bring about the end of the age-old scourge of hunger.”xv The US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, expressed the common goal of the conference when he said that no child should go hungry to bed within ten years after the conference. But ten years after, there were more than 800 hungry people in the world.

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The World Food Summit in 1996 declared that “We, the Heads of State and Government, or our representatives, gathered at the World Food Summit at the invitation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, reaffirm the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.

We pledge our political will and our common and national commitment to achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015.”xvi The World Food Summit also adopted a 30 pages plan of action to reach that goal. But from the time of the summit the number of hungry people increased with about 4 million people annually until 2007 when the number went up with about 75 million.

In the year 2000 the United Nation’s Millennium Development Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly. One of the main goals agreed on was “To halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water.”xvii It should be noted that to reach the goal “reducing the number… to half” as it was agreed on in 1996, it must be no more than about 400 million hungry in 2015. To “halve the proportion” as in the Millennium Development Goals, means that the goal will be reach with about 500 million hungry people in the world.

At the World Food Summit – Five years later in 2002 the governments reaffirmed their commitments from 1996. As a follow-up of the summit, the member states in FAO adopted in 2004 the Anti-hunger Programme.xviii The High-Level meeting World Food Security; the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy which took place in Roma 3.- 5. June 2008 with representatives from 180 countries once more reaffirmed the commitments.

In April 2008 the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon established The High-Level Task Force on the Global Foodsecurity Crisis with members of representatives from different UN-institutions, the World Bank, IMF and WTO. The Comprehensive Framework for Actionxix which is developed by the task force has many points which the social movements agree on, but at the same time it promotes more trade liberalization, unsustainable agriculture with high input of chemical fertilizer, agrochemicals etc, and more power to the multinational companies and the World Bank – more of the policies which have created and preserved hunger and poverty.

In October this year, the FAO Committee on World Food Security will meet for its 35 th session. In every of the 34 previous meetings governments have stated, conformed and reconfirmed their commitments to eradicate or substantially reduce the number of hungry an poor people. The same has been stated in several other international conferences, national plans and other official documents. Unfortunately very few of the government have made serious and successful attempt to follow up in practice. These declarations and plans of action have promoted a lot of good policies and actions, but at the same time also promoted policies which will increase hunger and poverty. And even more important, most of the governments have implemented and promoted policies which have preserved and increased hunger, malnutrition, poverty and injustice.

Civil society organizations’ reactions to the failuresIn 2002 the CSO forum parallel to the World Food Summit – Five years later stated: “The 1996 Plan of Action has not failed because of a lack of political will and resources, but rather it has failed because it supports policies that lead to hunger, policies that support economic liberalization for the South and

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cultural homogeneity, which are backed by military force if the first wave of prescriptive actions fail. Only fundamentally different policies, which are based on the dignity and livelihoods of communities can end hunger. We affirm our belief that this is possible and urgently needed.”xx

The declaration from the CSO-conference, Terra Preta taking place parallel to the High-Level meeting in June 2008 underline this: “Governments, including those in the global South, and intergovernmental organisations must now recognize their part in implementing policies that have undermined agricultural productivity and destroyed national food security. For these reasons, they have lost legitimacy and confidence of the world's peoples that they can make the real, substantial changes necessary to end the present food crisis; to safeguard peoples’ food availability and livelihoods; and to address the challenges of climate change.”xxi

6. Paradigm ShiftThe experience of past several decades indicates that unless economic, financial and agricultural policies are drastically amended nationally and internationally, food shortages, poverty, hunger and malnutrition are not likely to abate. Today, we find ourselves battling four crises: food, finance, energy and climate, which are all dimensions of the same 'meta-crisis,' i.e., capitalism's assaults on nature, creativity, human potential, social organisation and collective capacity. Not only are these crises deeply inter-connected their causes and effects, but also, they are recurrent crises that have happened before and will continue to happen repeatedly with increasingly serious and cumulative consequences.

These serious and urgent crises are being used by political and economic elites as opportunities to entrench corporate control of world agriculture and the ecological commons. At a time when chronic hunger, dispossession of food providers and workers, commodity and land speculation, and global warming are on the rise, governments, multilateral agencies and financial institutions are offering proposals that will only deepen these crises through more dangerous versions of policies that originally triggered the current situation.

For example, the proposals of the High Level Summit on the food, fuel and climate crisis convened by the FAO in Rome in June 2008 to address the food crisis entail intensification of the same policies that have made hunger and malnutrition recurring problems in the South: promotion of agrochemical based production, expansion of corporate agribusiness operations, reliance on markets and the private sector for distribution of food and agricultural inputs, privatisation of land and natural resources, trade liberalisation, and financialisation of food, commodities and production risks. Similarly, the declaration from the G 20 Summit on November 15 2008 on the financial crisis reaffirmed governmental commitments to an unregulated global economy through open trade and investment regimes and financial markets. Most egregious is the WB's 'new agriculture' elaborated in its 2008 World Development Report in which smallhold food producers are to be incorporated into “value chains” owned by agribusiness and finance capital under the guise of increasing agricultural productivity and meeting new consumer demands such as agro-fuels.

A few days before the Rome Summit, World Bank President Robert Zoellick presented a 10 point programme to tackle the food crisis which ignores the root causes of hunger and poverty, negates the roles of smallhold food

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producers and providers, and promotes policies and measures strengthen capitalism's grip on the world's resources. These include:...more investment in agribusiness so that we can tap the private sector's ability to work across the value chain: developing sustainable lands and water; supply chains; cutting wastage; infrastructure and logistics; helping developing country producers meet food safety standards; connecting retailers with farmers in developing countries; and supporting agricultural trade finance....innovative instruments for risk management and crop insurance for small farmers....weather derivatives for developing countries, with Malawi being identified as a likely first client. Should Malawi suffer a drought it would receive a payout to offset the price of imported maize....remove export bans that have led to even higher world prices......conclude a Doha World Trade Organisation deal in order to remove the distortions of agricultural subsidies and tariffs and create a more adaptable, efficient and fair global food trade. The need for rules that are agreed multilaterally has never been stronger.

One of the most serious causes of food shortages, hunger and recent food price inflation is the 'financialisation' of food and agriculture through speculative stocking/hoarding and trade in commodity futures and derivatives. In fact, finance capital is at the heart of the current model of corporate driven globalisation and has shown a marvelous capacity to 'financialise' virtually everything. Derivatives have monetized and made possible the extraction of profits from trading on uncertainty or risk in the movement of a whole range of things, such as weather predictions, the housing market, and the rate of broadband internet connections. Even solutions to global warming have been financialise through the financing of carbon trading schemes that are—in addition to not cooling down the planet-- creating a powerful lobby group for “market solutions” instead of strong state regulatory responses to climate change.

Clearly, neither governments, nor international institutions including UN agencies, seem to have the ability and political will to learn from past mistakes. This may well be a important reason why in the midst of plenty, poverty and hunger not only persist, but are actually on the rise.. Even today, despite ample evidence for the need of tough financial regulation, the regulation of markets, finance capital and financial institutions is viewed with suspicion by most governments; none are willing to put a stop to futures trading of food and agricultural commodities; land, water, forests, oil and minerals continue to be regarded as assets whose values have to be maximised in the service of greater economic growth, regardless of ecological costs.

It also seems clear that for many governments, the FAO and multilateral financial institutions, the value of agriculture lies in its potential for hastening economic growth and as a necessary “precursor” to industrialisation. Sustainable agriculture is secondary to market supremacy; small-holder agricultural production is to be modernised through new green revolution technologies and integrated into global markets through value chains that eventually feed an even more insidious high growth paradigm.

The challenges of acute and chronic poverty, hunger and malnutrition are immense and urgent. But they cannot be successfully through the application of reworked versions of the same capitalism driven and corporate friendly economic and financial models and neoliberal policies. In fact, new policies will not yield anything new

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unless the body of knowledge from which they are drawn is fundamentally rethought. While there have been multilateral/international attempts to build new bodies of knowledge that challenge past models and practices, these have been given little attention by international policy makers. For example, the FAO convened International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Global Report released earlier this year:

a) questions industrial agriculture and genetically modified (GM) food as the solutions to the social and ecological crises brought about by the corporate, industrial agriculture model led by global agribusiness;

b) critiques the market obsession of neoliberal economics and the narrow focus of agricultural development to boosting productivity rather than the holistic integration of ecological, food and nutritional security;

c) valourises small-hold agriculture as genuinely multifunctional—it produces diverse and nutritional foods that are seasonally and culturally appropriate, protects the soil, water, forests and other common pool resources, nourishes and expands bio-diversity and local knowledge to deal with crises, conserves and maximises energy use, cools the planet, provides employment, preserves natural landscapes and environments, etc.

What is urgently needed today is a paradigm shift. We have today the opportunity to discard the failed orthodoxies of free market theory and replace them with practices that have actually worked in combatting hunger and poverty in the longer term. Neoliberal policy regimes need to be dismantled and the commodification and financialisation of food, agriculture, nature and climate must be stopped.

Instead we need to build the potential of families, communities and society to feed themselves and others, to survive and prevent crises, and nurture the planet rather than destroying it further through our current fossil-fuel intensive, high-consumption oriented lifestyles. The current model of industrial agriculture is a significant contributor to global warming through Green House Gas emissions (18 %??). We need to discard this model and adopt instead agro-ecological models of agricultural production that respect seasonality, nurture biodiversity, and are economically, socially and ecologically sustainable. We need to urgently set into motion processes of genuine, comprehensive and integral agrarian reform that respects and defends the rights of communities and societies to their resources and productive capacities. Particularly crucial here is ensuring the rights and opportunities of women and future generations.

We must also urgently end the privatisation and commodification of our commons—natural, political, social and intellectual. We need to reclaim for our communities and societies our public goods, spaces and services, for example, water, health, education, transportation, recreation, parks, etc. Wealth, opportunities and benefits need to be redistributed through historically fair and just systems.

Our proposal for a such a new paradigm is Peoples' Food Sovereignty, which is discussed and elaborated in the following sections....

OUR WAY TO ERADICATE HUNGER

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International and national institutions, governments, social movements, other civil society organizations, private companies, scientists, activists and other individuals have all a role to play to eradicate hunger and poverty, but the roles and responsibilities are very different. The main responsibilities lie with the governments, and especially with the governments in the much powerful rich countries.

The governments have the legal obligation to fulfil the right to adequate food, and they have the power to make laws and the necessary regulations, and to put in place actions and programs which are needed. However, the developing countries have been oppressed and kept into poverty for hundreds of years by rich countries, huge companies based in these countries, international finance institutions and economical and political structures imposed by the elites and governments in the rich countries. It is not possible for the developing countries to eradicate hunger and poverty, and to solve the climate crises, other environmental crises and the economic crises without a change in the power structure, economical and political structures which dominate the world today.

The different UN organizations and institutions have also an important role to play. They are doing very valuable research, are carrying out many very important actions and give governments very valuable and important support. There is however a need for structural reforms of many of these institutions, and for change in some of their approaches, policies and actions.

National and international scientific and research institutions are important to synthesize peoples’ experiences and knowledge and to develop new knowledge and technology. However, many of these institutions and individuals are unfortunately supporting the interests of the multinational companies and are promoting a pro elite and not sustainable development.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and regional financial institutions have huge responsibilities for upholding and creating hunger and poverty, and also for the current economic crises. They have promoted the neoliberal economic model and forced developing countries to follow such policies. Drastically changes are needed in economic policies and the international institutions dealing with finance.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been an important instrument for the most powerful rich countries and the multinational countries to strengthen their power – despite the fact that WTO formally acts on consensus by all member states. WTO is based on neoliberal principles and policies, and it is impossible to eradicate hunger and poverty as long as rules and regulations based on this are followed. We therefore strongly advocate that WTO should get out of food and agriculture, basic services which are important to fulfil the human rights, like health, education, water, energy and transport.

Social movements play an absolutely crucial role in the fight against hunger and poverty. Only strong popular pressure will make the changes needed to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Huge mobilization and strong pressure from labour unions, organizations of farmers’ and fisherfolks’, indigenous peoples’, women’s organizations and other broad based social movements are necessary to change the power structures and policies which har dominating today. Non governmental organizations, activists, intellectuals and other individuals are playing an important role in many actions against hunger, malnutrition and poverty, but it is

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necessary to work closer with and to support the broad based social movements to make the major changes in policies and power structures which are needed to eradicate hunger and poverty.

A. Food sovereignty framework and the right to food

7. Food sovereigntyFOOD SOVEREIGNTY puts those who produce, distribute and need wholesome, local food at the heart of food, agricultural, livestock and fisheries systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that reduce food to internationally tradeable commodities and components. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle this inequitable and unsustainable system that perversely results in both chronic undernutrition and rapidly rising obesity. Food sovereignty includes the right to food – the right of individuals and peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through socially just and ecologically sensitive methods. It entails peoples’ right to participate in decision making and define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation and supports new social relations free from oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups and social classes. It promotes a genuine agrarian reform and defends access to, and the sharing of, productive territories free from the threat of privatisation and expulsion.

Food sovereignty defends the right to adequate food and to produce their own food of peoples and communities, including those under occupation, in conflict zones, facing and/or recovering from disasters, as well as those who are socially and economically marginalised, such as dalits, indigenous peoples and migrant workers. Food sovereignty provides a policy framework for food, farming, pastoral, fisheries and other food production, harvesting and gathering systems determined by local communities.

8. Implementation of the right to food To be free from hunger is a fundamental human right. As a universally guaranteed human right, the right to adequate food prescribes fundamental principles to guide decision-making processes, social and economic policies and priority setting. Among these principles, participation, transparency and accountability are crucial to ensure democratic processes. In particular, in a human rights based approach, accountability includes the need for the establishment of publicly agreed national and international strategies for the realization of the right to food. These strategies must define clearly stated goals and budget allocation. It also requires participatory monitoring mechanisms and the institution of recourse mechanisms (claim instruments from the local to the international level). These mechanisms have to be effective and accessible to the individuals and communities who understand that their human right to adequate food is violated, or who claim that the proposed strategy is not appropriate or being adequately implemented. Concretely, to adopt such an approach

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would for instance question agricultural development models which privileges large agribusiness producing cash crops for export (such as the production of agrofuels) to the detriment of small and landless peasants.

There is no quick fix. Quick fixes are only good for those who benefit economically and politically from them. The world must tackle the root causes of the power imbalances and injustice in the world, if it effectively wishes to eradicate hunger, poverty and malnutrition. This must be done through the participatory elaboration of national and international strategies, which should include.

a. Identify all vulnerable groups to food insecurityb. Assess the causes of food insecurityc. Develop adequate policies to the need of these groups and revise current policies that lead to

social exclusion, hunger and malnutrition, or have the potential to do so, such as industrial agricultural systems, privatization of public services and the like.

d. Promote policies that effectively_i. Include small food producers, particularly women, in the productive process

ii. Promote food production in harmony with environment, and food diversityiii. Take immediate action to eradicate and prevent hunger and malnutrition, in special for

children and women.e. Establish clear goals, timelines and define obligations and allocation of resources both addressing

immediate and long term goalsf. Promote the capacity of rural and urban social groups most affected by food insecurity to physical

and economical access to a diversified and adequate diet, through their productive insertion into the development process.

g. Establish recourse mechanisms to which right holders could resort in case they see that their right to food is not being guaranteed.

h. Develop strong and effective accountability systems at national and international level in order to curtail the growing corporate control over food systems.

9. Implementation of genuine agrarian and aquatic reform and protection against grabbing of land, territory and aquatic resources Agrarian and aquatic reforms can put an end to the massive and forced rural exodus from the countryside to the city, which has made cities grow at unsustainable rates and under inhuman conditions; would help provide a life with dignity for all members of our societies; would open the way toward a more broad-based and inclusive local, regional and national economic development, that benefits the majority of the population; and could put an end to unsustainable practices of intensive monoculture that make wasteful use of water and poison our land and water with chemicals, and of industrial fishing that over-exploits and exhausts our fishing grounds. For all these reasons, agrarian and aquatic reforms are not just needed in the so-called "developing countries," but also in Northern, so-called "developed" countries.

The use of natural resources should primarily be for food production. Genuine agrarian and aquatic reforms recognize the socio-environmental function of land, the sea, and the natural resources, in the context of food

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sovereignty. They protect the rights of access to and control over our territories, including for Indigenous Peoples and pastoralists; and guarantee policies of redistribution and equitable access and control over natural and productive resources by rural women, peasants, indigenous peoples, communities of artisanal fisherfolk, rural workers, unemployed workers, pastoralists, Dalit communities and other rural communities where needed.

Aquatic reforms should give legal recognition, protection and enforcement of the collective rights of traditional/artisanal fishing communities to access and use fishergrounds and maritine resources. They should also include new fishing policies that effectively recognize the rights of traditional/artisanal fishing communities and that stop the depletion of life in the sea and undermine the very resources their lives depend upon.

There can be no genuine agrarian and aquatic reforms without gender equity. Women should receive full equality of opportunities and rights to land and natural resources that recognize their diversity. Past discrimination against rural women should be redressed. We must ensure women’s access to land, abolishing discriminatory laws of inheritance and repartition in the event of divorce; transforming customs that deny women’s right to the land; and equality between women and men in processes of agrarian reform.

Genuine agrarian and aquatic reforms should guarantee a future with dignity for today’s rural youth.

The concept of territory has been historically excluded from agrarian reform policies. No agrarian reform is acceptable if it only aims at the distribution of land. We believe that the new agrarian reform must include the Cosmo visions of territory of communities of peasant, the landless, indigenous peoples, rural workers, fisherfolk, nomadic pastoralists, tribes, afrodescendents, ethnic minorities, and displaced peoples, who base their work on the production of food and who maintain a relationship of respect and harmony with the Mother Earth including the oceans.

We must define territories beyond geopolitical boundaries so as to include the territories of indigenous peoples, nomadic and pastoralist communities and beach-based fisherfolk. Local communities and peoples that share territories should have equitable, but controlled, access.

We need to ensure the peaceful coexistence of diverse communities in territories by strengthening our organizations and multi-sectoral alliances so as to democratically negotiate and share territories. A strong, aware and organized civil society will be able to assert the rights of peasants/farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, pastoralists and indigenous communities.

The State must play a strong role in policies of agrarian reform and food production. The State must apply policies that recognize rights and democratize access to land, to coastal areas, forests, and so on, especially in cases where access to these resources are concentrated in the hands of a few. Furthermore, the State should guarantee community control over natural resources by peasant, fisherfolk, pastoralist, and forest communities, and by indigenous peoples, such that they can continue to live and work in the countryside and on the coasts, by means of collective and community rights. Agrarian reform should create jobs with dignity and strengthen the rights of rural workers.

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10. Promoting sustainable peasant based production, small scale fisheries and consumption.

Defining priorities in national and international agricultural and food policies.Sustainable peasant based production, small scale fisheries is diverse, it develops and renews production based on cultural roots, imagined and practiced by peasants and family farmers, men an women. Centre of all policies should be people and not the market. The first priority in all policies should be to support and protect communities and their cultural and human values as well as local food systems including production and consumption.

Concrete policies should therefore have the following priorities:

Equal treatment of women and men: women should have full access to means of production and participate fully in the decisions taken by the communities as well as the organizations that represent them.

Production should be as autonomously as possible, independent from external inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, capital, hybrid seeds,….) and takes care of natural assets that are used in production (land, seeds, soil, biodiversity, water, diverse human knowledge, etc.). Key is the reproduction of seeds on the farm and the rejection of patented and hybrid seeds.

Full access and control over the use of the means of production. Peasants and the rural communities should be able to control the use of the land, enabled to reproduce their own seeds, control the use of water, and have access to sufficient credits.

Promote and support diversified production. Contrary to industrial production that works with mono – culture cropping, peasant production is diverse, from the same land up to 10-12 different crops and products are produced. Peasants also combine in an effective way crop mixtures with livestock husbandry (fish, cattle, chicken,….).

Local and domestic needs should have priority and peasants and small farmers should have access to their own local and domestic markets! They should be able to control the ways of commercialization in collaboration with urban communities and consumers so that products can be sold at fair prices for producers and consumers.

Production of diverse food and culturally appropriate for consumption in the area closest to production. This allows to reduce transport costs and avoid unnecessary industrial processing costs.

Use of appropriate technology. This peasant agriculture is dynamic, integrates innovations and needs a blend of traditional and modern knowledge and technology.

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Promote agro-ecological methods, based on the notion of obtaining good quality food products without negatively affecting the environment and enhancing the conservation of soil fertility on the basis of a correct use of natural resources and the smallest possible quantity of industrial chemicals, are part of it.

Promote adequate, decentralized distribution and processing systems that give priorities to local, domestic producers and create shortest possible links between consumers and producers.

11. regulate, dismantle agribusiness TNCs: put support instead into localised, sustainable and accountable businessIn the neo-liberal development model, national and transnational agribusiness corporations—often with support from governments and multilateral agencies--are given free reign to control the food chain starting from access to capital, land, water and other resources to production inputs and labour, and post production storage, distribution, processing and trade. This restricts and often denies the rights of smallhold family producers and workers to income, food and good health, as well as decision making about how natural resources, capital, production and distribution should be organised and governed.

Agribusiness operations are based on industrial production models and come with extremely high environmental, social and economic costs. They shift agricultural production from diverse, seasonally appropriate, food and cash crop production (including fishing) towards mono-cropping and industrial harvesting and production, all of which reduce the abilities of communities ad societies to be food secure through their own means. They secure monopoly access to large tracts of land and forests, water sources and other resources for long periods of time which result in physical displacement/dislocation of communities from lands and ancestral territories, livelihoods, sources of food, and social and cultural security. Industrial, chemically intensive production pollutes water and soils, destroys forests and biodiversity, and poison local food sources. Corporate operations come with intellectual property rights (IPR) protections which promote bio-piracy and result in the loss of traditional knowledge.

These impacts are billed as “externalities” by agribusiness companies and multilateral agencies such as the FAO, World Bank and IFAD... The costs of mitigating the above impacts are left to governments who pass the burden on to national populations; or these costs are not mitigated at all and precipitate environmental, economic and social crises. It is thus urgent that:

Governments and multilateral agencies cease support for agribusiness corporations; instead, they should support smallhold and sustainable agriculture and fisheries, secure land, territory and resource rights for rural, smallhold farming, fishing, pastoral and indigenous communities.

Public resources should not be used to finance agribusiness corporations; instead, they should be directed towards localised production and distribution arrangements/systems that create employment, protect the environment, and strengthen local and national economies.

Instead of public-private partnerships that benefit private companies/corporations, governments should build public-public partnerships where national resources are used to build the productive abilities of majority of the country's food producers and workers.

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Governments and multilateral agencies must formulate and enact laws that regulate corporate operations to make them socially, economically and environmentally accountable to the public in the immediate term but with the longer term goal of dismantling agribusiness corporations altogether.

Agribusiness corporations must be legally compelled to pay for the costs of mitigating the negative impacts they cause.

IPR and other corporate friendly private property regimes must be dismantled. International and regional institutions and agreements that promote agribusiness corporations—such as

IFIs, the WTO and free trade and investment agreements—must be dismepowered through national legislation.

Privatisation and liberalisation processes must be halted and reversed.

12. Conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity, water and other natural resources; development of agro-ecological models of production

Agricultural Biodiversity

Since the dawn of agriculture 12,000 years ago, humans have nurtured plants and animals to provide food. Careful selection by farmers and gardeners of the traits, tastes and textures that make good food resulted in a myriad diversity of varieties of the relatively few plants and animals we use for food - our agricultural biodiversity1. This is the first link in the food chain, developed and safeguarded by women and men, farmers, gardeners, herders, fishers, forest dweller and indigenous people throughout the world.

Most of this locally-developed diversity is now under threat and needs urgent actions to halt its privatisation, modification and elimination. International and local actions are needed, not least, to counter the rapid loss of these varieties from farmers' fields – more than 90 per cent in the past century – but also to protect the genetic resources stored in, often poorly maintained, public gene banks, and to limit the increasing use of intellectual property rights (IPRs), laws, commercial contracts and technologies to claim monopoly ownership over varieties, breeds and genes, which is further restricting farmers’ access and limiting their ability to save, re-sow, exchange and sell their seeds.

1 Definition of Agricultural Biodiversity. It comprises the diversity of genetic resources (varieties, breeds, etc.) and species used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture (including, in the FAO definition, crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries) for the production of food, fodder, fibre, fuel and pharmaceuticals, the diversity of species that support production (soil biota, pollinators, predators, etc.) and those in the wider environment that support agro-ecosystems (agricultural, pastoral, forest and aquatic), as well as the diversity of the agro-ecosystems themselves.

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Global food provision is focused on few crops - but millions of varieties of these crops, developed by small-scale food providers, feed us. Sustaining and developing the species diversity of these crops underpins the security of future food supplies

Number of ‘Flowering’ plant species

approx

250,000

Exchanges between small-scale food providers in different communities, countries and continents are essential to facilitate the increased diversity in agro-ecosystems necessary to adapt crops to climate change etc. Under present rules this is very limited: the governance of seeds has to change in support of agroecological production.

Agricultural biodiversity provides security against future adversity, be it from climate change, war, industrial developments, biotechnological calamities or ecosystem collapse. One example of careful nurturing of agricultural biodiversity is found in the many local Seed Fairs that communities organise each harvest-time. For example, in Kenya, 46 farmers came together and displayed and exchanged 206 different varieties of local crops including cowpeas, millet, sorghum, squash.

Agroecology vs industrial agriculture.

Agroecological production, pastoralism and artisanal fisheries are diverse and multifunctional producing many goods (food, clothing, housing materials, as well as those for exchange and sale) and providing ecosystem functions (clean water, healthy soils) needed by local communities. Agroecological production systems depend on and produce a wide range of agricultural biodiversity. Agroecological systems are highly productive in terms of area, inputs and energy. These methods of production and harvesting are people-centred with both women and men having decisive roles. They are knowledge-intensive and maintain livelihoods. They depend on and provide locally-developed plant varieties and livestock breeds that are adapted to local climatic conditions – such as drought resistant seed varieties, crops that grow in wetlands and flood plains, disease-resistant livestock etc. They are not dependent on agrochemicals. They sustain agroecosystem functions – they work with and not against the environment and, as a result, productivity is higher. These approaches do not seek to transform nature, but instead, they develop synergies with nature creating space for local experimentation and building the store of knowledge that can be shared, without high costs. They are resilient in the face of climate change and other threats and they are not ‘carbon hungry’, not dependent on fossil fuels: for every unit of energy input, up to 10 times as much food energy is produced. Small-scale agroecological production methods and artisanal fishing practices cannot be appropriated or ‘owned’ by an individual. They enable localised control over food systems i.e. food sovereignty.

Food sovereignty policies enable zero carbon production, collection and consumption of local food and biomass for fuel. This can be achieved in ways that increase resilience and can enable production to adapt to Climate Change. This model of production and harvesting is agroecological and sequesters CO2 in soil organic matter and uses organic manures and nitrogen-fixing plants in place of chemical fertilisers. It is smaller scale, people-centred with both women and men having decisive roles. It is knowledge-intensive and maintains livelihoods. It depends on and provides locally-developed crop varieties and livestock breeds that are adapted to local climatic conditions – such as drought resistant seed varieties, crops that grow in wetlands and flood plains (although some practices produce excessive methane), disease-resistant livestock etc. It is not dependent on agrochemicals.

This model of production sustains agroecosystems, working with and not against the environment and, as a result, productivity is higher. It develops synergies with nature creating space for local experimentation and building the store of knowledge that can be shared, without high costs. This agroecological, locally-controlled

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model of production cannot be appropriated or ‘owned’ by an individual but is responsive to democratic demands and respects collective rights.

In contrast, industrial agribusinesses, fisheries and aquaculture produce food ingredients in monocultures for global markets controlled by few TNCs. They are supported by public and private research institutions and promoted for ‘food security’ yet, they harm small-scale farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fisherfolk and indigenous peoples. And they damage the environment – soils, water, agroecosystems and our planet’s biodiversity and life support systems. They are a major contributor to the current global water crisis and Global Warming through intensive use of fossil fuels for fertilisers, agrochemicals, production, transport, processing, refrigeration and retailing: each unit of food energy produced requires many times more fossil fuel energy inputs. Corporate controlled industrial production is capital intensive, is protected by patents and trade rules. This enable corporations to capture and control markets for inputs ((GE) seeds, livestock breeds, water, fertilizers) and products (food, animal feed, biofuels, fibre and industrial commodities), to capture ecosystems and overexploit and degrade natural resources resulting in soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, desertification, water depletion and contamination and polluted seas, the costs of which are never included in the price paid. This approach seeks to control and transform nature rather than work within its parameters.

These industrial crop and livestock production and intensive fisheries, and associated processing, distribution and retailing systems, contribute around a quarter of GreenHouse Gas emissions, the cause of Climate Change. This model of production is based on intensive energy use and the mining of nature and favours production of agricultural commodities and agrofuels. It has little resilience and cannot adapt to climate change. It harms people and the planet, increasing:

air and water pollution; destruction of biodiversity, rural livelihoods and

communities;

negative impacts of disasters on poor people; abuse of fundamental rights

wars and conflicts.

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Industrial crop and livestock production and intensive fisheries and aquaculture facilitate the rise of consumerism and materialism with consequent increases in food waste and with negative impacts on culture, nutrition and food sovereignty.

Fishery dependent communities are amongst the most at risk from actual and predicted negative impacts of climate change. Fisheries, including capture of wild stocks and aquaculture, will change dramatically. The industrial model of fisheries, with its high dependence on fossil fuel, contributes to exacerbating the impacts of climate change by degrading fishery ecosystems and impoverishing biodiversity. Intensive aquaculture practices, by destroying critical coastal and aquatic environments, such as mangrove swamps, render coastal communities even more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and associated natural disasters.

Livestock production is especially crucial to the 1 billion rural poor who are supported by livestock, a significant number of whom depend on common property resources to sustain their animals. Livestock are the world’s largest user of land (30 percent of the world’s land surface area). Commercial livestock production contributes 40% of the world’s gross value of agricultural production. Intensive livestock production is responsible for the majority of agriculture's contribution to climate change. While deforestation/land use change, enteric fermentation, and manure have all been identified as causes, land use change is by far the biggest contributor: land use change for animal feed production alone contributes 7% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). There are important regional differences: in Brazil, for instance, the contribution of livestock to greenhouse gases is estimated at 60% of the national total, if land use change related emissions are factored in e.g. the conversion of tropical rainforest to Soya production for animal feed. Ruminant livestock (cattle, goats, sheep, camelids, yaks etc) produce methane that makes proportionally a much higher contribution to GHGs than CO2. There are trade-offs between ruminant methane production and livestock keepers’ contribution to climate change mitigation through the sustainable management of their animals in rangelands and through retention and nutrient recycling of nitrogen compounds (another contributor to GHGs) in well-composted manure for crop production.Industrial livestock production, which threatens the livelihoods of small-scale producers, is responsible for more and more of the livestock products that people consume – driven by a spiral of increased levels of demand. These are the result of a combination of lower prices through the externalisation of environmental, welfare and social costs and oversupply – a system favoured by international financing institutions and aid agencies in their mission of implementing a development paradigm based on economic growth. Since these increases in demand are an effect of unsustainable, increased supply, they should not be used to justify the intensification of animal husbandry and aquaculture.

As intensive supply-driven livestock production is aggressively promoted – increasingly in developing countries – there is increasing consumption that may cause health, environmental and social problems This model of production is rapidly spreading to all countries with a shift away from grazing and higher demand for feed and fodder crops. Cultivation of feed crops, e.g. soya, is a driver of deforestation of tropical rainforest. According to one estimate about one third of the world's arable land is used for growing crops to feed livestock, and this proportion could increase. The industrial production of livestock is not only a major contributor to climate change; it also destroys livelihoods,

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abuses rights and destroys diversity, thereby accelerating the food crisis. See the CSO/NGO Wilderswil Declaration on Livestock Diversity, September 2007. www.ukabc.org/wilderswil.pdf

The industrial model of production and harvesting is supported by public and private research institutions and promoted for so-called ‘food security’. It undermines food sovereignty. It enables capital concentration and corporate control, facilitated by trade liberalisation, intellectual property rights systems and the neoliberal policies, agreements and institutions which support them such as the World Trade Organisation, regional and bilateral Free Trade Agreements, as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

It is capital intensive and is protected by patents, commercial contracts and trade rules that facilitate corporations’ capture and control of markets for inputs and products, the capture of agroecosystems and the overexploitation and degradation of these and other natural resources.

This industrial model of production enables control by unaccountable and remote corporations.

Agricultural research predominately supports industrial production systems for it is through spreading patentable and other monopoly controlled production technologies and systems that researchers and the corporations that fund the research can reap profits. An alternative is one that is farmer-led and develops systems that will realise food sovereignty.

Scientific knowledge plays an increasingly significant role in the development and management of food systems throughout the world. It is a major driver of the social, economic and environmental changes in food systems, bringing about sweeping changes that affect everyone living today. But despite its huge significance for human well-being and the environment, very few citizens are able to meaningfully control or influence what type of knowledge is produced, for whom, how, where and why.

In agricultural science and technology a new paradigm for research is urgently needed.

“Conventional agricultural research must be reorganised for greater democratic oversight and priority setting to combine the strengths of farmers and scientists in the search for fair, sustainable and locally adapted food systems. Transforming agricultural research is also increasingly necessary to ensure that the food we eat keeps us healthy... local people and citizens should be the ones who decide which new policies and technologies are needed when, where and under what conditions… There is a need to transform knowledge — using ecology as the basis for sustainable agriculture and de-colonialising economics from narrow definitions of wealth… This will require more direct citizen participation in decisions about new technologies, research priorities and policies for food and farming.”

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Democratising science and technological R&D:

some institutional and methodological innovations (Pimbert, 2007)

1. Use regular citizen panels, consensus conferences, citizen juries, future scenario workshops and referendums to capture the full diversity of interests and values in deciding on strategic research and funding priorities in the social and natural sciences, the allocation of resources and technological risk assessments. Citizens’ commissions for science and technology futures should be set up to guide and connect research, training and policy institutions. These deliberative and inclusive democratic procedures will clearly need to be linked into the formal policy process through appropriate reforms that allow citizens to more directly frame policies and regulations. Recent experiences also suggest that these forms of participatory democracy can help re-frame policies on the future of food and farming to reflect broader social interests and goals rather than narrow corporate interests and elite expertise.

2. Open up decision-making bodies and governance structures of Research & Development organisations to allow a wider representation of different actors and greater transparency, equity and accountability in budget allocation and decisions on R&D priorities. Throughout the world, there is a dire need for much wider and more gender balanced representation in these institutions by different citizens: small farmers, tribal people, forest dwellers, fisherfolk, healers but also farm workers, small food processors, retailers and consumers. These bodies set the agenda for the design of policies and technologies for food and farming. They are immensely powerful in that they broadly decide which policies and technologies will ultimately be developed, why, how and for whom. And yet the governance of science and technological R&D is presently largely dominated by men who are increasingly distant from rural realities and moving closer to corporations.

3. Reorganise conventional scientific and technological research to encourage participatory knowledge creation and technological developments that combine the strengths of farmers and scientists in the search for locally adapted solutions and food systems. Effective and interdisciplinary partnerships are needed to link natural and social sciences with indigenous knowledge to address needs and problems in specific local settings that are typically marked by complex and dynamic change. An important goal here is to ensure that knowledge, policies and technologies are tailored to the diversity of human needs and the situations in which they are to be used. This must be on the basis of an inclusive process in which the means and ends of R&D are primarily shaped by and for citizens through conscious deliberation and negotiation.

4. Ensure that knowledge, genetic resources and innovations remain accessible to all as a basic condition for economic democracy and the exercise of human rights, including the right to food and participation. Decisions to issue patents on knowledge embodied in products and processes (seeds, software etc) and national intellectual property rights legislation require more comprehensive public framing of laws and policies based on deliberative and inclusive models of direct democracy.

13. Agriculture R&D and extension – valuing and building upon local knowledge, skills (Included in the text above. Editing needed)

14. Adequate market and price policiesLocal and national governments and international institutions must support the world’s biggest economic sector: peasant based production and artisan fisheries for domestic markets.

As over 90% of the world food production is for local and domestic markets, local communities (peasants and consumers) play a key role in it. 70% of the world’s poor live in rural areas. Therefore governments have to play a strong pro-active role at the local and national level in supporting peasant production and community initiatives to protect them against destructive influences from the “inside” (accumulation of resources by elites, market control by middlemen, etc.) as well as from the “outside” (dumping, appropriation of resources by corporate interests, etc.).

Local-national governments must implement policies that ensure:

Control of production (i.e. supply management) at the national level in order to avoid over-production and dumping. Supply management strategies have to be set up in the major exporting countries in both, the North and the South to curb over-production and guarantee minimum prices.

Control of imports to protect domestic food production against low price imports.

Stabilize internal market prices at a level that cover the cost of production, guaranteeing high quality and culturally adequate food.

Public assistance for the development of peasant based production and marketing, and sustainable and environmentally sound farming practices to build strong and robust local and national economies. Public support must not be used to generate dumping, or to perpetuate unsustainable, high input, export oriented agriculture. Domestic support schemes for small-scale producers should be combined with supply management schemes when production exceeds domestic demand in order to avoid dumping. Exporting countries must not be allowed to use domestic support schemes to benefit the largest producers and exporters, stimulating over-production for export.

Strengthening of domestic markets to give local small-scale producers, women and men, full access to these markets.

At the local and national level effective publicly managed buffer stocks have to exist in order be able to stabilize markets in situation of shortage.

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Poor consumers that live in urban areas should be guaranteed sufficient income to buy adequate and enough food on local markets.

Role of the international institutions

In order to allow local communities, as well as national-local governments, to play their constructive role, the international institutions should develop mechanisms that help to support and protect the local-domestic food systems and respect the local-national policies that are defined to support these food systems.

This means that among others following policies at he international level have to be implemented:

Governments should be guaranteed the right and have the obligation to control and stop food imports (without facing economic or political retaliation) in order to stabilise their internal markets. Essential resources (land, seeds, water, flora and fauna) have to be protected through international regulation against privatisation and corporate control.

International commodity agreements to control supply at the international level and guarantee fair prices to peasant producers for main exports products such as cacao, coffee, cotton, maize, wheat, rice etc.

Creating an international, independent monitoring body to analyse and evaluate exhaustively the effects of trade policies on food sovereignty and the right to food in order to provide the policy makers and public opinion with relevant information.

A problem/argument solving mechanism should integrated in an international Court of Justice, with a mandate to judge policies against the principle of food sovereignty and the right to food.

15. Policies regarding climate changeClimate change is extremely serious and urgent and will affect the availability of and acces to food at various stages: production, storage, distribution and purchase. The current model of industrial agriculture that is being 'globalised' and promoted by agribusiness corporations and many governments and international agencies is a major contributor to climate change because of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) through changes in land use, destruction of forests, degradation and loss of soils, chemically intensive and fossil fuel based agricultural technologies and industrial livestock raising. At the same time, extreme climate variations and disasters associated with climate change are getting worse, resulting in land loss and unpredictable changes of natural growing conditions.

Over the past 40 years, 13 million hectares of land--ncluding 6 million ha forest land--were converted to agriculture annually, leading to depletion of soil matter and increasing GHG emissions from soils. Deforestsation and agriculture (largely industrial monocultures) are responsible for 14-18 % of all GHG emissions. A third of the world's arable land is used for animal feed production and the livestock industry for meat and dairy production emits methane and nitrous oxide.

The planet's natural carbon cycle that has captured and stored carbon in wood, organic matter in soils, peat lands, meadows and native forests, is being disrupted by corporate agribusiness operations that impose widespread chemical agriculture (with massive use of oil-based pesticides

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and fertilizers), transform forests into monoculture plantations and destroy peat lands and biodiversity. Forests, pastures and cultivated lands are being converted into industrial agricultural production areas or into shopping malls, industrial complexes, big houses, large infrastructure projects or tourist resorts. This in turn causes massive carbon releases and reduces the capacity of the environment to absorb the carbon released into the atmosphere.

Economic growth, industrialized farming systems, greater meat consumption, free trade policies, and biomass production have greatly contributed to this situation. Free trade in agricultural products play a significant role here through pollution and emissions because of storage, shipping and transportation, distribution and retail. The more “food miles” a product has, the larger its carbon footprint. A crucial area of the corporate food industry is solid waste from packing and shipping, whose carbon costs have yet to be fully calculated. Further intensification of these trends combined with the growing agro-fuel and bio-plastics industries to replace fossil fuel products will only worsen the situation.

Contradictorily though, in many international platforms -- including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and FAO -- further intensification of industrial agriculture and the expansion of first and second generation agro-fuels are proposed as solutions to food and energy shortages associated with climate change, without proper assessment of their long term ecological and economic impacts. Genetically modified (GM) trees and crops for agro-fuel, food and forest cover production are already being experimented with through variations of new green revolutions. Equally alarming are proposals to bring agriculture into carbon trade and offset markets, which would allow agribusiness corporations to continue deforestation and industrial agriculture while threatening the livelihoods and environments of smallhold producer.

Clearly, technological “quick-fixes” and “market solutions” will not help us to address the current global environmental disaster. What is urgently needed is alternative models of production, trade and consumption that reduce emissions, minimise waste and conserve energy. A set of true solutions should include:

Governments and multilateral agencies should support and promote food self-sufficiency through local and national production to the maximum extent possible.

Support for Ssustainable small-scale food production and provision which are labor-intensive and requires little energy use, and can actually contribute to stop and reverse the effects of climate change by storing more CO2 in soil organic matter and replacing nitrogen fertilizers with organic agriculture or/and cultivating nitrogen-fixing plants which capture

nitrogen directly from the air. True agrarian reform, that strengthens small-scale farming, promotes the production of food

as the primary use of land, and regards food as a baisc human right that should not be treated as a commodity. Local food production that will stop the unnecessary transportation of food and ensure that

what reaches our tables is safe, fresh and nutritious. Changing consumption and production patterns which promote waste and unnecessary

consumption by a minority of humankind, while hundreds of millions still suffer hunger and deprivation. Fair and just distribution of food and necessary goods, as well as reducing unnecessary

consumption.

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16. Policies regarding agrofuels and energy policies overallThe model of economic growth that has defined the world economy since the industrial revolution in the 18th century is based on indiscriminate extraction and use of fossil fuels. Today, the global energy matrix is composed of petroleum (35%), coal (23%), and natural gas (21%) [CHECK REF AND CIT]. But energy use is not equitably distributed. Just ten of the wealthiest countries consume close to 80% of the energy produced in the world and are also responsible for the negative environmental impacts that accompany such intensive energy use. For example, the United States is responsible for 25% of the atmospheric pollution produced by this energy. Brazil is the fourth largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world. [MORE STATS?]

The so called 'conventional' model of food/agricultural production and distribution promoted by most governments, UN agencies (including the FAO), IFIs, Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) and many prominent policy think-tanks follows an industrial-export system of resource use and is fossil fuel intensive. Production is made 'cost-effective' through large-scale monocultures that are dependent on petroleum based chemicals, and heavy machinery and irrigation systems that require fossil fuels for their operations. Food and agricultural products are transported across long distances, stored for long periods of time and processed to the maximum extent possible in an attempt to extract maximum 'value'; food products are packaged and stored in ways and places that require refrigeration, and retailed through outlets that consume tremendous amounts of resources. All these operations require massive amounts of fossil fuels.

This dependence on fossil fuels has come at extremely high environmental, social and economic costs. The recent global price increases in the costs of chemical inputs for conventional farming (particularly fertilizers) were a direct result of the increasing price of petroleum, and a major causal factor of the recent global food price inflation. As petroleum prices rise, so do the operating costs of conventional food/agricultural production and distribution. TNCs tend to hoard and export much needed foodstuffs from certain countries in search of better prices, exacerbating local shortages.

Majority of the world's food producers are actually smallhold producers, who use 80 times less energy than conventional producers and use energy and resources more efficiently than conventional producers. Arguably, majority of the world's consumers rely on food that is largely locally or regionally produced. However, spurred on by the profit motive of agribusiness and agro-industrial food corporations, the world's policy makers and financiers continue to support and promote an export-driven, industrially oriented, corporate controlled food regime that is resulting in deforestation, environmental contamination, atmospheric pollution (especially the release and concentration of GHGs), hunger and poor health.

The burgeoning agrofuel boom is a significant contributing factor in the recent food price crisis. Although the dominant causal factors of the crisis have thus far been the dismantling of national productive capacity in developing countries, privatisation, hoarding, and speculating with food reserves, trade liberalisation and the role of speculative financial capital [PR AFs paper], the growing demand for agrofuels will both, exacerbate food price inflation as well as trigger a crisis of food availability as more and more farmland is diverted away from food agro-fuel crops.

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Although agrofuels are being billed as substitutes for fossil fuels and thereby clinate friendly, experience thus far shows that agrofuels actually consume more fossil fuels to produce than the GHG emissions they reduce [find citation]. Agrofuels are a new and different type of value-added agricultural product and are resulting in a renewed push for mono-crop industrial agriculture, genetically modified crops and infrastructure projects, all of which provide energy, agribusiness and biotech corporations increased access to natural and genetic resources. These corporations are agribusiness, capitalising on new captive agro-energy markets created by mandates in the US and EU for “blending” fossil fuels with agro-fuels. By competing with food production for land, water and financial resources, agrofuels are already and will continue to increase food prices and hunger and weaken food security, leading the former UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food to call them “a crime against humanity. [Ago-fuels in America—FF]

In many countries of the South, governments are committing hundreds of thousands to millions of hectares of farm and forest lands for agro-fuel crop production. Policy makers argue that some agrofuel crops such as jatropha are not human foods anyway and that some of the biomass crops needed for ethanol production [check on whether corn and sugarcane used for AFs are edible] can also be used for food. However, the massive scales of agro-fuel crop production are resulting in drastic land use changes and expansion of plantation agriculture with its attendant negative ecological and social impacts. Lands to be planted to biomass crops often comes from areas which otherwise would include diverse food crops; moreover, biomass crops planted on marginal soils likely compete even more with food production since given that agro-industrial expansion in most countries has driven smallhold producers off fertile to marginal lands [PR-AFs paper]. Land and labour for such mono-crop export-oriented agriculture comes at the expense of poor rural communities and has resulted in evictions, land grabs, concentration of landholdings under new corporate ownership, disruption of indigenous communities and entrenchment of slavery type working conditions. Ecological impacts include habitat destruction, deforestation, land and soil degradation, water depletion, oceanic dead zones and spread of GM crops. Studies have shown that, depending on crops and conditions, agrofuel land use changes produce between 17 and 420 times more CO2 than the displaced fossil fuels [Agrofuels in America--FF]

Also of concern are second or third-generation agrofuels that use cellulosic technologies to turn normally non-harvested crop residues into agrofuels. Non-edible portions of food plants such as maize should be incorporated into the soil after harvest in order to maintain soil fertility. If instead, they are harvested and sent to ethanol factories, we are likely to see a steep decline in soil fertility and a resulting drop in food crop yields (PR-AFs paper--Science Daily, 2008).

Agrofuels are clearly not an appropriate option for a world faced with food and climate crises. They are not as thermodynamically efficient as fossil fuels and in order to replace fossil fuels to a significant degree, they will have to be grown at a scale and under conditions that will increase GHG emissions, degrade environments and eco-systems, displace rural and/or indigenous communities and threaten food security. What are needed instead are radical restructuring of how we live, produce, trade, consume and eat. These include:

1. Making possible the decentralized production, collection and use of energy;2. Public investment in technologies for producing, storing and distributing alternative energies;

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3. Removal of patent protection and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws for technology transfer and use for alternative energies and energy efficient production, storage and transportation systems;4. Fundamental lifestyle changes at individual and collective levels that drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and increase energy efficiency; these include reduction of private vehicles, increase in mass transit syst,ems, public investment in sustainable living spaces, reduction of packaging, garbage and waste, etc.5. An end to corporate driven, industrial scale production of agro-fuels. As a first step, an immediate moratorium on the production, trade and consumption of agrofuels must be declared; simultaneously, an in-depth evaluation of the social and environment costs of the agrofuel boom and of profits made by TNCs in the6. processing and trade of the raw materials must be carried out by by [WHO?]7. Halting trade liberalisation, especially in food and agricultural goods;8. The technological transformation of farming systems from conventional, chemically intensive agriculture to those based on agroecology;9. Breaking the link between food and petroleum prices by transforming food production, distribution and retail systems; the promotion and development of small scale production and local consumption models; 10. Explicit support from governments and institutions to the sustainable peasant-based model of food production and11. distribution, with its minimal use of energy, its capacity to create jobs, to respect cultural and biological diversity and its12. positive effect on global warming (fertile soils are the best way to capture CO2).13. Reducing food miles by procuring, distributing and eating as locally and as seasonably as possible; 14. Conserving and restoring the productive capacity of farm lands;15. Protecting and regenerating forests, wastelands, wetlands and eco-systems under threat;

17. Reduce post harvest losses(To be written)

B. Associated rights and policies that are needed to eradicate hunger and ensure implementation of the Right to Food – these work alongside with Peoples Food Sovereignty.

18. Role of development assistance Poverty and hunger in developing countries is a result of economical and political structures and power established hundreds of years ago during colonialism which are still in place and also further developed. Development assistance cannot substantially change this or make up for the misery, oppression and environmental damages this has caused. And development assistance cannot eradicate hunger and poverty. To a great extent development assistance has been used as a tool

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from the elites in rich countries to preserve these political and economic structures, and to promote unsustainable development models. Development assistance has also made developing countries and people dependent and weakened the struggle for self determination and self managed development. However, development assistance can play a positive role and contribute to sustainable development, eradication of hunger and poverty, and to strengthen peoples’ own efforts and struggle for independence, welfare and sustainable development. There are many examples of that. The More and Better campaign has developed principles for good development aid for agriculture and rural development to eradicate hunger and povertyxxii which should be followed and supported.

The oppression and destruction made by the elites in the rich countries, which also to some extent have benefited ordinary people in the rich countries, cannot be “repaid” with money. However, there should be no doubt that the rich countries owe developing countries enormous amount of money for as an ecological and historical debt. The development assistance is just a tiny part of the payback the rich countries should make. We therefore demand that the rich countries fulfill their obligations and commitment to increase development assistance, but only if it’s a real support to the peoples’ and countries own efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty.

Despite the facts that the majority of the people in developing countries, the majority of the poor and the hungry people are small scale peasants and their families, only 3,4% of the official development assistance (ODA) in 2006 was for agriculture, down from 18% in 1979.xxiii

The rich countries must immediately fulfil their promises to pay at least 0,7% of gross national income (GNI) in development assistance. The assistance must be given unconditionally and based on the peoples, local communities and countries own priorities and plans.

The rich countries must as a minimum “increase in the percentage of ODA to be invested in food and agricultural development from the current 3 % to 10% within five years (and beyond if needed as absorption capacity increases) to reverse the historic underinvestment in agriculture” as proposed by the UN High-Level Task Force. xxiv

The assistance must be given to small scale, family based agro ecological and other forms of sustainable agriculture, pastoralists and artisanal fisheries, based on food sovereignty and principles for good assistance developed by the More and Better campaign and similar principles based on peoples own needs and decisions.

Promotion of and support for unsustainable, high input agriculture, GMO’s, so called “green revolution” etc from rich countries, philanthropic foundations etc must end.

Rich countries must fulfil their obligations to pay for climate change adaptation – as a compensation for the damage and misery they have caused. These payments are not development assistance (ODA), but additional money.

Developing countries should make themselves independent of development assistance.

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19. Debt cancellation for developing countries and the rich countries must pay their ecological debt to developing countriesDebt cancellation for developing countries and the rich countries must pay their ecological and other debt to developing countries. The point here is to create space in national budgets to allot adequate resources to family farming and small-scale food production, and to social protections systems

Since the mid-twentieth century (after World War 2), most developing countries have been caught in vicious debt traps to the countries of the industrialised North, that have prevented them from directing national, public resources towards building strong, robust and self-sufficient domestic economies, food and agriculture systems, and manufacturing and services industries. Ironically, many of these debts were incurred by newly decolonised countries to their former colonisers. Wealth and resources once appropriated through colonialism were– after decolonisation – expropriated through development aid, debt repayment and free trade and investment agreements. Servicing external debts have diverted precious national resources away from tackling the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

As the debt crisis unfolded in the late 1970-s [check precise year], the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank came up with a package of “economic reforms” that developing countries had to implement in order to be eligible for loans and grants. Initially called Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and later renamed poverty reduction and growth strategies, these reforms aimed at achieving rapid economic growth, removing government intervention in the economy, and catapulting domestic economies into globalised, unregulated markets regardless of their specific conditions, characteristics or constraints. A standard package of reforms includes: trade, investment and financial liberalisation; dismantling of public enterprises and cross subsidies to poor communities; privatisation of property rights (especially land), public enterprises, goods and services; commercialisation of agriculture; reductions in public expenditure and public investment programmes (including agriculture); deregulation (including the removal of price controls and protections for workers and the environment), and; creating an enabling environment for private corporations to operate unfettered and amass profits (also called “good governance”).

According to the IMF and World Bank, these reforms were necessary in order to generate the revenues needed by indebted countries to repay their debts and put in place the institutional infrastructure for full market economies which would help countries to export their way out of debt. But in reality, countries under SAPs fell deeper into debt and poverty. Domestic enterprises, agriculture, industries and local livelihoods were destroyed. Unemployment, inequality, poverty and food insecurity increased. The privatisation of land, goods and services and loss of public subsidies and supports increased indebtedness among rural and urban poor. And the indiscriminate extraction and sale of natural resources and mineral wealth destroyed environments. High levels of debt servicing left little in the national coffers to meet national development development needs.

Three decades of debt servicing, neoliberal budgeting, privatisation, and trade and investment liberalisation have systematically dismantled national food production and distribution capacity in most developing countries. Despite the fact that smallhold producers feed majority of the world's peoples, neoliberal policies are taking away the facilities they need to survive such as minimum price

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guarantees, state supported marketing boards, credit, technical assistance and markets for their produce. In many indebted countries, the IMF and World Bank have forced governments to sell off their public sector enterprises that maintained grain reserves (Rosset, 2006). Food inventories are now largely in the hands of the private sector, usually foreign corporations, that tend to hoard and speculate in times of crisis to increase their profit margins. Instead, national food needs are increasingly met through imports even as national productive capacity is oriented towards exports stimulated by enormous government subsidies to agribusiness using taxpayer money (Rosset, 2006).

It is now patently clear that the external debts of countries that were subjected to SAPs in their various forms have been repaid several times over through financial flows for interest payments to IFIs and transfers of natural resources, agricultural raw materials, mineral wealth and labour capacity to the corporations of wealthy countries. What remains unpaid and even unacknowledged by the countries of the North is the huge ecological debt that is owed to the countries of the South. This ecological debt owed by the North to the South includes:

looting, destruction and devastation that North countries caused during the colonial period; the extraction and export of natural resources from the South to North, such as petroleum,

minerals, forest, marine and genetic resources, processes which are destroying ecosystems and the basis of the survival of the peoples of the South;

the ecologically unequal terms of trade because these goods are exported from the South without taking into account the social and environmental damages caused by their extraction and production;

historic and current intellectual appropriation of ancestral knowledge, mainly related to seeds, medicinal plants and other knowledge on which the biotechnology and the modern agro industries are based;

the use and the degradation of the best lands, water, air and human energy to establish export crops to feed Northern industries and corporations, putting at risk the food and cultural security of local and national communities in the South;

the contamination of the atmosphere by the industrialised North through disproportionate emissions carbon dioxide and other GHGs;

the production of toxic wastes, chemical weapons and for the carrying out of nuclear tests;o [citation: ecological debt website]

Although many Southern governments are now also pursuing economic growth strategies that entail the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, mineral wealth and energy, there remain huge structural differences in the quality of life between North and South countries. The development model that continues to be pushed by the world's wealthiest countries and IFIs is one that creates and perpetuates debt. Urgent steps that need to be taken:

1. Unconditional cancellation of the external debt of the poorest countries of the world. Years of SAPs and debt servicing have weakened the social and economic bases of many of the world’s poorest debtors. Rebuilding this capacity is crucial for lasting solutions towards poverty elimination, but this will not happen as long as the debtor countries are increasingly strapped with debt service payments and further structural adjustment in the name of debt relief.

2. Acknowledgement and payment of the ecological debt owed by the North to the peoples of the

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South. 3. Abolition of neoliberal economic programmes whether they are called SAPs, PRSP-PRGF or

economic reforms. The neoliberal reform agenda that currently underwrites north-south development assistance through grants and loans must be rejected.

4. Trade and financial liberalisation must be curbed because of their negative impacts on the local and national economies of poor, indebted countries.

5. Halt the financialisation of food and agriculture and speculative trade in commodity futures and derivatives.

6. End the impunity of creditors and corporations that benefit from financial and food crises and precipitate them through speculative activities and irresponsible lending and financing.

7. End financial deregulation and the ; re-regulate finance through measures such as strict capital controls, the imposition of taxes on foreign exchange transactions (such as the Tobin Tax), etc.

8. Reparations by private and public financial institutions (including the IFIs) and Northern governments for irresponsible lending, financial transactions and policy advice.

9. Reduce dependency on foreign financing, especially loans, in local and national development. Most development priorities (for example, food security, education, healthcare, environmental protection, clean water, etc.) can be supported through domestic resources, and the use of foreign financing can be limited to those goods and services that are as yet unavailable at reasonable cost domestically.

10. Reorient economies from production for export to production for local/national markets, and the redistribution of land, income, and other productive assets to strengthen local and national economic capacities.

20. Decent work for all, correct conditions and pay for agricultural workers an migrants.One of the most shameful and recurring tragedies of our times is that majority of those who produce and prepare the food we eat are hungry, malnourished and poor. These include smallhold producers, workers in agricultural and fisheries businesses, workers, workers in food processing, distribution and retail operations and those who work in food outlets. The ILO estimates that the waged work force in agriculture is made up of 700 million women and men producing the food we eat but who are often unable to afford it. [citation] These numbers would be even larger if we consider that many smallhold rural producers are in fact dependent on a seasonal or temporary wage for basic survival. Workers transformed into "outgrowers" are generally entirely dependent on their former employers for inputs, sales and credit.[citation—IUF presentation]

As farmgate and trading prices rise, the incomes of smallhold producers and workers do not rise proportionately: they do not get wage increases in time of financial and economic crises nor do governments put into place emergency measures that would allow them and their families to eat. Increasing corporate control over our food systems enables corporations and the wealthy to benefit from food price fluctuations. When governments do put in price control measures they are designed primarily to benefit urban middle and upper class consumers.

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Agriculture has the capacity for simultaneously generating abundant harvests as well as miserable poverty [cite IUF]. With each economic depression and the growing power of agribusiness and energy corporations over land, natural resources and production inputs, millions of smallholders, workers and indigenous communities are being driven off their lands and territories into debt, poverty and continuing cycles of distress migration.

Agricultural workers and workers in the informal sector are some of the most unprotected groups in the world and among them, migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, hunger and ill health. [need to add more]. They perform some of the most strenuous work under dangerous conditions: they are exposed to harmful chemicals for prolonged periods; routinely handle toxic substances without protection; live in some of the most environmentally contaminated and polluted areas; and are prevented by employers to organise and struggle for their rights collectively. Migrant workers that cross international borders in search of work are not able to make use of even the most rudimentary legal channels to protect themselves. They are are in effect 'stateless' and dispossessed of even the most fundamental and universal human rights.

[NEED TO ADD MORE ABOUT MIGRANTS AND ALSO WOMEN]

One of the major keys to eradicating hunger and malnutrition is decent work in agriculture and fisheries for those who work for a wage. The bulk of hunger is in rural areas, and agricultural workers are among the most food insecure. The are hungry because they are poor, and they are poor because their basic rights, including their collective rights as workers, are violated on a daily basis. [cite IUF]

Although vulnerable to exploitation, smallhold producers, agricultural workers and other workers are not passive victims. Given the space to exercise the rights they are denied, they have the capacity to fundamentally move the food system in the direction of the social and environmental sustainability which is fundamental to their own existence - and to that of all the rest of us. Conventional industrial agriculture (including crops, livestock and fisheries) poisons and pollutes the bodies and environments of those who produce our food. The fight against poverty and hunger cannot be advanced without advancing decent work in agriculture.

Some urgent steps to advancing decent work and protecting the rights of workers include:

1. Food rights must include the right to food and rights for those who produce food. Achieving decent work in agriculture is fundamental to advancing the fight against hunger. UN agencies with mandates for food and labour must work together to ensure these rights in policy as well as practice.2. Agricultural workers--and all workers--need a living wage; a living wage for agricultural workers is a key element in the struggle to attain food security and sovereignty.3. The strategic role of women in producing, preparing, processing, marketing and trading of food must be built into policy responses and implementation.4. Capital markets urgently require strong regulation to prevent the recurrence of financial and economic crises. 5. Governments must immediately put into place laws and regulations to ensure the occupational health and safety of workers; effective monitoring mechanisms to ensure occupational health and safety must be put in place and made operational under the oversight of competent professionals.6. The use of harmful chemicals, compounds, etc. in agriculture (including livestock) and fisheries

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must be stopped.7. The rights of workers to organise and to collective bargaining must be recognised by governments and multilateral agencies, and guaranteed by laws.8. Migrant workers must be accorded the full enjoyment of their human rights regardless of the country they are working in; this includes the right to decent work, living wages, occupational safety and health and freedom from exploitation..[NEED TO ADD MORE]

21. Social security and protection systems (distribution, redistribution and social transfers) Social assistance (non-contributory part of social protection) and social insurance (for health care, unemployment benefits, contributory pensions etc.) together provide the social protection system of a state. In our contemporary societies, social protection systems are of utmost importance to guarantee an adequate and dignified standard of living for all persons.

The past ten years have seen an impressive expansion of social cash transfer programmes in the Global South which are particularly important for children, orphans, elderly, chronic ill and all groups of the population who can not provide for themselves by working or earning an income. Cash transfers provide non-contributory payment in the form of cash to the poor or to those who risk falling into poverty. The objective of these programs is to increase the households’ real income. Thus, social cash transfers can contribute to counteract income poverty and improve the nutrition status, can reduce child labour and increase school attendance and improve the health of children.

Income transfers are necessary but they are not sufficient: They should be integrated into a comprehensive concept of social security. Moreover they should be linked to measures which put people in a position to feed themselves – without holding them captive in an unsustainable form of capitalism and consumerism. The first and foremost requirement in this context is therefore a set of structural policies which recognize people’s right to feed themselves rather than only the right to be fed by way of transfers. This implies special programmes like agrarian reform, small-scale agriculture, decent working conditions, etc. In no case, social cash transfers should replace sructural policies to assist people to make use of productive resources and fend for themselves, but should supplement and strengthen them.

Minimum income programmes should be rights-based making the recipient a rights-holder independent of local elites in the selection and distribution systems. In the hands of a corrupt or politicized implementing bureaucracy these programmes can otherwise turn into a tool for oppression. The best way to overcome such risks would be to get away from narrow and little transparent selective targeting and to strengthen the transfers to the recipients as human beings, rather than as being poor.

22. Emergency aid / humanitarian actions on food delivery Implementation of food sovereignty and other policies and actions promoted in this document will drastically reduce the needs for emergency aid and humanitarian actions for food delivery. Local

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communities and countries will be able to fulfill the right to adequate food on a regular basis, and to handle most of the emergency situations caused by bad harvests, natural disasters and conflicts. There is, however, now a huge need for emergency aid and humanitarian actions to reduce hunger and poverty, and there will still be a need in the future – even with the implementation of food sovereignty and actions promoted in this document.

The international institutions and the riche countries should guarantee the aid needed in emergency situations to avoid famines and hunger. There are enough resources to avoid any hunger catastrophes. It is not acceptable that the economic resources needed are not made available by the rich countries.

Emergency aid is often used to dump surplus production from some rich countries and to pressure countries to accept GMO’s. Emergency aid is also destroying local production and the local biodiversity. Such emergency aid has to be stopped. All emergency aid should be based on the need of the people affected and should support local production and preserve local biodiversity.

The following guidelines should be followed in such humanitarian assistance and emergency aid:

Rich countries must guarantee the money needed in emergency situations to fulfil the right to adequate food, the right to shelter, sanitation and basic health services.

Starvation and hunger crises have multiple causes and are complex. Each situation has to be dealt with according to the specific circumstances and with a holistic approach. Food delivery or food delivery alone will often not be sufficient to rescue people in emergency food crises.

Emergency aid has to strengthen and build up under the long term strategy for food security and food sovereignty, not undermine it. If it to rescue people is needed to work in a waythat go against the long term strategy, the actions have to be considered carefully.

Buy from local farmers, herders and fisherfolks: When food delivery is needed in emergency situations, it should always be bought in the local community if possible. If that is not possible the food should be bought by near by communities, next within the country and then the region.

Food delivery in emergency situations has to be carried out in close cooperation with the people effected by hunger, their organisations, local authorities and governments. This is important to reach the people needed, strengthen the local capacity and avoid distortion of local markets.

FAO’s guidelines for seed delivery in emergency situations must be followed (MUST BE CHECKED!)

Price and marked control are needed: To avoid extreme high prices and black markets, governmental price control and control of the marked are needed.

Support in cash in stead of food should be considered in all emergency hunger situations whether food is brought into the area or not.

23. Holistic development of societies A healthy economic system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stand more than 200 years of industrial development, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land

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and water resources, a drive to maximize profits and model of consumption in the rich countries that pretends unlimited availability of natural resources. A radically different approach to all sectors of our economies is needed. The quality of life, expressed as the realization of all economic, social, cultural and political human rights for all people on this planet today and for future generations, and long-term sustainability ought to guide our economy.

Recognition and implementation of food sovereignty is necessary to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and poverty in developing countries, but it not sufficient alone. The human rights must be respected and implemented by all governments. Global and national economic and power structures must be changed so peoples and countries can determine their own diverse development. No outside power should be able to dictate or pressure communities, peoples and countries to follow certain development paradigm or policies. This also include the right to preserve traditional ways of life and to delink from or not link up to so called modernization and development as some indigenous peoples have demanded.

No country has come out of poverty without developing production of industrial goods and diversified development of services, including public health and education services. Industrialisation and development of service sectors in developing countries will also benefit the food producers because there will be bigger markets and higher prices for their products, and also goods and services of importance for the life of farmers and fisherfolks will be available. Strengthening of and developing of diversified infrastructure is also of crucial importance. At the same time it must be underlined that the industrialization and transport sector, mainly in the rich countries, have caused climate change and tremendous environmental damage. It is therefore necessary to develop industry, transport and infrastructure in a way so it does not destroy the environment and lead to climate change.

The international trade rules in WTO and bilateral trade agreements between developing countries and rich countries do not give the political and economical space for developing countries to develop their production - agriculture, industry and service sectors . Also international financial institutions and the power of the multinational companies limit the possibilities for developing countries to develop a diverse production of food, services and industrial goods.

(This section need to be developed after the more specific sections are written. There might be a need to expand this section with paragraphs on

- Political, cultural and democratic rights- Women’s rights and role- Health- Education- Energy- Transport

24. Guarantee adequate nutrition and build universal healthcare It is well known: food can be the first medicine. Healthy food helps to keep the body healthy. On the contrary diets which are not balanced or varied enough, food that is not fresh and safe lead to

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chronic deficiencies, to physical and mental disorders and diseases. For the person who is already sick, unadequate food and diets may prevent medical treatments to be efficient or accelerate the evolution of the disease. This is especially the case for people living with HIV-AIDS.

Persons with specific nutritional assistance needs are:

Women and girls (because of food taboos and discrimination within the family) Pregnant and lactating women (because of the specific nutritional needs they have and

because breastfeeding by healthy mothers is so crucial for the development and health of babies and children)

Children and Elderly (because of their dependence on others to buy and prepare food and because of the disappearing of the family and social structures by which they were taken care of).

Adults and children living with HIV-AIDS (because of their specific nutritional needs and because of their economic and social vulnerability to food insecurity)

i www.foodsovereignty.org ii Make e reference her to some of the key documents, and put some of the documents in the annex – the Nyéléni declaration, Terra Preta declaration etciii www.moreandbetter.org iv List of the members in the committee: …v Undernourishment refers to the condition of people whose dietary energy consumption is continuously below a minimum dietary energy requirement (MDER) for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out a light physical activity. (http://www.fao.org/faostat/foodsecurity/FSSDMetadata_en.htm) vi FAO news release 9 December 2008vii World Food Program: www.wfp.org/hunger/who-are viii The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO 2006ix UN Standing Committee on Nutrition's 5th Report on the World Nutrition Situation, 2005, and World Food Program: www.wfp.org/hunger/who-arex The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO 2006xi The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO 2008.xii FAO news release 9 December 2008xiii All facts about nutrition are from www.wfp.org/hunger xiv Report of the World Food Conference, Rome 5-16 November 1974. www.eclac.org/cumbres/3/43/FAORLC-41001 WorldFoodConference .doc xv Ibidxvi World Food Summit, Rome Italy 13-17 November 1996: Rome Declaration on World Food Security. http://www.fao.org/WFS/index_en.htm xvii http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm xviii ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/j0563e/j0563e00.pdf xix www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/Documentation/CFA Web.pdf xx Food Sovereignty A Right For All - Political Statement of the NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty, Rome 2002xxi From the Terra Preta conference: Civil Society statement on the World Food Emergency: No More “Failures-as-Usual"!xxii www.moreandbetter.org/en/about/common-principles-for-good-aid xxiii High-Level Task Force on the global food security crisis. Comprehensive framework for action. http://www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/Documentation/CFA%20Web.pdf page 33xxiv High-Level Task Force on the global food security crisis. Comprehensive framework for action. h ttp://www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/Documentation/CFA%20Web.pdf page 34

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Six months of exclusive breastfeeding is the single most effective way to bring down high infant mortality rates. This will be achieved only when adolescent girls and pregnant and lactating women are strongly supported by ensuring their adequate nutritional status and by alleviating their high work burdens. Breastfeeding encourages women’s self-reliance by reducing their dependence on medical professionals and challenges the interest of the baby food industry. Breastfeeding contributes to household food autonomy and saves unnecessary purchase of breastmilk substitutes, feeding equipment and medical care. Mothers’ and babies’ right to breastfeed places a legal obligation on governments to enact policy and legislation to make it possible for them to do so.

In times of food crisis, particular attention should be given to children and women. The critical period when the foundation for life long health is set reaches from pre-conception to around 24 months of age. Collective community action should be at the core of efforts to overcome the impact of the food crisis on women and children. Communities should obtain adequate services and support from the government to put into practice their solutions. In the face of food price crisis and food shortages school meals are important both for keeping children in school, as well as protecting the school children from the effects of the food shortages. School meals are especially important for keeping the girl child in school, as it is she who is most likely to be removed from school in the event of a financial crisis and/or to help increase food collection and/or harvest.

Protection from aggressive advertising by food corporations for unhealthy and low quality food should be put in place. Awareness-raising campaigns on healthy food habits and key nutritional issues should be promoted at all levels. Governments should ensure full transparency for consumers on the quality and nutritional values of the consumed food. Consumption of locally produced food should be promoted. Initiatives towards creation and cultivation of individual and collective gardens, also in urban and peri-urban areas (including in schools) should be strongly encouraged.

Universal access to quality health care is an important requirement to achieve the eradication of hunger. Health is a fundamental human right. Inequality, poverty, exploitation, violence and injustice are at the root of ill‐health and the deaths of poor and marginalised people.

Governments should promote, finance and provide comprehensive Primary Health Care as the most effective way of addressing health problems and organising public health services so as to ensure free and universal access. We oppose the privatisation of public health services which turn them into a commodity. Effective regulation of the private medical sector, including charitable and NGO medical services should be ensured. Public health services should be independent from corporate interests. Communities and people’s organizations should be able to participate in decision making in health at all levels, including patient and consumer rights.Traditional and holistic healing systems and practitioners should be recognised and supported. They should also be integrated into Primary Health Care.

25. Mechanisms to support people in zones of conflict (wars, forces migration …) and how to build resilience of communitiesPeople in conflict/war zones are subject to evictions, displacement, blockades, confiscation of land, loss of natural resources. Impediments to proper cultivation of land, lack of production in the

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absence of normal living conditions and restrictions to marketing & on free movement are debilitating factors that pose hunger as a magnified threat which people have to face due to losing security of their livelihoods on a daily basis.

Conflict zones should be aided by sound policies and plans to enhance the people's ability to foster a will for life in face of all risks and dangers threatening their existence.

Engaging people in conflict zones through support groups is essential to any initiative designed to assist them, set up relief operations which strengthen their abilities to cope with disaster situations, or contribute to efforts to ease tensions in such areas that could keep away the danger of hunger. Development aid is preferred to pure aid which created dependence and doesn’t meet actual needs.

Moreover, fostering solidarity among members of a community in crisis is vital for their ability to cope with dire conditions.

People in conflict zones need to:- Connect - Create local support groups and organizations- Communicate with local leaders- Depend on locally-produced food and materials- Diversify production- Hold on to the land- Protect natural resources- Define ways to reduce consumption .- Seek food alternatives- Get their basic needs through barter.- Document developments on the ground when possible.

Developing approaches and policies:Facing up to the threat of hunger in conflict zones requires combined efforts that should involve policy making, engagement of target groups, training and awareness. Such efforts may include the following in the process of dealing with such a threat:

- Spreading awareness of any impacts of the conflict - Reaching out to people in all areas of conflict- Helping people to maintain production- Assisting people to develop food alternatives- Providing assistance for land cultivation- Maintaining/developing traditional crafts and handiwork- Offering training to women to maintain/ create home jobs- Introducing local "no interest" credit and funding programs. - Encouraging Urban Agriculture and home economics.

26. Food distribution /retail systems, particularly in urban areas(To be written)

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C. INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

27. The role of peoples organisations and local initiativesMost important part of a strong and vibrant local food system are the communities that sustain them. Local initiatives, increasing the autonomy of communities build resistance and resilience against influences from international markets and the corporate sector.

Peoples organisations at all level play a key role on building these initiatives and mobilize against forces that want to destroy our food systems. They will have to continue to mobilize against the influence of WTO, WB, IMF, free trade agreements and the corporate sector to roll back their influence.

At the local and national level peoples organisations have to pressure their governments to implement policies based on food sovereignty and the right to food. Direct actions are needed to push or agenda and to make sure that governments take their interests into account.

With governments that are open to implement such policies dialogues should be set up in order to exchange experiences. National organisations should receive support from international organisations in negotiating adequate national policies with their governments.

Peoples organisations have to be enabled to bring their concerns towards the UN agencies and pressure them, as well as their member governments, to take up their mandate and set the right policies and initiatives at the international level. For example the follow up of the ICARRD Conference by FAO and IFAD is crucial, as well as the strengthening of farmers rights on seeds and the support for “in situ conservation by farmers through the FAO seed treaty.

28. What to be expected from local and national governmentsLocal and national policies have to be re-installed to support peasant based production and artisan fisheries and to protect local-domestic markets. This space has been dramatically eroded by the structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF as well as the trade liberalisation imposed by WTO.

Local and national governments should protect productive resources and basic services as public goods and protect these against privatisation and corporate control.

Local and national governments have the obligation to implement policies that respond to the needs of their people, protect the rights of communities, protect the environment as well as productive resources.

Local and national governments should define mandatory strategies to overcome hunger with clear goals, time bound commitments and independent monitoring. These strategies should be discussed, adopted and monitored with full participation of women, indigenous peoples, peasant, fisherfolks, workers, the urban poor and the persons and communities most affected by poverty and hunger.

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Achieving food sovereignty is the result of the realization of people’s rights. Therefore, the application of the principles of human rights form must be an integral part of the process. Local and national governments should fully implement the principles of participation, transparency, accountability and non-discrimination. This means that local and national governments should provide information and adequate institutional mechanisms to strengthen the ability of people’s organizations to effectively participate in food related policy decision-making and to challenge decisions that threaten their rights. Recourse mechanisms to which people can resort in case they see that their rights are not being guaranteed are of utmost importance. Moreover, local and national governments should fully respect and protect the right to freedom of expression, the right of peaceful assembly; the right to freedom of association in order to be able to form strong people’s organizations.

29. On the role of the international institutionsPeasant based agriculture, artisan fisheries and pastoralism still provide the food for the large majority of the world population. This production has to be supported and protected against aggressive invasions of Translational Companies (TNCs) that have a clear interest to destroy the sector and transform peasants into slum dwellers and dependent agricultural workers or contract farmers, being consumers of TNC products instead of producing food for their families and communities.

International institutions should support and facilitate governments to implement national policies based on food sovereignty and to roll back the devastating influence of the international, very volatile markets as well of the presence of TNCs that invade countries to grab peasant land for industrial food and agro fuel production.

An International Declaration on Peasant Rights has to be adopted by the United Nations. This declaration will define and defend peasants and small-scale producers rights over goods and resources, and gives the legal protection needed to exercise the right to produce. This Declaration has to be integrated in the United Nations Human Rights system and be associated with other relevant treaties that already exist under the United Nations.

Food sovereignty and the right to Food should prevail over trade agreements and other international policies. Current negotiations on trade agreements and under WTO must be stopped. These negotiations are hurting the vast majority of food producers. A new approach to international food and agricultural trade is urgently needed. This approach must be based on the right of countries to decide their level of self sufficiency and support for sustainable food production for domestic consumption. Discussions leading to a new trade regime based on the diverse needs of people and societies and the preservation of the environment should take place within the UN system.

The UN agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP, CGIAR,…) have to go back to their mandate and orientate all their support in protecting and facilitating the space for national governments to implement necessary policies as explained above. This means for example that they should set clear rules to stop dumping, avoid food aid that destroys local production, forbid the privatisation of seeds, animal genetic resources and water.

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We call on the Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice to investigate

the contribution of agribusiness, including grain traders and commodity speculators, to

violations of the right to food and to the ongoing food and rural crisis.

The UN agencies should actively support to agrarian reform as well as to other programs for education, health and other basic services. The UN agencies should also support peoples organisations in enabling them to set up effective dialogues with their national governments on necessary policies to achieve food sovereignty and the right to food.

In 2008 a United Nations-High Level Task force was set up to coordinate actions of the UN-agencies, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO, and a Common Framework for Action (CFA) was developed. Although an increased coordination by UN agencies is desperately needed, the task force is mainly driven by the G8 donor countries and Multilateral Institutions like the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF. The CFA was written by the international bureaucracy without any serious consultation of governments and civil society. Although support for small farmers is mentioned in the text, the interests of the multilateral institutions and the G8 countries are different. The text clearly pushes for more trade liberalisation and the World Bank want to use this mechanism to channel big funding to agribusinesses for a second green revolution, particularly in Africa. The FAO and other UN agencies that have a mandate and the expertise to implement effective programs are isolated and marginalized.

Until now UN agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP) as well as the CGIAR have dramatically failed to address the crisis in an effective way due to lack of funding, inefficient functioning and lack of focus on support for peasant and fisher based domestic food production. This has to change. The global governance on agriculture and food has to be dramatically improved. We need one single space in the UN system that acts in total independence of the WTO, the WB and the IMF, with a clear mandate from governments, an adequate participation of peasant, fisher folk and other Civil Society Organisations and a transparent and democratic process of decision taking. This has to be the unique space where food and agriculture issues are discussed, where policies and rules are set and where all financial resources are controlled.

We call for a new and truly cooperative global initiative in which we are full participants in the process of policy change and institutional correction.

We call for the establishment of a UN Commission on Food Production, Consumption

and Trade. This Commission must have a significant and substantive representation of small-scale food producers and marginalized consumers. The Commission should expand upon the format established by the Brundtland Commission 20 years ago which opened the way for the environmental summits that followed.

In forming the Commission, the Secretary-General should be mindful of the findings of the

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) whose recently completed report was approved by nearly 60 governments, as well as the

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outcomes of FAO agrarian reform (ICARRD) conference and process. The mandate of the new Commission must include all forms of – and constraints to –

food production; all aspects of – and barriers to – safe, adequate, affordable and culturally

appropriate food; and a full analysis of the entire food chain in consideration of changing

climatic conditions. The Commission should provide an interim report to the UN General

Assembly and the governing bodies of FAO, IFAD and WFP after a year and provide a final report, with recommendations, to these organisations in two years.

A Rome Food Summit where the UN Commission is established should agree to undertake a meta-evaluation of the major food and agricultural institutions (FAO, IFAD, WFP and CGIAR). Based on this meta-evaluation, FAO’s biennial budget for regional conferences should be adjusted to allow the convening of regional food and agricultural conferences, equally involving all the major multilateral institutions, in the first half of 2009. These meetings must ensure the full and active participation of representatives of peasant and small-scale farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk. Building from the meta-evaluation and regional conferences, the Commission must submit its report including a new architecture for the UN’s food and agricultural work.

ANNEXES ETC(To be added)

NOTES

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