Peddling “Acceptable” Land Grabbing

Food insecurity remains an immense problem troubling many countries despite increased global food production. This is essentially because food still does not reach those who need it most, the poor who lack the capacity to buy it. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that over a billion people in the world suffer hunger and millions have already died from the lack of food. Rising food prices underscored this crisis in 2008 and since then the solution being pushed has been increased investments for agricultural production and raising productivity in underdeveloped countries, mainly to expand crops export.

Roundtable Discussion Tackled Why IRRI Should be Closed

Leaders of farmer’s organizations, health professionals, scientists, non-government organizations (NGOs) and other concerned individuals gathered in a roundtable discussion on the 50 years of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Spearheaded by the Resistance and Solidarity Against Agrochemical TNCs (RESIST! Agrochemical TNCs), the talk focused on natural calamities such as drought, El Niño, and climate change and how these severely affected Philippine agriculture. The discussion scrutinized IRRI’s role in the country’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice.

While the whole world is grappling with the dreadful effects of climate change, the world’s premier rice center, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), offers nothing but the same old technological solutions. Problem with drought? IRRI has a drought-tolerant variety. Problem with flood and salt-water intrusion? IRRI has the varieties too. But none of it is really going to work. The problem is not that there is climate change, but that it is largely a result of an industrial food system that IRRI’s seeds and technology continue to perpetuate and reinforce.

After the failure of the UN’s climate summit, the international community has to pick up the pieces and find a new approach to tackling global warming. Hans Dembowski discussed the matter with Tony Tujan of the Manila-based IBON Foundation.

In European media, China and the USA are considered to have caused the failure of the Copenhagen Climate talks. Do you agree?

I think it is too simple to blame these two countries in isolation. Several factors contributed to the failure. First of all, the notion that all countries should accept binding emissions targets is misleading. It does not make sense to try to resolve the major environmental crisis humanity is facing with such quotas. We need a new development paradigm, a model of development that would lead to a healthier world.

Food sovereignty encompasses many of the measures that are needed for women to achieve their full human rights, including the right to food.

The number of people in the world who are hungry because of insufficient calorie intake rose from about 840 million in 2003 to more than a billion in 2009, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Another billion people may have enough calories but are malnourished and in chronic poor health due to micronutrient shortfalls. This means that nearly one-third of the world’s 6.8 billion people are malnourished and unable to secure sufficient healthy food to conduct normal activities.

For three decades, the village of Gaviotas has worked to build a sustainable, imaginative community in the eastern savannahs of Colombia. They have planted 20,000 acres of pines, creating shade and soil that has nurtured the return of hundreds of species of native plants and animals.

The US’s agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and the surrounding regions. These are not unique cases born from unusual circumstances, but constitute a likely template for US activities overseas, as it continues to expand its “war on terror” and pursue US corporate interests.

The failure of governments meeting in the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to conclude a strong and just deal for global climate action brought widespread disappointment. Dissatisfied with the official process, thousands of climate and social movement activists met 19-22 April 2010 at Cochabamba, Bolivia in an alternative people’s summit to discuss real solutions to climate change.

The summit, called Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climatico y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra (CMPCC), was convened by Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Advocacy group Water for the People Network (WPN) said that the water sector, instead of private power companies, should take the lead in managing the facilities of the Angat Dam in Bulacan, Philippines. The group issued the statement during a roundtable discussion that it organized last March 23 regarding the planned privatization of the Angat Dam, whose bidding is scheduled in April.

Water used by golf courses can supply 1,500 hectares of rice paddies per day

As the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) warns against cutting water supply for irrigation because of the El Nino, independent research group IBON said that there may be enough supply if consumption is regulated among wasteful users such as golf courses.

RP Jobs, Quality of Work in 2009 Worst in 50 Years

IBON Foundation, Inc.

The Philippines’ employment and quality of work was at its worst in 2009, with around 64.4% to 81% of the 39.4 million-labor force in 2009 either jobless or in poor quality work. Its true unemployment rate of around 11% counting 4.32 million jobless Filipinos puts the Philippines in the worst crisis of joblessness and of poor quality work in its history

We the people have given away our sovereign money-creating power to private, for-profit lending nstitutions, which have used it to siphon wealth from the productive economy. Some states are moving to take that power back.

Source: “Climate change and its implications for small farmers,” Special Release Issue No. 9, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, September 2009.