Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

Declaration of the IPC on the draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

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In late February, governments and civil society organisations, along with NGO and private sector representatives convened in Rome to discuss the Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.  The Framework will set the targets and directions for addressing an urgent problem – the ongoing loss of biodiversity that is crucial to the landscape functions that we rely on for food, fibre, fuel, and clean water.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas joined these discussions as part of the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty. The IPC has called for more ambitious and transformative targets to be set for the post-2020 framework, noting that while many governments and civil society organisations support a more transformative agenda, this has yet to be included in the draft Framework.  AFSA, along with the IPC and many grassroots movements, urges the parties to adopt targets that will lead significant, widespread, and transformative action to halt biodiversity loss and crucially, to recognise the major contribution of agroecology and ecologically-sound farming to maintaining global biodiversity.

See the full statement of the IPC below

(AFSA members’ participation in these events is funded by the IPC via U.N. funding mechanisms)

 

Declaration of the IPC on the Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) is an autonomous platform representing 6000 grassroots organizations and social movements of Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers involved in the conservation, sustainable use, development and governance of agricultural biodiversity, which is the basis for food sovereignty.

Agricultural biodiversity is guaranteed by the women and men of the world who are peasants, small-scale farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, forest dwellers, indigenous peoples and other small-scale food producers who feed the world.  The targets of the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework cannot be achieved unless the role and the individual and collective rights of the Indigenous peoples, who have distinct rights guaranteed in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale producers, who have distinct rights recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, with particular regard for women and youth, are recognized and protected. People must be allowed to live in rural areas in harmony with nature, as indigenous peoples and local communities do while enhancing the world’s biodiversity.

Our first comment on the Zero Draft is that while our people grapple with the worst impacts of the climate crisis induced primarily by industrial agriculture and extractive industries, this draft strategy to protect & conserve biodiversity in perpetuity is worryingly lacking in ambition. While the draft itself acknowledges the need for transformative change, it fails to deliver the ambitious goals and targets needed to achieve this.

One example of the lack of ambition in the draft is the reference to ‘no net losses’ – at a time when we are losing the very biodiversity on which our lives depend, this draft proposes that industries may still choose to wipe out biodiversity in one forest so long as somewhere else somebody is planting trees. We call on parties to reject this weak approach to securing the aims of the Convention to conserve biological diversity, and instead to set targets for no losses. We further note that this is emblematic of the growing movement to put a price on nature – such as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’, with the attendant damaging practices of speculating within new markets around carbon and soon perhaps, biodiversity, to its detriment.

Moreover, the zero draft fails to address issues of land tenure in an adequate way. The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework should set targets to strengthen the legal recognition and protection of peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ tenure rights and systems, in particular those currently not protected by law.

We call upon parties to ensure that the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework reaffirms the precautionary principle and contains concrete guidance to parties about how to protect biodiversity and peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ rights in the context of technologies, in particular biotechnologies and digital technologies. This should include to implement effective measures at national level to identify, prevent and manage any potential or real adverse impacts effects of biotechnology and new and emerging technologies on biodiversity, taking also into account risks to human health. We were disappointed to hear parties with powerful biotechnology interests assert that the Framework should recognize the alleged positive benefits of biotechnology, when the only demonstrated benefit of biotechnology has been to create profit for a select few.

We note that small-scale food producers, also called ‘peasants’, are defined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas as any person engaged in artisanal or small- scale agriculture. However, neither the CBD nor the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework specifically acknowledge the rights of peasants, in spite of the fact that they produce 70% of the world’s food on 30% of its land, therefore having a critical role in preserving biodiversity.

The industrial food system, from production to consumption, is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss and the destruction of ecosystems. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production is therefore urgent. Through agroecological production and management, peasants, fishing communities, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples preserve and enhance biodiversity. Agroecology is based on the rights of small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples and communities, in particular rights to seeds and biodiversity, as well as rights on knowledge, innovation and practices. We question what special interests have made it so difficult to include explicit recognition of the critical role of agroecology in the zero draft of the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework.

At the recent meetings in Rome, we have had renewed hope, having heard many Parties recognize the role of agroeocology as the most sustainable means of providing biodiverse, nutritious, and culturally-determined food to millions of people and communities around the world. It is also urgent to recognize the unique role of small-scale food producers in the management and sustainable use of biodiverse ecosystems.

The industrial food system and extractive industries are the primary causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the destruction of ecosystems, as witnessed in the recent devastation of over 16 million hectares of Australian forests and farmlands. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production and a rapid transition away from unsustainable energy, manufacturing, and transport industries is therefore urgent. Setting targets that increase the areas controlled and managed by Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers is one sure way to reverse the biodiversity losses the world is currently suffering, and we are relying on the governments of the world to show the vision needed to deliver a biodiverse and sustainable future for all.

Finally, we sadly must highlight how difficult it was for non-English speaking peoples to actively participate in the second Open-Ended Working Group for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework processes, where the future of their land, rivers, and seas was addressed without interpretation.

We ask that Parties to this Convention who have been similarly excluded from the work of the Contact Groups to join us in demanding interpretation at all future meetings to ensure full participation of all countries and civil society in this critical work.

Advocating for food sovereignty and agroecology in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

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Intervention of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty at the working group on the post-2020 Global Biodversity Framework.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas is at the meetings of the working group of the Convention of Biodiversity, where civil society orgs, governments and others are working to develop the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. AFSA participates in the working group as part of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, to represent small-scale and agroecological producers in major policy forums.

What we do now to halt the loss of biodiversity is critical to keeping landscapes functioning, to our future food security, and for adaptation to a changing climate. Small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, peasants and Indigenous peoples are all already playing a huge role in conserving biodiversity and the knowledge needed to manage landscapes to support it.

Yesterday, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty called on the working group to push for more ambitious and transformative change to halt the loss of biodiversity and hold those driving biodiversity loss to account – with this to be underpinned by better support for agroecological systems, stronger work to uphold the the rights of Indigenous peoples’ and small-scale producers, and better efforts to listen to their knowledge about how to create and sustain ecologically sound systems. Read the full 1st intervention below.

 

 

I am a small-scale farmer, here with the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) a global alliance made up of organizations of small-scale farmers, small-scale fishers and fish workers, and indigenous peoples. While our people grapple with the worst impacts of the climate crisis induced primarily by industrial agriculture and extractive industries, this draft strategy to protect & conserve biodiversity in perpetuity is seriously lacking in ambition.

While the draft itself acknowledges the need for transformative change, it fails to deliver the ambitious goals and targets needed to achieve this. We note a concerning silence on the issue of human rights, andask the parties to apply a human rights lens to your deliberations over thecoming week, acknowledging and recognising the individual and collectiverights of all peoples, but especially Indigenous peoples, who have distinct rights guaranteed in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale producers, who have distinct rights recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, with particular regard for women and youth.

One example of the lack of ambition in the draft is the reference to ‘no net losses’ – at a time when we are losing the very biodiversity on which our lives depend, this draft proposes that industries may still choose to wipe out biodiversity in one forest so long as somewhere else somebody is planting trees. We call on parties to reject this weak approach to securing the aims of the Convention to conserve biological diversity, and instead toset targets for no losses. We further note that this is emblematic of the growing movement to put a price on nature – such as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’, with the attendant damaging practices of speculating within new markets around carbon and soon perhaps, biodiversity, to its detriment.

The world’s indigenous peoples and small-scale producers are the enduring and best custodians of biological diversity, and our control over our territories and right to land have been disappearing in parallel with the global decline in biodiversity. This is no coincidence. The zero draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework fails to address issues of land tenure in an adequate way. The Framework should set a target to strengthen the legal recognition and protection of local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ tenure rights and systems, in particular those currently not protected by law.

The draft purports to address the drivers of biodiversity loss, yet fails to name the most significant actors – industrial agriculture and extractive industries – and in failing to name them, many of the targets float aimlessly without clarity of who must be responsible for truly transformative systems change. We note that the Global North is disproportionately responsible for the destructive practices directly causing both the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis we are in – the impacts of which are disproportionately borne by the Global South – and urge all parties to stand more boldly and support the radical changes needed. We recall that governments are duty-bearers under the CBD as well as the international human rights framework, which are accountable to the rights-holders. This includes to put in place public policies that regulate non-state actors.

We call upon parties to ensure that the GBF reaffirms the precautionary principle and contains concrete guidance to parties about how to protect biodiversity and IPLC’s rights in the context of technologies, in particular biotechnologies and digital technologies. This should include, in particular, implementing effective measures at national level to identify, prevent and manage any potential or real adverse impacts effects of biotechnology and new and emerging technologies on biodiversity, taking also into account risks to human health.

The industrial food system is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss and the destruction of ecosystems. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production is therefore urgent. Through agroecological production and management, peasants, fishing communities, livestock farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples preserve and enhance biodiversity. In a recent decision, the FAO Council acknowledged the importance of agroecology to preserve and enhance biodiversity and social justice, based on many years of concentrated thematic work.

In this context, we would like to remind delegates that agroecology is based on our rights as small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples and communities, in particular our rights to seeds and biodiversity, as well as our knowledge, innovation and practices. Agroecological systems feed three-quarters of the world with just one third of the land already, so we cannot help but question what vested interests make it so difficult to include agroecology inn the world’s strategy to preserve biodiversity.

We ask parties to ask some hard questions and act in the genuine interest of a sustainable and prosperous future for all. We small-scale producers and indigenous peoples here this week have concrete proposals to help parties enact truly transformative change – just ask us.

Submission to the Senate Inquiry on regulation of farming practices impacting the Great Barrier Reef

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New regulations under the Environmental Protection (Great Barrier Reef Protection Measures) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 will require more documentation of agricultural practices and permits for changes to cropping and land use.

While strongly supporting measures to protect water quality in the Reef, AFSA has highlighted the difference in ecological impacts between small-scale, regenerative farms and large industrial producers in the region, calling for greater support and incentives for farmers to adopt regenerative practices which will improve water quality outcomes. The submission also called for scale-appropriate regulations to allow farms to shift to regenerative practices, and avoid barriers to entry or excessive admin burdens for small-scale farmers.

See the full submission here.

Local Laws submission to defend the right to common resources

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Last week AFSA made a submission to the Hepburn Shire Council to defend residents’ rights to forage, collect firewood, have more than 20 chooks, and salvage materials from the tip and roadside without need for a permit.

We were concerned that these laws originated from overzealous risk management policies rather than residents’ interests. Further, they were proposed without transparent community consultation, and would hinder sustainable public use of public goods.

You can see the full submission here.

Local council laws have significant potential to facilitate or limit democratic community control of local food systems and common resources, so it’s important to speak up to make sure councils get it right!

If your council is doing good things, or you’d like to see them do things differently – let us know over at the Ideal Councils Survey so we can tell councils what our members want to see to improve food sovereignty support in local regulations.

Declaration from the 2019 Food Sovereignty Convergence 22 October 2019

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From 20 to 22 October 2019, small-scale farmers and allies converged from across Australia to meet on the traditional lands of the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, paying our respect to elders past, present, and emerging. We held our annual Food Sovereignty Convergence in Australia’s pioneering Food Connect Shed, a vibrant hub of food system activists and workers supporting stronger connections between farmers and eaters, which successfully crowdfunded $2.1 million last year to gain community ownership of this valuable physical resource.

At this year’s Convergence we deepened our resolve and grew our capacity to defend our right to democratically participate in food and agriculture systems, while enjoying time together to build greater solidarity in the food sovereignty movement amongst farmers, farm and food system workers, chefs, academics, and other activists with a focus on the particular needs of youth, women, and LGBTQI+ people.

We commenced the Convergence with a palaver with some of the farmer-authors of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s (AFSA) most recent book Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up, discussing the many ways we are working to farm, to grow more growers, and to ensure radical abundance for all in our small-scale degrowth models.

At this year’s AGM, AFSA established the Farming on Other Peoples’ Land fund (FOOPL) with a generous donation from a member. FOOPL aims to support and encourage new farming ventures on existing farms and underutilized land, and to advocate for easier access to land for those who wish to farm in an ethical and ecological manner, and inform the wider community of the benefits in doing so. In establishing FOOPL, we acknowledge that all non-indigenous farmers are farming on other peoples’ land that was never ceded, and commit to ongoing discussions with our local Traditional Owners on how we can pay the rent and treat the land under our care with grace.

Agroecology is recognized by the United Nations (UN) as the best way to feed the world and to build a global food system that is ‘not only sustainable but helps restore and protect Earth’s life-support systems’. In Australia, regenerative and agroecological farming is rapidly gaining momentum, and we re-affirm our commitment to supporting farmers in practices that drawdown carbon, build healthy soil biomes, and preserve and protect our precious water resources to combat climate change and build and maintain sustainable and viable livelihoods.

Small-scale farmers across Australia are grappling with a myriad of burdensome legislation that can be a barrier to growing more growers. The Queensland farmers present committed to transforming their already solid connections into a more active collectivized approach to work for reform of scale- and production-model-inappropriate regulations. After AFSA’s success in achieving significant reforms of the planning scheme in Victoria in 2018, we look forward to supporting similar reforms where they are needed in Queensland, and subsequently in every state in Australia.

Market gardeners discussed the difficulties they face in accessing untreated non-industrial seed, and committed to working collectively to achieve seed sovereignty, through possible initiatives such as cooperating to save, clean, store, and distribute their own seeds in local seed banks, and working collaboratively with smaller, independent plant breeders in Australia.

Turning our attention to Australia’s dying dairy industry, we discussed the need for farmers to be able to sell safely regulated unpasteurized (raw) milk directly from the farm gate, where they can be price makers instead of price takers. Legalising raw milk would not only throw a life ring to our struggling dairy farmers, it would give eaters the choice many crave to consume un-processed milk and dairy products – a basic right asserted in food sovereignty. It would also bring us into alignment with every other country in the world except Canada and Scotland, the only other nations with a blanket prohibition on sales of raw milk.

AFSA will reach a significant milestone in 2020, which will mark 10 years since a group of activists got together and formed the Alliance and set about creating the Peoples’ Food Plan with hundreds of people at ‘kitchen table conversations’ around Australia. We have a decade of achievements to celebrate with comrades old and new, whom we hope will join us next year once again in Brisbane to continue building a stronger movement for food sovereignty.

We look forward to continuing or commencing to work in solidarity with the many excellent organisations and people acting for food sovereignty in Australia and globally, including but not limited to Open Food Network, the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, the Australian Institute of Ecological Agriculture, the Agri-food Research Network, Farmers for Climate Action, the Right to Food Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Gene Ethics, the Youth Food Movement, Slow Food, the Food Connect Foundation, the CSA Australia New Zealand Network, Young Farmers Connect, the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, the New Economies Network Australia, Lock the Gate, Fair Food Brisbane, the Sydney Fair Food Alliance, Southern Harvest, the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, the Victorian Farmers’ Market Association, the NSW Farmers Market Association, Regrarians, RegenAg, Melbourne Farmers Markets, Sustainable Table, Sustain: the Australian Food Network, CERES, Cultivating Community, 3000 Acres, the Sydney Food Lab, Permaculture Australia, the City Farms and Community Gardens Network, the Australian Raw Milk Movement, the Weston A Price Foundation, ORICoop, Cultivate Farms, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, and Action Aid, as well as the many organisations working at the local level.

All this and more we commit to in our struggle for food sovereignty locally and globally. The members once again democratically elected a vibrant National Committee of farmers, food system workers, educators, and academics to lead the important work ahead of us.

Viva la via campesina! Viva la revolución!

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