Posts Tagged ‘Surplus People Project’
Katherine Zavala – IDEX’s Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances – reports from South Africa where she is on a site visit to our partners.
Herschelle Milford, Director, IDEX partner Surplus People's Project
Today I’m driving up north through the Western Cape with IDEX Catalyst Grantee Surplus People’s Project (SPP) to visit several farm workers and farm dwellers.
As soon as we leave the urban areas of Cape Town, I find myself in a semi-arid deserted landscape.
We are on our way to the Cederberg area where there are large white commercial farmers monocropping citrus fruits, particularly oranges. Known as the first place in the Western Cape to be colonized, the region was the starting point of the genocide of the indigenous Khoisan communities, known more popularly in the West as the Bushman.
The people I’m meeting today are descendants of these indigenous communities who, during apartheid, were classified as “coloured.”
Today, white farmers own most of the land. Even the land reform that came into place after 1994 did not produce any significant changes; only 5% of the land has been transferred over to the farm workers.
An estimated 40,000 people from all around the world are arriving in Durban, South Africa this week for COP 17, the UN’s latest round of climate talks. Civil society organizations – including 4 IDEX Partners – are mobilizing from all over the world to put pressure from the outside on the government negotiators on the inside.
Katherine Zavala – IDEX’s Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances – is in South Africa on a site visit to our partners and to support their activities at COP 17. She reports from Durban.
What is COP17?
COP17 is the 17th annual meeting where world governments get together to discuss and negotiate solutions to mitigate climate change. COP stands for Conference of Parties – the parties being the 195 nations that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The ultimate goal of the UNFCCC is to get nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, so that these gases stabilize at a level that will prevent “dangerous” climate change.
Why COP 17 Matters for Grassroots Organizations
Many grassroots organizations were disappointed with the outcome of the last COP (COP16), held in Cancun, Mexico to the point where many feel (and rightly so) hopeless with this process and foresee governments once again prioritizing false market-based solutions to climate change.
But it is important to continue to mobilize and amplify the voices of grassroots organizations, especially those based in South Africa, as the COP17 lands on the African continent for the second time.
The People’s Space: IDEX’s South African Partners and Their Role in COP 17
Durban is home to two of IDEX South African Partners. One of them, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), is actively convening and establishing the alternative civil society space (The People’s Space) during COP17.
This space will provide the base for organizations to network and share grassroots solutions to tackle climate change in real, practical ways to ensure their communities’ ability to cope with and adapt to climate change.
Four IDEX Partners in South Africa to Present Their Climate Justice Solutions
IDEX will be present at the civil society space, as an ally and supporter of four IDEX Partners and Grantees who will all be present this week organizing and networking to promote their climate justice solutions:
Aug
26International Seminar for exchanging experiences, Brazil, India and South Africa
2010
Posted by IDEX
Earlier this month a seminar on biodiversity and biosafety was held in Brazil, by the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) partnership. It was attended by the partnership of AS-PTA in Brazil, Chetna in India and Biowatch (IDEX Partner) and Surplus People Project (IDEX Grantee) in South Africa. Our appreciation is given to the AS-PTA for allowing us to publish their report.
Members of the IBSA group 2010
As well as the organizations from Brazil, India and South Africa linked to the Ford-IBSA project, the seminar was attended by representatives of entities from Peru, Uruguay, the United States, the Philippines and Germany working in the area. The latter came at their own cost in response to AS-PTA’s invitation to organizations from other countries campaigning on the GMO issue. Around 15 Brazilian organizations also took part in the seminar and had their travel costs and expenses met by the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agrarian Development, thereby expanding the scope of the seminar, originally planned for members of the project only. University organizations and students from Rio de Janeiro were also present.
The seminar was composed of five panels. Four of these presented case studies produced by the entities taking part in the project. The session opened with an analysis of the agronomic and economic efficiency of the main GM crops (soya in Brazil, cotton in India and maize in South Africa), highlighting the gap between the situation experienced in the field by farmers who have adopted GM seeds and the promises made by the industry. This was followed by a debate on the biosafety legislation in the three countries. In the Brazilian case, input also came from the Federal Attorney responsible for coordinating the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Working Group on GMOs and Pesticides, who analyzed the organ’s role in monitoring the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio). Explaining the actions taken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to rectify CTNBio’s mistakes, the Attorney General emphasized that the Office is actively working on the issue largely because of the demands made by civil society. A member of CTNBio representing the pro-biosafety group on the commission also took part in the seminar.
The reviews of studies on the impacts of GMOs on the environment and human health commissioned by AS-PTA were presented by a consultant from Nead/Ministry of Agrarian Development and a researcher from Fiocruz, respectively. This panel showed that there now exists a growing body of scientific evidence corroborating the warnings made years earlier, but discarded by the regulatory bodies of various countries, in general concerned less with biosafety issues and more with the interests of the biotechnology industry.
The program also included a panel on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, whose Fifth Meeting of the Parties (MOP 5) will be held in October in Japan. The Third World Network’s representative explored the main themes on the negotiation agenda at MOP 5, while the representatives from the Ministries of the Environment and Agrarian Development discussed the internal process of formulating the Brazilian position and their expectations for the event in terms of advances in implementing the agreement. As well as updating participants on the current negotiations, the roundtable performed the function of amplifying the Brazilian government’s dialogue with the organizations who work on the issue, anticipating the preparatory process for the next round of negotiations.
On the 11th and 12th a meeting was held of the GM campaigns who had attended the seminar: AS-PTA and Terra de Direitos, representing the group coordinating the Brazilian campaign, the Pesticide Action Network – North America PANNA, the Philippines Third World Network, Uruguay Redes, ETC Andes Peru and EED from Germany, as well as Chetna from India, and Biowatch and the Surplus People Project from South Africa. This meeting was convoked with the objective of initiating a process of international coordination of initiatives on the issue. At the end of the meeting a number of common themes were reached, identified as priorities by the participants based on the specific contexts in each of their regions (contamination and monopoly of the seed market, legislation and risk analysis, information and organic markets). These themes were prominent among the challenges cited during the seminar, especially the panel on campaign work. The participants also established activities for each of these points, which combined can form the basis for a partnership and exchange project. It was concluded that the meeting had achieved its objective of initiating a process of closer liaisons between campaigns from different countries with the aim of creating a shared platform for interaction.
Responding to AS-PTA’s invitation, organizations from other countries expressed their interest in taking part in the activities, but could not attend as they were unable to cover their travel costs. This fact reinforces the potential of the initiative and illustrates that efforts should be made to promote or make use of international meetings and exchanges that continue the process of building a shared platform for campaigning on the GMO issue with the aim of strengthening civil society.
