Country: Brazil

Global land grab highlights growing inequality

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Massive tracts of land in the Global South are being bought up by international investors and ultra-rich corporations, fueling growing inequality – part of a wider global trend of wealth transfers away from the poor and working people.

The report from FIAN International and Focus on the Global South, Lords of the Land: Transnational Landowners, Inequality and the Case for Redistribution, puts the spotlight on the world’s ten largest transnational landowners – who together control 404,457 km², an area the size of Japan.

This is part of a global land rush. Since 2000, corporations and financial investors have acquired an estimated 65 million hectares of land – twice the size of Germany. Today, 70 percent of global farmland is controlled by the largest 1 percent of giant industrial-scale farms.

Forced displacements

This concentration has grave implications for food security, threatening the livelihoods of 2.5 billion smallholder farmers and 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people, most of whom rely on agriculture for survival. It is also driving violence, forced evictions, and environmental destruction while also contributing significantly to climate change.

Virtually all the top global landowners named in the report have been implicated in reports of forced displacements, environmental destruction, and violence against communities.

One of the main players is the US pension fund TIAA, which has acquired 61,000 hectares in Brazil’s Cerrado region, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas. In the Cerrado, approximately half of the land has been converted into tree plantations, large agro-industrial monocultures, and pastures for cattle production — amid reports of violent land grabs, deforestation and environmental destruction which already shows signs of impacting the climate.

TIAA almost quadrupled its global landholdings between 2012 and 2023 — from 328,200 hectares to 1.2 million hectares.

Inequality

Land concentration undermines state sovereignty and peoples’ self-determination, with distant corporations controlling vast tracts of land across multiple jurisdictions.

The industrial-scale monocropping, often carried out on this land, is a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem destruction, preventing just transitions to more equitable and sustainable food systems and economic models.

These developments reflect a broader global trend of rising inequality and wealth concentration. Since the mid-1990s, the richest 1% of the world’s population has captured 38% of all additional accumulated wealth, while the poorest 50% have received only 2%.  An estimated 3.6 billion people, or 44% of the world population, now live on less than US$ 6.85 a day, below the threshold for a dignified life.

Because land grabbing is largely driven by global capital and the accumulation of land across jurisdictions by transnational corporations and financial entities, international cooperation is essential. The upcoming International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Colombia early next year offers a critical opportunity for governments to agree on measures that end land grabbing, reverse land concentration, and ensure broad and sustainable distribution of natural resources.

In a world facing intersecting crises – from climate breakdown and food insecurity to entrenched poverty and social inequality – and amid reconfiguration of the global balance of power, now is the time to move away from neoliberal policies that have benefited very few, and to create a more just and sustainable global future for all.

Watch an expert panel discussion on the report here:

For more information or media interviews please contact Anisa Widyasari anisa@focusweb.org or Tom Sullivan sullivan@fian.org.

Digital agriculture: A new frontier for data rights

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One morning in 2019, the inhabitants of Naya Toli, a village in eastern India, woke to find that they had become landless overnight. This time, it was not bulldozers or armed gangs driving them from their land but a state government program to digitize land records. The new digital registry attributed 108 acres in their area to the previous owner, who had sold the land to 19 families in 1973. 

What might appear to be a simple technical glitch reveals a fundamental problem with the rapid deployment of digital technologies: it risks entrenching existing exclusion and increasing inequalities.

Power imbalances embedded in digital technologies

The promise we so often hear about the future of food is that digital technologies will make food systems more productive, sustainable, and efficient, as well as help to address rising world hunger. In reality, the digitalization of agriculture is set to benefit mainly large corporations, while small-scale food producers, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups risk losing out. Smallholder farmers fear that their data will be extracted and used without their consent to create products and services that will then be sold to them for profit—deepening their dependence on external actors while lining the pockets of corporations. After all, there are enormous power imbalances between rural communities and multinational technology conglomerates.

The Indian government began digitizing land records in the 1990s and launched its ambitious Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) in 2008. By 2019, the state of Jharkhand had digitized more than 99% of its land registry records. However, with only 2.3% of land physically surveyed in the fast-paced process, the land rights and claims of many communities, such as those in Naya Toli, disappeared in the newly digitized registries. When villagers there tried to pay their land taxes, officials refused, claiming that they could not pay taxes for land they did not own, according to DILRMP records. The villagers have since tried, with great difficulty, to correct the information in the registry.

Communities across India relate similar experiences, especially smallholder farmers and Indigenous peoples, who possess traditional claims to common lands or collective forms of land ownership. The new digital registries have proved unable to document the diversity of tenure types, further disenfranchising marginalized groups. Indian communities are not alone: from Brazil to Rwanda and Georgia to Indonesia, people face similar challenges.

The pitfalls of “digital agriculture”

The digitization of land records is one part of a rapid and far-reaching transformation of food systems, sometimes referred to as “digital agriculture.” The Indian government announced in 2021 that newly digitized land records would be included in Agri Stack, a government-backed data exchange that enables the integration of land data with farmer profiles and other non-human sourced agricultural data (weather, soil health, hydrology, etc.). The stated goal is to create a pool of aggregated data to create customized products and services for farmers.

But as in other sectors of the economy, there is a race underway for profitable data and data collecting and processing technologies—including artificial intelligence. In recent years, several of the world’s leading agribusiness companies have partnered with large technology companies such as Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. These provide the technical infrastructure, such as cloud-based systems and artificial intelligence, that underlies a range of new applications and services that agribusinesses sell to farmers. In India, massive farmers’ protests challenged new agricultural laws adopted by parliament in September 2020, which opened up the country’s agricultural sector to corporations. The new laws coincided with the launch of Agri Stack, reinforcing farmers’ fears of a new wave of data-driven land grabs. 

Just digitalisation 

Two important lessons can be drawn from the experiences of communities in India and other countries. First, the development and use of digital technologies are firmly embedded in a given socioeconomic context. Technology does not develop in a bubble but is shaped by money and power, both of which are highly concentrated in a few large companies. Second, the implications of digitalization go beyond data protection and privacy. More specifically, digitalization impacts equity and the distribution of resources and wealth. It must be shaped proactively to make our societies more just rather than reproducing patterns of exclusion and discrimination. There is an urgent need for strong human rights–based governance frameworks that establish principles and standards for the use of digital technologies in the context of food and agriculture.

Governments and the United Nations appear to be finally rising to this challenge. The UN Human Rights Council recently adopted a resolution on “new and emerging digital technologies and human rights.” While highlighting the potential of these technologies, the resolution also recognizes the risks they may pose to human rights, including the economic, social, and cultural rights of marginalized groups such as Indigenous peoples and people living in rural areas. In addition, it calls on states to establish governance frameworks to prevent, mitigate, and remedy the adverse effects of digital technologies on human rights, including regulating the activities of technology companies.

The UN’s Committee on World Food Security also recently agreed on a set of policy recommendations on the collection and use of data in the context of food security and nutrition. This document includes the first formal attempt to describe how data and related technologies are affecting food systems and to propose guidance on how to manage the associated opportunities and risks. Significantly, the recommendations, to be adopted in October 2023, recognize farmers, Indigenous peoples, and other small-scale food producers as rights holders over their data and related knowledge, with the right to an equitable share of any benefits generated from that data. 

Whether these global initiatives will help to shape the use of digital technologies in food and agriculture in a way that supports human rights remains to be seen. However, they clearly demonstrate that the issues raised by digitalization are inherently political. We cannot leave it to technicians and corporations to shape the future of our societies. 

As seen with the massive farmers’ mobilizations in India, food producers’ organizations are putting forward an alternative vision in which technologies are at the service of people and the planet, not financial interests.

Philip Seufert is a FIAN international policy officer working with small-scale food producers to support the realization of their right to food in the context of land, biodiversity, and digital technologies.

This article was originally published in OpenGlobalRights on September 22, 2023.

For more information or media interviews please contact Tom Sullivan, FIAN International Communications and Campaigns: sullivan@fian.org

Guarani and Kaiowá leaders call on EU and UN to support their struggle

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In Brazil, 62% of existing indigenous lands and territorial claims are pending administrative regularization or demarcation. The resulting tenure insecurity is at the heart of multiple human rights violations and a brutal land conflict which has seen 795 indigenous people murdered and 535 cases of suicide within the past four years. The Guarani and Kaiowá Peoples of Mato Grosso do Sul are among the main victims.

Human rights violations and abuses, socio-territorial conflicts and insecurities against the Guarani and Kaiowá (GK) are largely driven by incursions into their traditional territories by agro-industrial corporations, landowners, luxury condominiums, illegal prisons and the expansion of infrastructure megaprojects to transport commodities. Conflicts have occurred between armed militias formed by farmers and their rural unions and paramilitary actions and military operations by state security forces lacking judicial authorization. 

Exploitation of natural resources 

Widespread violations of the Guarani and Kaiowá’s right to adequate food and nutrition have their origin in historical and ongoing dispossession of their ancestral lands. This predatory exploitation of their natural resources has resulted in water, land and air contamination by pesticides and the denial of practically all their human rights. From the difficulty of accessing documentation and public services, to the psychological and physical violence resulting from generalised racism, to the dependence on irregularly delivered food baskets, all these violations culminate in alarming rates of food insecurity and hunger. The already dire situation worsened considerably during the Bolsonaro regime which saw a systematic dismantling of social policies, programmes, and structures, and the promotion of anti-indigenous policies and sentiments. 

In a recent study by FIAN Brasil and the University of Grande Dourados, carried out in five Guarani and Kaiowa communities, it was found that 77% of households live with some level of food insecurity, while 33.6% of households have insufficient food to feed their families. 

During the advocacy tour, the indigenous leaders will meet members of the European Parliament, the European Commission’s External Action Service, as well as representatives of human rights bodies and diplomatic missions in Geneva. They will also be participating in the 54th Human Rights Council session and the examination of Brazil by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. FIAN Brazil together with other civil society organizations has submitted a report on the situation of ESC rights in the country.  

‘We are being murdered’ 

“We came to Europe to demand the demarcation of our lands, the recognition of traditional lands, the homologation of lands… to give a voice to youth, women, elders. To clamor for the world to know how we live … how we are being murdered, how we are being violated, massacred… by the very powers of the Brazilian state…,” said Inaye Gomes Lopes, a counselor in the municipality of Antônio João, in Mato Grosso do Sul and one of the representatives advocating in Europe this week.  

“I hope that the UN/European Union officials will notify the Brazilian authorities so that they implement our territorial rights, which are stipulated in the Brazilian Constitution, and denounce how our rights are being violated, continue to be violated, and (how we) are being massacred…”

Their central demands also include effective protection of Indigenous Peoples from violent attacks in the context of reoccupations of their ancestral lands, the completion of the demarcation processes, and rejection of the “temporal framework” thesis and Bill 2.903/23.  

Moreover, European policy makers and legislators are urged to ensure that existing and currently negotiated trade deals, as well as investments and actions by the companies based in or with ties to EU and its member states, do not further fuel the land conflict or otherwise contribute to violations of the rights of the GK people. The banning of exports of harmful agrotoxics, prohibited in the EU, to Brazil and other countries is another key demand.

FIAN Brazil and FIAN International have been accompanying the Guarani and Kaiowa since 2005. Together with Aty Guasu, CIMI, and Justicia Global they have a petition pending at the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights. 

For more information or media interviews please contact Amanda Cordova Gonzales cordova-gonzales@fian.org  
 

Photo Credits: Ruy Sposati/CIM

Rural communities in Piauí, Brazil, request urgent action against ongoing violence, land grabbing and deforestation

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A delegation of leaders of several rural communities in Southern Piauí has handed over a letter to state authorities asking for urgent action to safeguard their rights against the expansion of monocropping of agricultural commodities and land speculation. Loss of land combined with ongoing deforestation is destroying their livelihoods, disrupting communities, and causing food and nutrition insecurity. 

The letter, which is signed by FIAN International and several international organizations, denounces the fact that threats against community leaders and deforestation have intensified in recent months. On 5 March, Mr. Adaildo José Alves da Silva, an indigenous leader from the community of Morro D'Água who has been resisting land grabbers, was attacked with a machete by an unidentified man who called on him to give up his land.  

Simultaneously, deforestation has escalated in different parts of Piauí. According to satellite images, 2,590 hectares have been deforested on a farm called Kajubar since February 2023, whose area overlaps with land claimed by local communities. Importantly, Piauí is part of the Cerrado, the world’s largest tropical savanna and one of Latin America’s most important and biodiverse ecosystems that borders the Amazon.

“Human rights violations in Piauí caused by land grabbing, deforestation, fumigation with toxic agrochemicals and other pollutants, as well as physical and psychological violence against rural communities, have been widely documented and brought to the attention of state and federal authorities,” the letter handed over today states. “The perpetrators of the violence are usually individuals linked to local land grabbers and/or agribusinesses, but research has shown that international investors play a key role in encouraging human rights violations and environmental crimes in the region.” 

 

In May 2023, after local and international organizations had raised the issue of problematic investments for 10 years, the German doctor's fund Ärzteversorgung Westfalen-Lippe (ÄVWL) withdrew from land purchases that had led to land grabbing for soy monoculture in the Cerrado.

Piauí authorities recently cancelled the environmental licenses of several large farms and imposed fines on big landowners for ongoing illegal deforestation. However, the Piauí Land Institute, INTERPI, has hitherto failed to swiftly implement a recent land law, which gives priority to collective land titles of rural communities. Therefore, human rights violations, land grabbing and deforestation continue. 

The letter states that “Protecting the tenure rights of rural communities is vital to ending violence and ecosystem destruction in Piauí. Brazilian federal and state authorities have an obligation under national and international human rights law to recognize and protect communities’ tenure rights, in particular their collective tenure rights.” 

This action has been organized by Coletivo de Povos e Comunidades Tradicionais, CPT- Piaui, and Rede Social de Justica e Direitos Humanos. With it, rural communities aim to pressure authorities to guarantee community members' physical and mental integrity and to accelerate the issuance of collective land titles to rural communities. Moreover, they call for intensifying efforts to stop deforestation in Piauí, especially on lands claimed by rural communities. 

Read the letter here (in Portuguese). 

For more information, please contact Philip Seufert at seufert@fian.org.

Community leaders meet with Piauí's authorities.

Teresinha Menezes/CPT PI

Documentaries in two regions of Brazil portray challenges to strengthening indigenous school feeding

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A village surrounded by “seas” of soy, GMO corn and sugarcane in the Midwest. A community ruled by the times and distances of the Amazon rivers. A Guarani and Kaiowá population, a majority Tikuna population. Two distinct realities, with their own and common challenges. This is what the mini-documentaries The Small Plantation, the River and the Steps – Indigenous School Meals in Alto Solimões and The Tekoha and the School Plate – The Pnae in Te'yikue Village, produced by FIAN Brazil, together with the production company Extrato de Cinema, portray. Both are available with subtitles in Spanish and English, in addition to Portuguese.

With 14 minutes each, the films document initiatives for the fulfillment of two guidelines of the National School Meals Program (Pnae): the adaptation of the menu to the culture of each community; and priority to indigenous family farmers in the supply.

The interviews with teachers, cooks, rural producers and students also show obstacles such as the bureaucracy that makes documentation difficult, the lack of structure in the kitchens, and the advance of ultra-processed food products, with the diseases associated with the increase in their consumption.

Pnae represents one of the main policies for the food and nutritional security of children and adolescents. Both in supporting school performance and the formation of healthy habits, and at the most urgent level, the fight against hunger. Furthermore, it is an example of the possibility of using public purchases to achieve objectives such as local development, improving the living conditions of vulnerable populations, and strengthening agro-ecology.

The Small Plantation, the River and the Steps was filmed in the Belém do Solimões community, in the Eware 1 Indigenous Land, in Tabatinga (AM). It brings accounts of daily life in the municipal indigenous schools (EMIs) Eware Mowatcha and Ngetchutchu Ya Mecü, where local production has its space, but school meals are scarce or missing at various times. The production also shows the work of Mapana, a Tikuna women's association, with collective gardens and training, which already has more than 200 members.

The Tekoha and the School Plate takes place in the Te'yikue village, in Caarapó (MS), with the EMI Ñandejara community. The school introduced traditional foods in the menu and made the preparations healthier, but testimonials call for a more structured transition, alongside the purchase of local produce. The documentary presents two projects of food and nutritional education (EAN): the Taste of the Earth, with preparation of typical dishes by students and families; and the Poty Reñoi Experimental Unit, in which children and teenagers plant, care for, and harvest – and taste what they have grown.

“These recordings with the indigenous ethnic groups in Amazonas and Mato Grosso do Sul were quite transformative,” says the films' director, Marcelo Coutinho. “Not only in terms of unique professional experiences, but, above all, in the importance of spreading the culture and political resistance of those peoples who, more than ever, deserve and need the attention and respect of Brazilian society.”

The track features music tracks by Djuena Tikuna and the Memória Viva Guarani project.

Equity and health

Each minidocumentary links to a case study, which generated a diagnosis and recommendations to the actors involved, especially the public authorities of the two municipalities. “We expect that the materials produced will help overcome the bottlenecks and impact the local reality. And that they contribute to the struggle of indigenous peoples in other regions,” says FIAN coordinator Mariana Santarelli.

This work is part of the project “Equity and health in food systems”, which also includes a national mapping of how inequities are reflected and worsened in this field. The initiative is supported by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI).

You can access the content on the entity's website, in Portuguese, here and here.

 

Former FIAN Brazil Secretary General Leads President Lula’s Anti-Hunger Programs

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In 2022, Brazil returned to the UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) Hunger Map after eight years absence. Former FIAN Brazil Secretary General Valéria Burity now faces the challenge of restoring the food security system that former President Jair Bolsonaro dismantled. This system is composed of the National Council for Food Security and Nutrition (CONSEA), a key consultation body bringing together civil society and the government, the Interministerial Chamber on Food and Nutritional Security (CAISAN) and the National Conference on Food and Nutritional Security. This institutional structure exists both at the state and municipal levels. The CONSEA, for instance, was re-established on February 28, 2023 by President Lula da Silva in an effort to include a diversity of voices in the fight against hunger.

During Bolsonaro’s presidency, hunger levels skyrocketed even though Brazil is one of the world’s top four food producers. The FAO put the country back on the Hunger Map when the numbers of people suffering chronic hunger rose from 2.5% to 4.1%. Almost a third of the population (30%) have difficulties obtaining food, and 15% (33.1 million people) go hungry every night, according to a report by Rede Penssan.

The number of people facing hunger almost doubled between 2019 and 2021 after 24 consecutive years of falling food insecurity. Some of the causes include Bolsonaro’s dismantling of food programs, President Michel Temer’s neoliberal policies from 2016 to 2018 which encouraged corporate capture of land and natural resources, a sharp reduction of the government’s social welfare spending, the COVID-19 crisis, and the global rise of food prices.

Now, Lula da Silva’s government intends to redress the worsening hunger situation. The president has declared this to be one of the main priorities of the new government, setting up a chamber to coordinate the actions of 24 ministries working to end hunger. Valéria Burity will coordinate this task as the Extraordinary Secretary to Fight Hunger in the Ministry of Social Development.

Her first objective is to rebuild the federal structures and institutions dismantled by Bolsonaro which were dedicated to guaranteeing the Right to Food and Nutrition. Along with CONSEA and CAISAN, there is the National Plan for Food and Nutrition Security (PLANSAN), which will include emergency and structural measures.

All these institutions will work together to form an emergency plan to reduce hunger through a range of actions. These include an increase in budget of the anti-poverty programme Bolsa Familia and in the minimum wage, more funds to make school meals healthier, and programs to source the state’s food consumption from small-scale farmers.

However, structural drivers of food insecurity such as sharp inequalities and racism, and land concentration also need to be addressed to ensure adequate and nutritious food. There are also plans for agrarian redistributive reform to ensure the right to land of rural communities most affected by hunger, tax reforms to counter inequalities, and the establishment of food reserves to combat food price volatility. All these actions will be directed towards restructuring food systems. On a personal level, Valerie believes that pesticides have gone through a major liberalization in the last decades and that this “is one of the challenges to guarantee adequate food”.

Burity understands that this will be a challenging task, especially in a coalition government lacking a common vision of the importance of food sovereignty and other underlying issues related to the right to food. “This is not an easy task,” she explains “but Lula is very engaged with ending hunger, and we are backed by a strong civil society”.

For media inquiries, please contact Clara Roig at roig@fian.org

Human Rights Hold the Key to Protecting Biodiversity

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Yet it is precisely these groups who know how to preserve our precious natural systems write Sofia Monsalve  and Georgina Catacora-Vargas in Project Syndicate.

HEIDELBERG/LA PAZ – In October 2021, two tractors with a large chain stretched between them cleared more than 2,000 hectares of forest in the Brazilian Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas. Tragically, such scenes have become all too familiar in the region.

In 2021 alone, 8,531 square kilometers (3,294 square miles) of the Cerrado’s forests, grasslands, and other native vegetation were destroyed – the highest rate since 2015. And in recent decades, 40-55% of the Cerrado biome has been converted to croplands, pastures, and tree plantations, with much of the deforestation making way for large industrial soy monocultures and cattle production. Agribusinesses have dispossessed thousands of communities in land grabs and destroyed the surrounding environment.

The Cerrado is a tragic and alarming example of how quickly the world’s biological diversity is being lost. The region is estimated to be home to 12,000 plant species – 35% of which grow nowhere else in the world – as well as around 25 million people, including indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, and other communities where traditional livelihoods depend on biodiversity. All are in urgent need of protection.

For the past few years, governments have been negotiating a new Global Biodiversity Framework under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. But very little progress was made at the most recent round of talks in June, and though there is a global consensus on the urgent need to act, the current debate is based on two dangerously mistaken premises.

The first is the assumption that human societies and ecosystems exist separately from one another, implying that the best way to conserve biodiversity is to carve out protected areas that exclude all human activity. Hence, most of the focus today is on the “30×30” campaign to establish formal protections for 30% of all land and marine areas by 2030.

But this “fortress conservation” approach has already been tried, and it was shown to lead to systematic violations of local communities’ rights. By deploying such strategies, governments risk sidelining precisely the people who live closest to the ecosystems that we are trying to protect, and who play a critical role in sustainably managing those resources to preserve their own livelihoods.

The second flawed premise guiding today’s negotiations is that protecting biodiversity must be turned into a business. Instead of ensuring that industrial and financial activities are regulated to avoid harming people and the planet, the current proposals focus on trying to transform the biodiversity crisis into another opportunity to boost corporate profits.

In “green” business and financial circles, the current buzz is about “nature-based solutions,” a term used to describe interventions ranging from reforestation to carbon markets. The concept has a nice ring to it, and it has been endorsed by the UN Environment Assembly. But it is dangerously ill-defined.

Those who use the term seldom refer to human rights and tend to focus instead on offsetting schemes, such as carbon markets, which tie the protection of biodiversity in one place to its ongoing destruction elsewhere. Rather than a remedy, “nature-based solutions” are becoming part of the problem, serving as a license for business as usual, or even encouraging more land grabs in areas traditionally managed by indigenous peoples and local communities.

Governments need to look beyond “30×30” and “nature-based solutions” to put human rights at the center of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Doing so acknowledges that human societies and natural ecosystems are inextricably connected, and that biodiversity protection requires a shift to more sustainable social and economic models. The goal should be to achieve human and ecosystems’ well-being, not shareholder value.

A human-rights lens sharpens the focus on those people and communities who are most affected by today’s destructive practices. It shows that we need to address the drivers of biodiversity loss – extractive and industrial activities – rather than entrusting protection of the world’s ecosystems to corporations and financial markets. Governments are required to hold these entities accountable for the damage they cause to the environment and human communities, and to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, and others who have long helped protect the world’s precious ecosystems.

Our food systems are a prime example of why we need a different approach. The crops and animal breeds that feed humanity co-evolved with human farming communities over the course of millennia. But with the expansion of industrial farming models since the twentieth century, we have radically broken from this tradition, destroying 75% of biological diversity in our food and agriculture. Most food systems today are based on deforestation, land degradation, use of pesticides, pollution, high energy consumption, genetic homogeneity, and socioeconomic inequity.

We cannot solve the biodiversity crisis without transforming these dysfunctional food systems. In their place, we can embrace agroecology, which has been shown to be a powerful and effective approach to food production, distribution, and consumption. Agroecology fosters biodiversity by stimulating synergies within ecosystems to boost resilience and productivity. Instead of degrading the land, agroecology revitalizes soils and contributes to their restoration and conservation.

This approach – oriented toward generating integral well-being – has always been taken by indigenous peoples, peasants, and other smallholder food producers. Traditional, collective knowledge of sustainable farming (much of it held by women), together with locally adapted and self-reliant innovations, is central to these groups’ management systems. Protecting this knowledge and supporting agroecology is essential to the shift toward a more sustainable, healthy, and just manner of producing, distributing, and consuming food.

A good example is Cuba, where peasants and urban farmers have boosted food production and resilience while dramatically reducing the use of agrochemicals. One key factor in their success has been the strengthening of peasant networks to facilitate knowledge sharing.

This year’s biodiversity negotiations are a crucial opportunity for world leaders to agree on a plan to protect both nature and people. But a new framework will succeed only to the extent that it guarantees the rights of indigenous peoples, peasants, and other smallholder food producers, while putting the worlds’ food systems on a path toward agroecology.

Sofia Monsalve is Secretary-General of FIAN International.

Georgina Catacora-Vargas is President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology.

Brazil: FIAN condemns recent attacks on Guapoy indigenous community

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In an open letter to the Brazilian authorities, FIAN International, FIAN Brazil and other members of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition condemn the recent violent attacks by the military police and the State of Mato Grosso do Sul (MS) against the Tekoha Guapoy community, in the municipality of Amambai, in Mato Grosso do Sul.

They call on the Brazilian government to immediately stop the violence, investigate and hold accountable those responsible for the actions, and address the structural inequalities and violence faced by the Guarani and Kaiowá that give rise to multiple human rights violations.  

The Tekoha Guapoy, members of the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous Peoples, had retaken part of their territory, in a context of the Brazilian State’s failure to demarcate traditional indigenous lands.

As a reaction to the Guarani Kaiowá’s fight for their territory, military police and large landowners (“fazendeiros”) last Friday, on June 24, without judicial authorization and in defiance of the Brazilian legal system, entered the area occupied by the Indigenous Peoples to violently expel them. The action is being referred to as the “Guapoy Massacre.” The number of people killed and injured is still being determined. However, according to the latest information received, there are records of one person killed and at least ten injured as a result. 

FIAN International and FIAN Brazil have been accompanying the Guarani e Kaiowá for over a decade. They have been denouncing the historic economic exploitation in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, the failure of the Brazilian State to demarcate the territories of the Guarani and Kaiowá, and the severe discrimination and violence to which they are subjected. All of which leads them to live in precarious and often inhumane conditions, where their rights, including their right to food and nutrition, are systematically violated.

See the Open Letter of 29 June here 

Read an Open Letter of 4 July about repeated violence in the case

For more information on the attacks see note published by the Grand Assembly of Aty Guasu Guarani e Kaiowá: https://cimi.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Nota-Aty-Guasu-Guapoy-25.06.2022.pdf  

Open Letter to the Brazilian Authorities

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General Secretary of FIAN International has written an open letter to the Brazilian authorities to express support to the fight of quilombola communities for their right to territory, and to demand the president of Brazil to guarantee execution of the land titling decree agreed to Brejo dos Crioulos in September 29, 2011, but neglected by the Federal Government.

Furthermore, it is demanded from federal judges: Wilson Medeiros Pereira, Marcos Antônio Ferreira, and Isaias Caldeira Veloso to ensure fairness in this process, all parties to be heard, punishment of those guilty, and to ensure that all innocent quilombola people defending their rights are released, giving an end to the criminalization of this marginalized group in Brazil.

Time to hold corporations legally accountable for human rights and environmental crimes

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FIAN International stands in solidarity with hundreds of social movements and civil society groups around the world calling for a binding treaty with the teeth to protect peasants, small hold farmers, Indigenous Peoples and communities who have no proper recourse to justice when their lives, health and livelihoods are threatened. 

“There are too many gaps in international law which allow for the impunity of corporations that have caused or contributed to serious human rights impacts. After seven years of talks, governments must now stand firmly on the side of affected communities and advance the negotiations, taking into account the urgent need for global solutions,” said FIAN International’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ana María Suárez Franco.

There is currently no binding global legal framework to regulate the activities and value chains of transnational mining companies, agribusiness and other businesses with atrocious human rights records. This is particularly problematic in resource rich countries in the Global South with weaker legal protections, where companies can argue that they are not breaking any local or international laws when they force communities off their land, pollute their habitats, and even cause loss of life.

Voluntary guidelines like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and national legislation like the French law on the duty of vigilance of transnational corporations are not enough to protect communities and the environment from unscrupulous corporations. As demonstrated in several recent high profile cases, such as the massive displacement of communities in Uganda by French oil giant Total, the Brumadinho Dam Disaster in Brazil and Land grabbing by POSCO in India, a robust set of binding rules are needed to ensure peoples human rights are prioritized over economic interests.

“An international treaty on transnational corporations and other businesses is essential to govern globalized economies,” said Ana María Suárez Franco. “A level legal playing field would fill the gaps in protection, allow people better access to justice, and hold companies liable for their human rights and environmental impacts.”

In the wake of last month’s UN Food Systems Summit in Rome, which failed to curb the growing power of agribusiness, it is all the more important to seize this opportunity at the UN in Geneva between 25 and 29 October.

Corporate interests, or states intent on defending them at the expense of people, must not be allowed to hijack the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights (OEIGWG) must not be hijacked by corporate interests, as happened in the past with similar initiatives.

That would be a lost opportunity for communities fighting human rights abuses around the world and for the UN-system.