Issue: NUTRITION, HEALTH & FOOD SYSTEMS

Fisher peoples denounce false climate solutions

Posted on by Tom

Despite binding obligations under international human rights and environmental law, states consistently fail to protect the rights of fisher peoples. Instead of addressing the root causes of the climate crisis, governments continue to promote so-called climate change solutions that entrench inequality and dispossession.

Ahead of the summit – held in parallel to the official UN Climate Change Conference – a new report by FIAN International and the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), Rising Tides, Shrinking Coasts, and Sinking Rights: Climate Crisis and the Struggles of Fisher Peoples, reveals how the climate crisis is undermining the livelihoods, food systems, and cultures of millions of fisher peoples and coastal communities.

Based on ten case studies from Bangladesh, Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, the report demonstrates that the climate crisis is already a human rights emergency. Across all regions, fisher peoples, collectors, and coastal communities report systematic violations of their rights to food and nutrition, territories, housing, health, and culture.

Fishing and coastal communities have already made many concessions to their governments on access to fisheries. Now they are on the frontlines of the climate catastrophe and they demand real solutions. This is a defining moment for how this global resource – the ocean, lakes and rivers – are managed for future generations.

Right to food and nutrition under threat

Millions of livelihoods are threatened by a range of false climate change solutions, ranging from Marine Protected Areas that exclude traditional fishers and carbon credit schemes that enable resource grabbing, to industrial aquaculture promoted under the guise of food security or climate resilience and large-scale infrastructure projects that serve corporate interests.

“Carbon credit projects are being sold as climate solutions but in reality they displace fishing communities and privatize the mangroves that sustain life. In Thailand, corporations now plant monoculture mangroves for carbon profit while erasing the diverse ecosystems and community rights that have protected these coasts for generations,” said Ravadee Prasertcharoensuk from Sustainable Development Foundation, Thailand, a national member of WFFP.

“Under the banner of ‘blue carbon,’ the state hands over public lands to private investors, leaving only 20 percent of the benefits to the people who have lived and cared for these forests. Climate justice cannot be built on exclusion and greenwashing—it begins with restoring community control and recognizing that the real climate custodians are the people of the mangroves.

The report reveals how core elements of the right to food and nutrition – availability, accessibility, adequacy, and sustainability – are increasingly under threat. As ecosystems collapse under climate change and fish stocks decline, fisher peoples who have long acted as guardians of biodiversity and coastal ecosystem, and as providers of nutritious food, are being displaced from their territories and deprived of their livelihoods.

Many are now forced into precarious forms of labor or are made dependent on inadequate and inconsistent external aid. This further undermines both their right to food and nutrition and their food sovereignty.

Despite the worsening crisis, states – often in close partnership with private corporations – continue to exclude fisher peoples from climate policy and decision-making. Instead of supporting community-led adaptation strategies grounded in human rights and local knowledge, they continue to promote top-down interventions that exacerbate inequality and marginalization.

A call for rights-based climate action

For decades, the peoples of the sea and the mangroves have resisted the theft of our lands and the destruction of our ecosystems. In Ecuador, we have replanted mangroves, defended our coasts, and demanded justice for the social and ecological debt owed to our communities.

“From the womb of the mangrove and the sea,” said Líder Góngora, director of Coordinadora Nacional para la Defensa del Ecosistema Manglar in Ecuador, “we, the gatherers and fisher peoples, have been restoring the mangrove ecosystem – a national public treasure and the heart of our life and culture – through our own socio-ecological efforts since the late 1980s.”

“Our struggle is collective. It rises in defiance of the criminal shrimp industry in Ecuador and across the world. We defend our living spaces, our legends, and our ancestral stories rooted in the marine territories that sustain us.”

True restoration means restitution: returning stolen territories and protecting the peoples who have cared for them with love and resilience for generations.

FIAN International and WFFP urge all states and intergovernmental organizations to fulfil their human rights obligations, including under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

Genuine solutions must recognize fisher peoples as rights-holders, knowledge-holders, and key actors in the struggle for climate justice, food sovereignty, and the protection of aquatic ecosystems.

Download report here.

For more information please contact Yifang Slot-Tang slot-tang@fian.org

Transforming food systems from the bottom-up: local food policies and public participation in Europe

Posted on by fredsaxo

The CRESS project is a collective effort by FIAN International, FIAN Austria, FIAN Belgium, FIAN Portugal, Observatori DESCA (Spain), and (the former) FIAN Sweden, funded by the EU. 

In recent years there has been an increase across Europe in local government policies and initiatives around food (systems) and nutrition. This has been accompanied and driven by the emergence of participatory spaces, including food policy councils, that engage communities in food policy making at the local level.

The project examines concrete policies and initiatives by local and regional governments and spaces of community participation in six European countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The project examined areas of engagement and constraints faced by local governments, as well as the transformative character (from a human rights perspective) of the policies and initiatives put forward.

Moreover, a central emphasis of the project was to understand how participation is organised across the different countries and localities: which structures are in place and what influence do they hold, who participates and who remains at the margins, how are power relations and conflicts of interest addressed?

Project outcomes are presented in three outcomes: (1) a mapping that summarizes the situation for each of the six countries and draws some general reflections, (2) an interactive map that provides more detail on the cases reviewed and (3) a toolkit that seeks to create greater understanding of how to operationalise human rights based local policy making, including impacts at the level of the EU.

Findings from the mapping point to important steps being taken at the local level to re-localize food systems and make them more healthy, sustainable, and just. There is an increased recognition by local governments of the role they can play and multiple strategies and initiatives covering critical areas of intervention from communal catering and public procurement, to support for ecological production and local markets, to changes in land use criteria. At the same time, local government is constrained by a number of internal and external factors including a lack of human and financial resources, and EU policies which hinder regionalisation.  

The project’s findings also reflect the immense diversity that exists across Europe – and within countries – with regard to structures of community participation. They highlight the critical relevance of such spaces, and community mobilization, for putting food on the agenda of local governments and pushing for transformative, bottom-up food systems changes. At the same time, and despite many efforts, important challenges and limitations remain, especially with regard to including marginalised groups within these spaces and enabling their voices to be heard. 

The toolkit aims to foster a more comprehensive human rights approach to addressing food system challenges from the bottom-up and promoting inclusive governance structures. It aims to contribute to our collective understanding of strategically engaging with food systems at the local level in Europe and fostering strategies to ensure stronger bottom-up governance at the European Union (EU) level. It explores the potential for multi-level architecture of food systems policies and governance structures and examines how regional policies impact local policymaking.

The mapping, interactive map and toolkit are also available in other languages:

Mapping: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Interactive map: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Toolkit: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

For more information please contact Emily Mattheisen: mattheisen@fian.org or Laura Michéle: michele@fian.org

Free School Meals Sourced from Small-Scale Farmers: a Win-Win for Food Systems Transformation

Posted on by fredsaxo

A quarter of children in the EU was at risk of poverty or social exclusion and encountered barriers to performing well in school and enjoying good health in 2021. This will have long term consequences as those children face a higher risk of being unemployed, poor and socially excluded as adults.

For the 80 million school-aged children across the continent, school food can make up more than 50 percent of their daily intake.

Apart from promoting the health and development of children, free school meals can also support the transition to sustainable food systems by linking school meals to small-scale farmers using organic or agroecological production methods.

Purchasing school meals from small and medium-scale farmers is also a lever for social justice as it provides a steady source of income to those who work the land in our territories.

In new policy brief, Fian International, Urgenci and FIAN Austria, in collaboration with Coventry University, propose four policy recommendations to the EU and its Member States on how to use free school meals as a tool to implement the right to food and nutrition in the EU, and foster a transition to sustainable food systems.

This paper was developed in the EU-funded COACH project which aims to facilitate collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to scale up short agri-food chains and drive innovation in territorial food systems.

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

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

Posted on by fredsaxo

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

Posted on by fredsaxo

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

Youth and the democratization of food systems

Posted on by fredsaxo

It’s December. Yet another year in our cycle of life is drawing to a close as we search for hope and solidarity in the face of daunting adversities. The world is marred by rising temperatures, erratic weather events, extreme poverty, hunger, wars, conflicts and violence.

A systemic model that placed the interests and profits of the few over those of the many has created this catastrophe. The global industrial food system is a case in point—it is among the largest polluters on the planet. It uses nearly two-thirds of the world’s resources but can only feed a quarter of the world’s population, leaving behind a trail of destructive and polluting practices along its supply chain. In contrast, peasant agriculture, which still feeds 70% of the global population, sustains harmonious and healthy cycles of food production, distribution and consumption.

It’s high time we reminded global food governance institutions and governments that the real solutions to the global food crisis lie in giving peasant communities, Indigenous Peoples, migrant workers, landworkers, small-scale fishers and pastoralists the power and the autonomy to build food sovereignty in our territories. We must rally behind food systems built by and for the people in an agroecological way that respects the cycle of life in all its forms. A vital element in protecting and multiplying these diverse, decentralized and resilient food systems are the conditions available to the young and future small-scale food producers to engage in the production process. This edition of the Nyéléni newsletter delves into the democratization of people’s food systems and the critical need to keep the role and future of the peasant youth in this process.

La Via Campesina Youth Articulation

Read the Nyeleni Newsletter No.50 here or download

The Problem with the Industrial Food System – and How to Fix It

Posted on by fredsaxo

The UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food, on the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, and on Toxics have described the main problems with the industrial food system, in particular with respect to environmental destruction and related human rights violations.

They have also outlined what governments should do to move towards sustainable, healthy and just agroecological practices supporting the right to food and nutrition and human rights more broadly.

FIAN International and national sections in Indonesia, Zambia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador summarized their analysis and recommendations with a view to using those recommendations to support the advocacy work of communities seeking the transformation of food systems.

Q and A by FIAN International The Problem with the Industrial Food System & How to Fix It

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by FIAN Brasil (@fianbrasil)

 

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A historical low for world food security policy

Posted on by fredsaxo

Following several weeks of negotiations, the final draft for the UN Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition will be presented for endorsement this week at the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) 47. Far from what was hoped, the Guidelines fall short in providing any substantive basis to bring about transformation to the industrial food system.

The negotiations, which ended last week, were largely dominated by a bloc of exporting countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia and the US. Their interventions repeatedly watered down any transformative language proposed by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) to redefine food systems. This did not only unmask the predisposition of the bloc to defend the interests of corporations in their countries, but also to strengthen the vision of an increasingly globalized food system with global food supply chains, global trade and investment at its core. 

For their part, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were almost entirely absent from the negotiations with few exceptions such as Senegal and Mali, who strongly supported CSM’s proposals and views. The fact that the process was rushed and informal negotiations sessions were carried out without interpretation did not contribute to a higher participation of LDCs, which often have small permanent representations.

No acknowledgement of what is wrong

As the Guidelines stand now, there is no clear reference to what is wrong with existing industrial food systems and why they are also responsible for the climate crisis, ecological destruction, related pandemics, and for the health crisis, caused by the predominance of diets relying on ultra-processed foods. What’s more, the Guidelines do not recognize food systems as a matter of public interest, even if billions of people depend on it, or include a holistic vision of human rights in food systems, as the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food warned during the negotiations.

As echoed by civil society, the text is missing any recommendations for strong safeguards against conflict of interest in policy-making, monitoring, science and research. With corporations having more resources at their disposal to influence and lead in these areas, strong safeguards would protect the public interest before any vested economic interests. 

Despite widespread recognition of its potential to face the challenges that the climate and hunger crisis present, the Guidelines also fail to put agroecology at the center of the transformation of unsustainable food systems.

With the negotiations underpinned by a non-inclusive format and continuous attempts to restrict language approved by international law and the CFS itself, the CSM has announced that it would carefully assess whether to endorse the Guidelines or not this week. It is nevertheless clear, that the final agreed document does a poor job in meeting their expectations.

A vision for a true transformation

In order to overcome today’s climate crisis and rising food insecurity, the Guidelines should be assessed and applied considering  some key aspects. This starts by acknowledging the urgent need for radically transforming food systems to make them sustainable and just and by placing human rights as central pillar of this transformation.
 
Recognizing food systems as public goods implies that countries need to recalibrate public policies towards strengthening local and resilient food systems based on agroecology; and the communal and public economy upon which local and national food systems heavily rely.

The transformation of food systems must be based on the recognition of human beings as part of nature and not as two separate entities. In the context of food systems and nutrition this means that diets can only be healthy if they are also sustainable. This approach recognizes the circular relationship that exists between diets and food systems and constitutes as such the relational anchor between production and consumption, between an individual and the collective, and between people and the environment.

For enquiries please contact delrey@fian.org 

Brazilian Supreme Court says school meals not an obligation

Posted on by fredsaxo

Although public schools remain closed in the face of COVID, the State of Rio de Janeiro’s government has been judicially obliged to guarantee school meals for around 1.5 million schoolchildren who are enrolled in public schools.  Rio de Janeiro’s governor however, questioned this obligation last August, requesting the Brazilian Supreme Court to overrule it. Despite public outcry, the Supreme Court’s Justice Dias Toffoli has accepted the complaint and suspended the government’s obligation. 

In his decision, Justice Toffoli argues that the finances of the state should not be overburdened with the maintenance of the distribution of school meals to all schoolchildren during the pandemic, and highlighted that it is not task of the Judiciary to intervene in the definition of such public policies. This misleading interpretation sets a dangerous precedent for the realization of the right to food and nutrition, not only in Brazil, but also across the world.

“The Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision is a blatant attack on the most basic right of these schoolchildren: the right to be free from hunger! Justice Toffoli has miscalculated, falsely prioritizing the state’s budget over children’s right to food, which should be a priority for public authorities – especially during a pandemic”, comments Felipe Bley Folly, Justiciability Coordinator at FIAN International.

In an open letter spearheaded by the Brazilian Forum for Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security (FBSSAN), FIAN International, FIAN Brazil, DHESCA Brasil, National Campaign for the Right to Education, and the Public Defender’s Office, and supported by 130 organizations from more than 20 countries,  the signatories urge Toffoli to revoke his decision.

“In his decision, the Justice regrettably disregards the serious consequences of the absence of school meals in the integral development of schoolchildren from public schools in Rio de Janeiro – and in all regions across the country. In many cases, this is the only substantial meal of the day for them. International solidarity is crucial in condemning and giving visibility to such injustice”, highlights Mariana Santarelli, member of FBSSAN and Rapporteur on Human Rights from the ESCR Platform in Brazil.

As part of civil society’s mobilization, a public hearing is taking place on October 1 at 9pm (CEST), with the participation of representatives of students’ organizations, right to food and food sovereignty movements, members of the Public Ministry and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Mr. Michael Fakhri.

“The Brazilian Supreme Court must take the right to food seriously and oblige the Brazilian state to comply with its national and international human rights duties. Schoolchildren demand dignified treatment and adequate school meals, assuring that 30% of food purchases come from family farming, as provided by Brazilian law”, concludes Valeria Burity, Secretary-General of FIAN Brazil. 

Watch the public hearing with interpretation into English: youtube.com/user/FIANInt 
Watch the public hearing in Portuguese: facebook.com/fbssan/  
Read the fact sheet about the case.