Negotiations of the Voluntary Guidelines to continue in October: Civil society will have to redouble efforts

Their aim was to review, discuss and negotiate the first draft of the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance on Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests during the second meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG).

As proposed by the OEWG Chair, the meeting focused first on controversial issues such as tenure reform, markets, investments and concessions, harmonization of language with international and re-gional human rights obligations and the role of state and non-state actors. Thematic groups discussed these issues and came to agreements that were then presented to the plenary group. The review of the text in the plenary session only covered the preface and the three first paragraphs.

FIAN’s assessment of this first round of intergovernmental negotiations is mixed. On one hand, it was reassuring to see that the reformed CFS allows for a vibrant and powerful participation of various civil society constituencies. This is especially reassuring because this was the first CFS initiative dealing with one of the most pressing issues of our time: how to secure access to land, fisheries and forests for small food producers, particularly women. It was also important to see that a number of countries –   such as Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, the European Union, Switzerland, Tanzania, the USA and Zimbabwe – as well as the CFS’s Chair are seriously committed to adopting the Guidelines.

On the other hand, there are several reasons for concern. As the October 10-14 negotiations of the Guidelines approach, during the week immediately before the 37th session of the CFS, FIAN and other CSOs will be particularly watchful for the following issues.

Canada and Turkey fiercely opposed the inclusion of access to drinking water, food production and livestock tending in the scope of the Guidelines. This is despite the paramount importance of these items in eradicating hunger and the fact that, in many cases, the use of land for productive purposes is inseparable from water use. Thus, water has been marginally included in the preface of the Guide-lines, recalling that the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests is inextricably linked with access to and management of other natural resources such as water and mineral resources. However, states would be free to decide if they wish to take the governance of these associated natural resources into account in the implementation of the Guidelines.

In spite of the inclusion of food security in the title of the Guidelines (Voluntary Guidelines on the Re-sponsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Se-curity), and despite stating a clear objective to improve governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests for the benefit of marginalized people while keeping food security and the realization of the right to adequate food as primary goals, the text of the Guidelines still lack a clear focus on small-scale food producers and poor and marginalized groups who lack food security. With the support of Canada, Australia and the private sector, the USA insisted that economic growth, the strengthening of markets and investment are absolutely key to eradicate poverty. Thus, they refused – or tried to weaken – any policy measures beyond market mechanisms such as restitution, redistribution and the establishment of regulations guaranteeing security of tenure and safeguards for investments in favour of indigenous peoples, peasants, fishermen and women and nomadic pastoralists.

Particularly striking was the widespread hostility of states to recall their human rights obligations re-lated to land, fisheries and forests. Fearing that the Guidelines will create new obligations or become too prescriptive, many governments did all they can to weaken the language and the recommenda-tions of the Guidelines. For indigenous peoples this attitude is particularly worrying because the first draft of the Guidelines falls far behind the rights recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It took several hours of negotiation with Canada and the USA to move them to accept in the text of the Guidelines the incorporation of the indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as enshrined in UNDRIP! And the possibility to include consultations based on the FPIC principle for all groups whose livelihoods depend on land, fisheries and forests faced stiff opposition. Nevertheless, some progress was made in clarifying the respon-sibilities of business enterprises in relation to tenure of land, fisheries and forests.

CSOs are having a hard time meeting their baseline for negotiation. So far, the agreements are more or less on this baseline, but sometimes they are clearly below. Given the negotiation principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, nothing guarantees that the current agreements will not be undone in October. In fact, some governments accepted agreements in the thematic groups that they already sought to water down later on in plenary session. Some governments felt anxious about that there was too much CSO participation and, in the future, might try to interpret CFS rules to limit it. CSOs need to redouble their efforts for the OEWG meeting in October. More pressure from people is required to move the course of the negotiations.