Tag: right to food

Newsletter process: Rooted in resistance, territories for climate justice

Posted on by Tom

For Indigenous Peoples, peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, workers and other rural communities, land, waters, forests, and ecosystems are the foundation of life. Indigenous Peoples understand their territories as the total habitat they occupy or use, where culture, identity, and livelihoods are rooted. Beyond food production, these territories sustain essential social, cultural, spiritual, and ecological roles. Yet, land and natural goods are deeply contested, with their unequal distribution reflecting structural discrimination and historical injustices. Across centuries, processes of enclosure, colonialism, and dispossession have concentrated control in the hands of powerful actors, reinforcing oppression and exclusion.

Today, climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and environmental injustice – driven by neoliberal economies rooted in financialization, patriarchy and colonialism – intensify these struggles. Communities’ access to, use of, and control over land and territories remain essential for advancing systemic transformations envisioned by the food sovereignty movement. Territories are sites of resistance against extractive projects that endanger health, livelihoods, and ecosystems, but also spaces where communities build alternatives based on agroecology. These models promote food sovereignty, dignity, and justice – social, climate, environmental, gender, and intergenerational.

As social movements mobilize toward Climate COP 30 and the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, this edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter highlights the centrality of land and territories in shaping just and sustainable futures.

FIAN International, Friends of the Earth International, ETC Group, La Via Campesina

Illustration created for the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum: Cultivate or Die, Chardonnoir
Nyéléni Virtual Gallery – Axes – Nyéléni Global Forum

Read it directly on the website!          

For any further information, contact info@nyeleni.org – www.nyeleni.org
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The health and nutritional costs of supermarkets

Posted on by Tom

As supermarkets expand, traditional food systems shrink, endangering heritage diets and the benefits they offer to human health. This is the focus of our September bulletin.

Research carried out in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region found that the shift to a Western diet resulted in negative health outcomes like elevated inflammation, poorer immune function, and weight gain, while a return to traditional foods produced anti-inflammatory benefits and reduced markers of metabolic disease. The push for supermarkets across the world is causing an exponential rise in highly processed and refined foods that have a long shelf life and a rapid decline in the availability of nutritious, fresh and more perishable foods particularly fruits and vegetables.

These ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of obesity and other chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and even malnutrition among children. They are mostly composed of ingredients derived from industrial agriculture and global trade chains, leading to excessive chemical pollution of water, air and soil. On the other hand, local circuits of food distribution, with local markets and small-scale food vendors, provide more access to a diverse variety of fresh healthy foods that are affordable and easily accessible. Street food vendors play a critical role in many of these traditional food systems.

An estimated 2.5 billion people eat street food every day.  Most of these street food vendors do not have large storage capacities, so they often have to buy small quantities of fresh ingredients from traditional retail markets or directly from local farmers.  Food quality is assured by strong social ties and trust between producers, food vendors and consumers. The food is then prepared using simple processing facilities. In contrast, ultra-processed foods are commonly referred to as “junk food”, due to their high levels of free sugars, refined starches, sodium, saturated and trans-fats derived from substances or additives that make these products more appealing and enhance their shelf life.  In places where communities have a strong food culture, one of the marketing strategies of food corporations and retail chains is to mimic and recreate traditional foods using industrial food ingredients to expand their markets.    

This month, the third global Nyéléni Forum will be held in Sri Lanka.  The Nyéléni process emphasises the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.  Food production, distribution and access form a cohesive socio-cultural fabric that supports people’s nutritional and mental wellbeing, and people’s food sovereignty. In this edition, we highlight how local food systems should be the entry point for addressing issues like nutrition, labour conditions, and community strengthening, and we look at examples from a healthy food procurement policy in Brazil’s school networks and the ways in which Africa is resisting supermarket expansion.

Read Supermarket Watch here

For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org