UNITY
STATEMENT OF THE PEOPLES' STREET CONFERENCE
We,
the farmers, representatives of farmers organizations, peoples'
movements and civil society from throughout the Philippines
and around the world who gather here for the People's Street
Conference against the Annual General Meeting of the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) uphold
this statement of unity.
The Street Conference is an independent initiative to claim
space for critiques of the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and for the presentation of
alternatives.
The CGIAR, including the International Rice Research Institute
(IRRI), has consistently failed to meet the needs of poor
farmers throughout the world. From the start of the Green
Revolution, the research centers of the CGIAR have promoted
a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to research that
ignores the knowledge and experience of farmers, farming
communities, and indigenous people. The agriculture promoted
by the CGIAR, with its dependence on pesticides, fertilizers
and other chemicals, is environmentally and socially unsustainable.
Farmers have been plunged into debt, their health and the
health of their families has suffered, their knowledge,
culture and social systems have been exploited, and the
agro-environment of their farms has been severely degraded.
Despite decades of effort by civil society, by farmers and
farming communities both requesting and demanding reform
of the system, the CGIAR has shown itself unable or unwilling
to reform. Despite participation in conferences, on committees,
writing papers, and letters, despite interviews, speeches,
briefings and meetings, by millions of farmers throughout
the world, we do not see any significant change in the CGIAR
approach. For this reason we are forced to take to the streets.
The following issues are of particular concern to us:
1. Accountability and governance: The CGIAR has never been
accountable to whom it claims to serve. This is reflected
in its governance structure which is fundamentally controlled
by four rich countries of the North. It has never attempted
to solve its problems of accountability and continues to
refuse attempts to genuinely involve farmers' organizations
in its decision-making processes.
2. The Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution: The Green
Revolution continues to cause immense damage. Far from learning
from the mistakes of the Green Revolution, the CGIAR are
frantically chasing the tail of the latest mythological
'one-technology-fixes-all:' genetic engineering. GMOs are
associated with genetic privatization through patenting
and IPR; genetic contamination; market rejection; threats
to farmers' rights through increasing monopolization in
agriculture; negative health effects; environmental damage,
and a deepening of the structural inequalities between rich
and poor. The failure of the CGIAR to defend genetic diversity
in the light of contamination is disgraceful.
3. Trusteeship and biopiracy: The inability of the CGIAR
to protect material it holds in its genebanks from biopiracy
is a betrayal of the trust of farmers and farming communities.
The FAO-CGIAR trust agreement has been handled inadequately
and must be fundamentally restructured. Germplasm, its components
and derivatives must be kept free of intellectual property
control.
4. Worker health and safety: The relationship between CGIAR
centers and the national workforces facilitates exploitation
including, in some instances, immunity from national labor
laws. Illness and death of workers, contractualization of
labor, unfair dismissals and worker harassment result. Workers
have the right to stable, ongoing, safe employment with
adequate remuneration protected by national and international
law.
5. Business as usual: The ever strengthening links with
the private sector and capitulation to private sector values
and agendas brings into question the independence and integrity
of the CGIAR. The stated aims of corporations (to make money)
and the CGIAR (supposedly to increase food security) are
completely different. Biopiracy, the undermining of public-oriented
research agendas and a continuing flow of knowledge and
resources from the South to the North are the result.
6. The CGIAR have grossly failed to recognize and enforce
farmers' rights despite their rhetoric.
The CGIAR has shown itself to be unable to change. The use
of nice language and pro-farmer rhetoric to clothe the same
unsustainable approach does not constitute change. For this
reason and the reasons listed above, the Peoples' Street
Conference calls for a dismantling of the current international
agricultural research system and the reorientation of public
funds into responsive, pro-poor, pro-farmer, sustainable
approaches.
New models of agricultural research:
The work of many of the farmers, Peoples' Organizations
and NGOs attending this street conference is illustrative
of the wide range of farmer-centered research that is being
pursued throughout the world including farmer-breeding initiatives,
participative research, and the maintenance and development
of community knowledge. Farmer-led and farmer-oriented approaches,
however, are chronically underfunded, unsupported and marginalized
by the mainstream approach to research.
Call to action:
It is imperative that agricultural research is farmer-centered,
farmer-led, pro-poor, and rooted in the principle of farmers
rights, genuine land reform and food sovereignty. Alternatives
to the a mainstream approach to agriculture must be strengthened
and developed.
Funding for socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture
must be strengthened. We call upon donors to reorient their
funding from research on GMOs, hybrids and other damaging
techno-fixes to agro-ecological, farmer led approaches.
Public research on agriculture must be maintained free from
the influence (direct and indirect) of profit-oriented private
companies. We call on all the international scientific community
to join farmers in conducting farmer-led, farmer-oriented
participatory research.
We demand that there be no patents on life or any kind of
intellectual property. The international scientific community
must join peoples' movements in explicitly rejecting patents
on life, and in proactively protecting plants, animals and
agricultural processes from patents and other forms of IPR.
The international research community must work to ensure
adherence to human rights, and labor rights in accordance
with all national and international laws.
None of these demands can be achieved without the full implementation
of farmers' rights at national and international levels.
The international research establishment must recognize
and advance farmers' rights in all its policies and actions.
The current system of international agricultural research,
particularly the CGIAR, has blighted the development of
responsible public science by diverting resources and subverting
knowledge, technologies and agendas. There has been a stifling
of creativity, a marginalization of farmer science and a
tragic narrowing of analysis and goals of research. We call
upon ourselves, the international scientific community,
donors, and governments to start anew in agricultural research.
Uphold People's Control on Agriculture! Assert Farmer-centered
Agricultural Research and Systems!
Signatories: (During the Peoples' Street Conference)
1. Peasant Movement of the Philippines/KMP
2. Genetic Resources Action International Network/GRAIN
3. Farmers-Scientist Partnership for Development of Agriculture/MASIPAG
(Philippines)
4. International Alliance Against Agrochemical TNCs /IAAATNCs
5. Advocates of Science and Technology for the People/AGHAM
(Philippines)
6.. Alliance of Farmers in Cordillera/APIT-TAKO (Philippines)
7. Assembly of the Poor (Thailand)
8. BIOTHAI (Thailand)
9. Brotherhood of IRRI Support Services Group/BISSIG (Philippines)
10. CEDAC (Cambodia)
11. Center for Environmental Concerns/CEC (Philippines)
12. South East Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment/SEARICE
13. Sibol ng Agham at Teknolohiya/SIBAT (Philippines)
14. EL KANA (Georgia)
15. Erosion, Technology, Corporation Group/ETC Group (Canada)
16. Forum for Bio-technology and Food Security (India)
17. Institute for Occupational Health and Safety Development
/IOHSAD (Philippines)
18. Patrick Mulvany, ITDG (United Kingdom)
19. Kalikasan-People's Network for the Environment (Philippines)
20. LATIN (Indonesia)
21. Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific/PAN Asia Pacific
22. RRAFA (Thailand)
23. Peasant Movement of the Philippines-Cebu/KMP Cebu (Philippines)
24. Alliance of Farmers in Central Luzon/AMGL (Philippines)
25. Alliance of Farmers in Isabela//DAGAMI (Philippines)
26. Pesticide Action Network Indonesia/PAN Indonesia
27. Health Alliance for Democracy/HEAD (Philippines)
28. Rural Missionaries of the Philippines/RMP (Philippines)
29. National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates/NNARA
(Philippines)
30. National Fisherfolk Movement/PAMALAKAYA (Philippines)
31. Center for Genuine Agrarian Reform/SENTRA (Philippines)
Signatories: (After the Peoples' Street Conference)
34. Consumers Union of Japan (Japan)
35. Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering/NW
RAGE (OR)
36. Institute of Science in Society (UK)
37. eThekwini ECOPEACE (ZA)
38. Anarchist Action of Rochester (USA)
39. Rochester Food Not Bombs (USA)
40. Safe Food Coalition (South Africa)
41. Ecological Society of the Philippines (Philippines)
42. GE Free New Zealand in Food and Environment (New Zealand)
43. Miguel A. Altieri, Ph.D., University of California (California)
44. Chris Petersen (Iowa)
45. Center for Bio-diversitet (Denmark)
46. Michael Dickson (AU)
47. Ewa Charkiewicz -Tools for Transition (Poland/Netherlands)
48 Safe Food Campaign (New Zealand)
49. Gladys Schmitz, SSND (USA)
50. The Swedish Ecological Farmers Association (SE)
51. GeneEthics Network (AU)
52. Policy Research for Development Alternative/UBINIG (India)
53. Bert Lof, ETC Foundation (The Netherlands)
54. Sustainable Agriculture & Institutional Development
(The Netherlands)
55. Ecoropa-Europe (France)
56. Nico Verhagen, Via Campesina (Belgium)
57. Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Livelihoods/ANDES
(Peru)
58. Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Network, IPBN (International)
59. Robert Chakanda, Centre for Genetic Resources (The Netherlands)
60. Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation
(CBDC) Regional Coordinating Unit / Latin America
61. Elizabeth Bravo, Accion Ecologica (Equador)
62. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy /IATP
63. Pesticide Action Network - North America
64. South African Freeze Alliance on Genetic Engineering/SAFeAGE
(South Africa)
65. Joaquin Nieto, Secretario Confederal de Medio Ambiente
y Salud Laboral, Confederacion Sindical de Comisiones Obreras
(Spain)
66. Estefania Blount, Directora de Medio Ambiente de Instituto
Sindical de Trabajo, Ambiento y Salud /ISTAS (Spain)
67. Jorge Riechmann, Responsible de Biotechnologias y Agroalimentacion,
Departamento Confederal de Medio Ambiente de Comisiones
Obreras (Spain)
68. Jose Luis Porcuna, Presidente de la Sociedad Española
de Agricultura Ecologica (Spain)
69. Alagad ng Kalikasan / Volunteers for the Environment
(Philippines)
70. Andrew Mushita, Community Technology Development Trust
(Zimbabwe)
For those who want to sign in the
Unity Statement, please email MASIPAG: [email protected]