[Nyéléni]Nyeleni international: Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems
by Nyéleni newsletter
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*Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems*
<http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=168>
*The autumn edition of the Nyéléni newsletter is online! *
This year marks 25 years since the paradigm of food sovereignty was
launched at the World Food Summit 1996 in Rome as a direct challenge to
market-based food security promoted through the World Trade Organisation
(WTO). Food sovereignty asserts the autonomy and agency of small-scale
food producers and workers in the face of increasing corporate power over
the entire realm of food. Since its launch, the food sovereignty movement
has grown, diversified, and birthed numerous initiatives to address
historical and emerging injustices, inequalities, rights abuses, and
oppressions. Today, the movement is at the cutting-edge of real systemic
change, with millions of people all over the world engaged in and
supporting solidarity economies, agroecology, territorial markets,
cooperatives, the defense of land and territories, and the rights of
small-scale food producers, workers, migrants, indigenous peoples, women
and people living in protracted crises.
Ironically, this year, the United Nations will convene a Food Systems
Summit (UNFSS) that is the polar opposite of food sovereignty. The
structure, content, governance and outcomes of the UNFSS are dominated by
actors affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF), as well as
government and UN officials who believe that successfully tackling hunger,
unemployment, climate change and biodiversity loss requires the central
involvement of corporations since they have capital, technologies and
infrastructure that surpass most nations and the entire UN system.
The coincidence of these two moments clearly shows fundamentally opposing
ideas about food systems. The UNFSS adopts a lens that serves the interests
of the industrial, globalized, corporate controlled food system. By
deepening dependency on corporate dominated global value chains, and
capital-intensive and market mechanisms, this approach sidelines human
rights and impedes real transformation of food systems. Food sovereignty,
on the other hand, tackles root causes of hunger and malnutrition,
emphasizes democratic control over food systems, confronts power
asymmetries and calls for radical economic, social and governance changes
to build just, equal, territorially rooted food systems that are in harmony
with nature, revitalize biodiversity, and ensure the rights of people and
communities.
Corporations are using their considerable resources to co-opt the
conceptualization and governance of food systems through financing, trade,
investment, and multi-stakeholder platforms. The UNFSS is a dangerously
perfect example of corporate designed multistakeholderism, where
corporations can influence public decision making at the highest level but
make no public interest commitments themselves. The UNFSS process has been
characterized by a lack of transparency in decision-making and strong
involvement of corporations in all parts of its structure, posing serious
problems of accountability, legitimacy, and democratic control of the UN.
Over the past year we have demonstrated our ability to mobilize across
multiple constituencies around the world against the corporate capture of
food and for food sovereignty. We have succeeded in challenging the
legitimacy of the Summit and prevented formal agreement to the creation of
new institutions, such as a panel of experts on food systems. The
*Counter-Mobilization
to Transform Food Systems* organized from July 25-28 reached almost 11,000
people world-wide.
Food is a basic need and a human right: food systems provide livelihoods
for nearly a third of humanity and are intimately connected to health and
ecosystems. We need, therefore, to continue strengthening the convergence
of food, health, environmental and climate justice movements, and continue
to rise up against corporate food systems that are destroying our planet
and our communities.
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--
Emanuela Russo
Coordinator of the international Nyéléni Newsletter
www.nyeleni.org
info(a)nyeleni.org
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