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Perspectives from Asia Pacific on the outcome of the COP27 climate talks

The annual UN climate talks took place in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh this year, from 6 to 20 November. This was the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as “COP27”. In a press release issued at the end of the talks, Friends of the Earth International celebrated…

Linking alternatives: building peasant agroecology in Togo

Togo is one of the smallest countries in Africa and home to 8.6 million people. Since the shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, increasingly extreme weather and recent food price rises, the state of food security in Togo has greatly deteriorated. In 2022, 1 in 5 people in the country don’t have access to or can’t afford enough healthy, nutritious food. Yet…

The road to agroecology in Sri Lanka

Before the Green Revolution came to Sri Lanka in the 1960s, with the imposition of modernised machinery, high yielding varieties, increased use of fertilisers and other agrochemical inputs, the country had an ecologically sustainable agricultural system. Farmers used mixed farming techniques and cultivated in a manner that protected the natural environment and human health. They maintained soil fertility through the…

How many more socio-environmental and human rights crimes until we say enough?

On 23 August, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) together with social movements and organisations from the region held a public event in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to discuss the urgent need to agree an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and human rights. The goal is to gain the support of democratic governments…

A Toxic Alliance: How European agrochemical corporations and the agribusiness lobby are influencing the legislative agenda in Brazil

The EU-Mercosur trade deal, agreed in 2019 but yet to be ratified, is set to benefit European agrochemical companies whilst having dire consequences for nature, local communities and Indigenous communities in South America. It will lead to a steep increase in exports of crop to Europe and import of dangerous agrochemicals to the southern cone, particularly Brazil. This is why…

Transnationals in Mexico: depeasantization and Walmartization*

The Mexican diagnosis of government policies that have allowed and promoted the advance of transnational corporations, produced by Otros Mundos Chiapas - Friends of the Earth Mexico, is centered on the agri-food sector and is in line with the rest of the countries of the region at a pivotal moment: the 1990s, neoliberal policies and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). In…

Silvia Ribeiro: “No one can live without food”

Questioning the power of transnational corporations in our lives means questioning production and reproduction of many spheres of our society. How we live, what we wear, how we deal with our relationships, how we work and understand politics, all these aspects are to some extent influenced by the corporate power, which undermines and exploits our lives. How we eat and…

BLACK OVER GREEN: OIL SPILLS IN ECUADOR

On 7 April, 2020, the foundation and pipelines of the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) and the Heavy Oils Pipeline (OCP) collapsed, causing a huge oil spill on the waters of the Coca River, which rapidly reached the Napo River. Both rivers are part of the Amazonas River Basin, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. This polluted the water, land,…

Honduran peasants suffer violent evictions in Aguán

Last year, between December 16 and December 21, various social and peasant organizations denounced the violent evictions that thousands of peasants were suffering in Aguán, Honduras. The situation was repeated a week later against members of the Cooperativa Remolino cooperative, who were evicted by private security guards and the COBRA squad who shot them with firearms, leaving at least 7…

Peasant leader denounces systematic violence in Colombia at UN Human Rights Council

On Thursday 25 February, Nury Martinez, Chair of the National Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO), member of La Via Campesina in Colombia, will address the plenary meeting of the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council. She will denounce the systematic violence and repression of peasant organisations in Colombia, as well as the ongoing selective threats against defenders of land…