“If industrial agriculture is to blame for the climate crisis, sustainable small-scale farming and local markets can contribute in the long term to stabilize the temperature in the world”, reads a statement recently issued by La Via Campesina.

The 16 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will begin in Cancun on November 29th. The meeting will end on December 10th. A few months ago, La Via Campesina had called for international mobilizations to demand climate justice under the slogan “1000 Cancuns”.

The statement issued now by the farmers makes reference to the fact that the rural population could reduce current global emissions through the recovery of soil organic matter, substitution of industrial meat production with small-scale diversified production, the expansion of local food markets and an end to deforestation. But we lack the political will of the governments, they state.

Both industrial farming and deforestation are considered the main pollutant activities in terms of green house gases emissions that cause climate change. In turn, “local sustainable food production needs less energy, eliminates the dependence on imported animals and keeps carbon on the ground, and at the same time increases biodiversity”, La Via states. “Diversified peasant and small-scale farming is much more resistant to floods, landslides, plagues and droughts”, they add.

Rural workers believe that the climate negotiations are “increasingly similar to a big market” where industrialized countries, historically responsible for most greenhouse gases emissions are “trying to avoid emission reductions at all costs”. One of their measures to do so is the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) which allows rich countries to continue polluting while buying carbon credits of projects implemented in the Global South. This way they offset carbon emissions, but do not reduce them, something which is extremely urgent, they explain.

According to La Vía Campesina, meanwhile, transnational corporations continue to “pocket” as much money as possible, “selling destructive technologies disguised behind the lie that they can solve the climate crisis, such as agrofuels”.

La Via rejects the CDM, REDD, geoengineering, the involvement of the World Bank in climate finance and the carbon market, because they are a failure when it comes to reducing pollution.

This is why the farmers demand the UNFCCC to adopt the demands of the Peoples Agreement which came as a result of the World Peoples´ Conference on Climate Change carried out in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in April.

“Family farming does not only contribute in a positive way to the carbon balance of the planet, but also generates 2.8 billion job sources, for men and women around the world, and it is the best way to fight against hunger, malnutrition and the current food crisis”, they explain. “If we have access to land, water, education and sanitation, and receive support in food sovereignty policies, we will continue feeding the world and protecting the planet”, they conclude.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmdesf...