MANILA–Some 700 Filipinos protested in front of the Department of Agriculture in Quezon City on Monday, October 21, 2024, as part of Asia-wide protests, calling on Asian governments to build sustainable, climate-resilient food systems that ensure adequate and affordable food for all.
The campaigners, joined by labor leaders Leody de Guzman and Atty. Luke Espiritu, stressed the urgency of their calls in the face of intensifying impacts of climate change–including record-breaking typhoons, floods, and landslides–devastate the agricultural sector, increase food insecurity, and cost billions in losses and damages.
The mobilizations in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka were led by the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) and conducted on the first day of the UN Committee on World Food Security’s annual plenary session, where governments will discuss and endorse policy recommendations on global food security.
This year’s plenary session also marks the 20th anniversary of the Right to Food Guidelines, a framework adopted in 2004 by the member states of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to ensure access to adequate and sustainable food.
The actions also coincide with the start of the Annual Meeting of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), prompting campaigners to demand accountability for the WB-IMF’s promotion of neoliberal economic policies, which have weakened food systems across the Global South by enabling the corporate ownership of seed systems and opening up land tenure arrangements to international investors.
Demands raised by campaigners included the return of food, land, and water systems to the people, reparations for decades of harmful policies, and the cancellation of unsustainable and illegitimate debts to free up fiscal space for climate action and essential services.
In anticipation of COP29 in November, campaigners also demanded the payment of climate finance from Global North governments, as a form of reparations for the destruction of the Global South’s food, land, and water systems.
As governments prepare to negotiate a new climate finance goal, campaigners emphasized the need for adequate, public, and non-debt-creating climate finance to flow towards adaptation plans for food and agriculture.
“This year has been devastating for the farmers and fisherfolk on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” according to APMDD regional coordinator Lidy Nacpil.
In September, Typhoon Yagi killed over 800 people in Southeast Asia and cost over $15.8 billion in economic loss and damage. Earlier in the year, El Niño cost the Philippine government 9.89 billion pesos worth of agricultural losses, with rice making up 48% of those losses.
By the end of the dry season, nearly 200,000 farmers and fisherfolk were affected, requiring 8.59 billion pesos worth of financial aid.
“Every year, smallholder farmers spend $368 billion of their own money to adapt to climate change. It is unacceptable that those least responsible for the climate crisis are forced to pay for it, while the governments, elites, and corporations of rich countries deny their legal and ethical obligation to fund climate adaptation,” said Nacpil.
In 2018, only 7.5% of climate finance went towards adaptation programs, less than 3% went to agriculture, and only 1.7% reached small-scale producers.
In addition to meager amounts of adaptation finance, the newly established Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage has received less than $700 million in pledges, which amounts to less than 1% of the $447-894 billion needed annually.
Nacpil added: “The people of the Global South are owed trillions, not millions, for the losses and damages that threaten their right to food.”
“Our current food systems are not sustainable or climate-resilient,” according to Nacpil.
“Industrial agriculture is a key driver of the climate crisis, producing over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Governments must not only implement programs that adapt food systems to the impacts of the climate crisis, they should also ensure sustainability by phasing out carbon-intensive industrial agriculture, and shifting away from the imported chemical fertilizers and monoculture plantations that destroy biodiversity.”
Without adequate adaptation and mitigation programs in agriculture, climate impacts on the food sector will only intensify, driving up food insecurity for the world’s most vulnerable people.
In this year’s Southeast Asian Climate Outlook Survey, 70% of respondents reported experiences of food insecurity, and the top three reasons were high prices, climate change, and poor government policy.
“When India limited its rice exports last year due to an erratic monsoon season, rice prices were the highest they had been in 15 years,” Nacpil recalled.
“Relying on imports has made Asia’s food supply vulnerable to the volatility of the global market. Protecting people’s right to food means rejecting import dependence and strengthening the local production of staple food for domestic needs. We call on Asian governments to prioritize land for staple food production, end the conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, and protect farmers from corporate land-grabbing and rural militarization.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has argued in favor of import and export restrictions for the purpose of developing domestic food production and creating more self-sufficient systems.
Nacpil added: “The end of food insecurity lies in food sovereignty, which prioritizes the rights and needs of those who produce, distribute, and consume food over global markets and multinational corporations. It is time for Asian governments to turn away from the dominant models of industrial agriculture, reject import dependence, and build new national food systems that place staple food production for domestic needs as their highest priority.”
Photo by Lei Ventenilla
