Newsletters Nyéléni in English

The international Nyéléni newsletter is the voice of the international movement for Food Sovereignty. Its main goal is to strengthen the grassroots of the movement, by providing accessible material on key issues and creating a space – for individuals and organisations involved in the struggle – to exchange their experiences and share information.

Voices from the field

Newsletter no 61 - Rooted in resistance: territories for climate justice

Voices from the field 1

Timbulsloko: A village sinking into the sea

Susan Herawati, KIARA, Indonesia

Timbulsloko is a coastal village in northern Java, located in one of Indonesia’s fastest-sinking regions. Seawater intrusion was first recorded in 1990, marking the start of a dramatic transformation of the village’s landscape and livelihoods. By 1995, the sea was rising steadily, climbing an average of 18 centimeters each year between 2002 and 2016. Together with the sinking land beneath, this rise has left much of Timbulsloko permanently underwater. More than 100 hectares of land and between 400 and 1,300 meters of coastline have already vanished, along with many homes.

This is not simply a natural disaster. Industrial expansion has deepened the crisis. After the Lapindo mudflow displaced industries from East Java in 2006, they relocated to Central Java, attracted by lower environmental risks and labor costs. Demak, the district where Timbulsloko is located, quickly developed into an industrial hub. This and the expansion of Tanjung Mas Port worsened the situation. Industries extract massive amounts of groundwater, making the land sink even faster. As a result, floods have become unbearable, and every year more of Timbulsloko disappears.

This slow disaster has transformed the villagers’ way of life. In the 1960s, the coast was covered in rice fields, coconut groves, fruit trees, and vegetable farms. Families thrived on rice, corn, and legumes, and agriculture sustained both diets and incomes. But as the sea swallowed fertile land, farming became impossible. Residents were forced to shift from farming to shrimp and milkfish farming, and now most depend solely on fishing – often under precarious conditions.

The consequences are severe. Falling incomes and food insecurity have left families struggling to survive. What was once a thriving agricultural community now stands on the frontlines of the climate crisis, caught between rising seas and unsustainable development policies that continue to push it further underwater.

Voices from the field 2

Community self-governance of land as a path to climate and gender justice

Massa Koné, UACDDDD, Mali

In Mali, the struggle for land has long been a struggle for dignity. For decades, rural communities, women, and civil society organizations – led by the Union of Associations and Coordinations of Associations for the Development and Defense of the Rights of the Disadvantaged (UACDDDD) – pushed for recognition of their rights. Their persistence bore fruit in 2017, when Mali adopted a historical Agricultural Land Law (LFA), followed by an implementing decree in 2018.

For the first time, rural communities’ customary tenure rights were legally recognized, creating a new framework in Mali’s land governance system that protects communities’ control over their resources. Central to this system are the Village Land Commissions, or COFOVs (commissions foncières villageoises).

The COFOVs are more than legal structures – they are spaces of grassroots democracy. In regions threatened by agribusiness and extractive projects, they return decision-making power to communities, who collectively set the rules for land use, management, and transfer. Women, historically excluded, now take leadership roles, pass on knowledge, and safeguard food sovereignty. Their presence affirms that land justice and gender justice are inseparable.

To date, UACDDDD has supported the creation of COFOVs in over 380 villages through a ten-step participatory process grounded in national law and decades of struggle. By prioritizing women and youth, this approach ensures inclusive, equitable, and peaceful land governance. Importantly, COFOVs defend not only equitable access to land but also collective management of territories based on peasant agroecology.

As the world heads toward COP 30, Mali’s experience offers a vital lesson: climate justice will not emerge from top-down promises, but from communities governing their territories as commons. The COFOVs demonstrate that profound transformation is possible if communities are enabled to govern their lands as a common good, for the future of all.

Voices from the field 3

The healing power of agroecology

Angie Belem Ruiz, Galaxias-UNICAM SURI, Argentina

Agroecological refuge galaxies are collectively managed farms in Argentina, created on land reclaimed from agribusiness. Launched in 2018 by UNICAM SURI (Universidad Campesina – Sistemas Rurales Indocampesinos), the peasant university of the Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE-VC), they offer refuge, healing, and dignified work to young people, women, gender-diverse people, and migrants facing exclusion, violence, or addiction.

I arrived at Las Galaxias when I was sentenced to prison for being part of a group of young people who had problems with drug addiction in a slum on the outskirts of La Matanza, Buenos Aires. The court sentenced me to five years. At the trial, a coordinator from Las Galaxias asked the judge to let me serve my sentence in one of their communities, working the land instead of being locked up. To my surprise, the judge agreed, allowing me not only to live and work there, but also to have my two youngest daughters with me.

I started by learning how to raise goats with Mabel, a farmer who taught me how to milk, ensure hygiene, cool the milk, and make cheese. Later, I took care of the laying hens: feeding them, giving them water, grazing them, and cleaning their coop. Today, at Galaxia La Dorotea, I take care of sheep and share responsibilities with other young people.

Thanks to this work, my life has been transformed. Producing healthy food and living in community has become therapeutic and educational. I went from being a prisoner to being a coordinator, with organizational and administrative responsibilities.

Agroecology healed me. It restored my dignity, deepened my bond with my daughters, and showed me that cooperation and living in contact with the land can turn despair into hope. For me, the Galaxias are more than a refuge: they are a path to freedom, while healing Mother Earth and building just and sustainable food systems.

Voices from the field 4

Putting people in power

Movement of People Affected by Dams, Brazil

For the past two years in a row, the Brazilian Amazon has experienced the worst droughts in its history. Large rivers such as the Madeira River in Rondônia, the largest tributary of the Amazon River, which reaches a depth of more than 20 meters, fell to less than 25 centimeters in 2024. Throughout this period, traditional and riverside communities (in Portuguese: ribeirinhas) have seen their food and fish production compromised, as well as their access to health, education, and other rights.

The intensification of the climate crisis and, consequently, of extreme events has been happening faster than the state’s response to it. Therefore, while continuing to pressure governments, the affected populations organized in the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in the region began to organize their own adaptation measures, based on the principle of meeting the needs of the people first and in a collective format.

In Rondônia, as a result of the struggle for climate justice, those affected have achieved the construction of more than 800 systems, networks for water collection, filtration, storage, and distribution, built by the people in a collective effort.

The populations that have historically contributed least to global warming and protect our forests are now not only paying the highest price, but also need to develop solutions without the same conditions. The answer to the crisis we are experiencing lies in putting the people in power and transforming society and development from the ground up.

Water for life!

Boxes

Newsletter no 61 - Rooted in resistance: territories for climate justice

Box 1

Toward the ICARRD+20 to advance food sovereignty and climate justice

The Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) will take place in Colombia in February 2026, following a call from grassroots organizations of peasants, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, and rural communities. Colombia, one of the few countries advancing agrarian reform, offered to host this global event.

ICARRD+20 comes at a critical moment, as land grabbing, speculation, inequality, and ecological destruction continue to displace millions and deepen hunger and poverty. For rural communities, land and territories are the foundation of life, culture, dignity, and food sovereignty. Therefore, this conference is not just a policy forum – it is a space to demand justice, challenge corporate power, and push for systemic change rooted in people’s rights.

The first ICARRD in 2006 was historic, opening space for both governments and social movements, who organized the “Land, Territory and Dignity” forum. It paved the way for major gains such as the Tenure Guidelines, the UN Declaration on the Right of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which strengthened recognition of land as a human right. However, despite victories in some countries, implementation has been limited.

Twenty years later, and in light of the multiple crises the world is facing, small-scale food producers’ organizations expect ICARRD+20 to go further: to confront land concentration, secure collective and customary rights, advance redistributive agrarian reform, ensure gender and generational justice, and defend territories as spaces of resistance, hope, and transformation.

Box 2

Greening through data but data can’t be green

While the movements for food, agricultural and climate justice want to sync their struggles towards system change, carbon markets blossom with digital tools and processes: finding information, making calculations, programing a productive activity, transmitting information across seas or automating the nurseries—among others—, and they appear as frictionless, precise and clean.

Under the new digital world order, small and micro farms, community forests, and even the backyards in peasant homes can enter the carbon markets as their capacity for CO2 sequestration can be calculated and auctioned.

Satellite measurements, precision agriculture with sensors in fields and forests, increased connectivity, widespread use of smartphones and tablets, modeling with artificial intelligence, increased robotization and automation in factories—these are some of the deployments that corporations hope to scale up as part of their efforts to offset their emissions. This would be combined with the payment of carbon credits, green and blue bonds, climate bonds, and other financial instruments to be discussed at COP30.

The boost that digitalization is giving to carbon markets must be denounced as the scam it is, a snake biting its own tail. Digital technologies can never be clean because they depend on fossil fuels to power data centers and gadgets, and require the most aggressive extractivism to obtain their materials.

Will we see large digital technology companies at COP30 looking to lure people in with compensations, while offering their tools to measure speculative emissions?

Box 3

Agrarian reform, agroecology, and the struggle for climate justice

The climate crisis we face today is rooted in a long history of dispossession—where our peoples have been forced from their territories— and colonization whose legacy continues today in and the corporate control over our food systems.

The industrial agriculture model, which puts profit ahead of people and nature, has systematically destroyed biodiversity, polluted the planet, and worsened the climate crisis. Every year, we see this in extreme weather events, with the heaviest burden falling on those who work the land, fish the waters, and grow food for our communities.

To push back against this destructive corporate-led food system requires a fundamental shift in how we relate to land, water, commons and territories—and how control over them is shared.

Therefore, for peasants, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, pastoralists, and all small-scale food producers and land workers, the fight for agrarian reform is central to the broader fight for climate justice. This is because, simply put, without peoples’ control over land, water, seeds, and territories, agroecology—the practice that heals the earth and supports communities—cannot be practiced.

Integral agrarian reform is thus more than just redistributing land. It’s about reclaiming the commons needed to build territories of care and economies based on solidarity.

This must happen through the democratic participation of those who produce and consume food. The agrarian reform called for by social movements like La Via Campesina is therefore a struggle for the material conditions that allow small-scale producers to live with dignity and grow food in harmony with nature, through agroecology.

Why Agroecology? Peasant agroecology rejects dependence on chemical inputs and corporate seeds. Instead, it nurtures biodiversity, conserves soil and water, and rebuilds lost or damaged ecosystems. It is a production model, a political vision and a way of life grounded in respect for Mother Earth and collective well-being of all.

By combining biodiversity, soil health, water conservation, and local knowledge, peasant agroecology builds resilient food systems that store carbon in soils and vegetation. These farms absorb significant carbon, helping reduce atmospheric CO₂. Tree cover, crop diversity, and ecological balance revive the soil, restore the landscape and prevent erosion, while  regulate regulating local climates, maintain moisture, prevent erosion, and cooling the earth both locally and globally. Applied to fisheries and pastoralism, agroecology protects aquatic ecosystems, preserves biodiversity, and ensures fair access to resources. Pastoralists use mobility and rotational grazing to prevent desertification and maintain soil fertility.

The struggle for agrarian reform and agroecology must therefore advance hand in hand if we are to dismantle the corporate food system and achieve true social, economic and climate justice.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 61 - Rooted in resistance: territories for climate justice

In the spotlight 1

From Nyéléni to the People’s Summit: converging for change

“There is no single issue struggle because we don’t live single issue lives.” Audre Lorde

In 2025/26 social movements have several opportunities to converge and build our systemic alternatives to the intersecting crises we face today. These moments also give us an opportunity to mobilize against the entities grabbing our land and territories, oppressing our communities and dividing our movements with far right politics – transnational corporations, oligarchs and their nexus with authoritarian leaders.  The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum (that took place in September) , the People’s Summit towards COP 30 and ICARRD+20 (The Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development) bring together social movements who work for system change, from different starting points and different geographical and political realities but working towards common goals.

At all these spaces the question of how to counter the escalation in resource grabbing from neoliberal policies (as outlined in article “In the spotlight 2”) is central. One of the key answers to this question is the demand for agrarian reform and redistribution.

The climate justice movement fights the fossil fuel system which makes our world unlivable, while polluting and grabbing lands and seas from fishers and peasants. We fight the military-industrial complex which is responsible for untold suffering, for 5% of global emissions and for criminalising environmental defenders while sucking up trillions in public money that should be spent on public services or climate finance. We struggle against the financialization of nature – when supposed climate action becomes another route for banks and hedge funds to profit from destruction, while dispossessing Indigenous and rural peoples. We know that climate justice isn’t possible without economic justice – reparations for historical damage, debt relief. It is not possible without land reform, indigenous and peasant knowledge and tackling gross inequality. So we are sisters with other movements including the food sovereignty movement. 

Food sovereignty offers a completely different framework to organise food production and consumption. It demands food as a human right, not as a commodity, focuses power back in the hands of rural and urban working classes many of whom are also food producers. It relocalises food systems and respects and builds traditional knowledge. The framework also politised agroecology – the science, practice and movement of ecological agriculture which has become one of the most ensuring examples of grassroots solutions across the globe.

In the 3rd Nyéléni Forum, movements deepened and broadened the framework to achieve systemic transformation, for example tackling false solutions; opposing food as a weapon of war as we can see with devastating effect in Gaza and adding crucial economic and climate justice aspects. Expanding and strengthening our alliances and collective struggles for emancipation, justice, autonomy and the right to self-determination is the call of these moments.

Grassroots movements of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fishers, Black peoples, feminists, workers and migrants are the main protagonists in achieving climate justice and food sovereignty and resource redistribution.

It is peasants, fishers and Indigenous Peoples that are the first line of defence in fighting extractive projects on their lands. It is the waste pickers who struggle for a world without petroleum based plastics. It is grassroots feminists who have demanded economies for life and care, not for extraction. It is communities of black and indigenous peoples who give to the world their historical and traditional knowledge of medicine and food production. Putting land back in their hands means the real grassroots solutions can become a reality.

Organised peoples have historically brought about progressive change big and small. Today we face crumbling democracies, the rise of powerful oligarchs and corporations in collusion with the political class. Together from Nyéléni to the People’s Summit to ICARRD+20 we will face this challenge with hope and solidarity. With real, practical solutions that make the life of everyday people better.

In the spotlight 2

Agrarian reform and redistribution must be at the heart of climate policies

Placing land and territories under the control of small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, and rural communities is one of the most effective strategies to advance climate justice. Secure and equitable tenure is directly linked to ecologically sound resource management of territories, sustainable food systems, social justice, peace and well-being. Without redistributive policies, the concentration of land and resources will continue to fuel ecological destruction and deepen inequality.

Land inequality plays a central yet under-recognized role in the triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Today, just 1% of farms control 70% of global farmland, while the majority of rural communities, Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale food providers face dispossession and violence. This not only undermines their human rights but also weakens their proven capacity to act as stewards of ecosystems. Territories under their governance consistently show lower deforestation rates, higher biodiversity, better water management and stronger climate resilience.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, land has increasingly been treated as a financial asset, leading to speculation, large-scale acquisitions, and displacement of communities. More recently, “green grabs” tied to carbon offsets and biodiversity markets have accelerated, with such schemes now representing 20% of large land deals. These initiatives, marketed as climate solutions, often dispossess communities and erode ecological stewardship. Meanwhile, corporate, industrial food systems – dependent on monocultures, fossil fuels, and agrochemicals – remain major drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and soil and water degradation.

In contrast, small-scale producers – who use only 35% of global cropland yet feed more than half the world’s population – practice diverse, agroecological farming systems that enhance resilience and reduce emissions. Their contribution is indispensable for climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and food sovereignty. However, their ability to continue this role depends on secure rights to land, water, and territories.

The question of who owns and controls land is thus inseparable from the challenge of building a just and sustainable future. Addressing land inequality through redistributive tenure policies is not only a human rights obligation of states but also a social and ecological necessity. Agrarian reform can stop and reverse land grabbing, curb inequality, strengthen community-based conservation, and enable just transitions toward agroecology and sustainable food systems.

Therefore, agrarian reform and redistributive tenure policies must be fundamental pillars of climate strategies. Promoting them through public policies empowers rural communities and Indigenous Peoples to govern and manage their territories in a self-determined way. Special emphasis needs to be put on measures to ensure the respect, protection and fulfilment of the rights of peasants and other small-scale food providers, Indigenous Peoples, and rural communities in the context of carbon and biodiversity markets. In sum, placing land under the control of rural people and communities and securing their existing tenure rights – in particular collective and customary rights – lays the foundation for just transitions to sustainable and equitable economic models and societies.

Newsletter no 61 – Editorial

Newsletter no 61 - Rooted in resistance: territories for climate justice

Rooted in resistance: territories for climate justice

Illustration created for the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum: Cultivate or Die, Chardonnoir.
Campesinos.as rise like giants, their hands and harvests both shield and sword. They defend the earth, nurture life, and reclaim sovereignty, transforming cultivation into an act of rebellion, resilience, and hope.

For Indigenous Peoples, peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, workers and other rural communities, land, waters, forests, and ecosystems are the foundation of life. Indigenous Peoples understand their territories as the total habitat they occupy or use, where culture, identity, and livelihoods are rooted. Beyond food production, these territories sustain essential social, cultural, spiritual, and ecological roles. Yet, land and natural goods are deeply contested, with their unequal distribution reflecting structural discrimination and historical injustices. Across centuries, processes of enclosure, colonialism, and dispossession have concentrated control in the hands of powerful actors, reinforcing oppression and exclusion.

Today, climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and environmental injustice – driven by neoliberal economies rooted in financialization, patriarchy and colonialism – intensify these struggles. Communities’ access to, use of, and control over land and territories remain essential for advancing systemic transformations envisioned by the food sovereignty movement. Territories are sites of resistance against extractive projects that endanger health, livelihoods, and ecosystems, but also spaces where communities build alternatives based on agroecology. These models promote food sovereignty, dignity, and justice – social, climate, environmental, gender, and intergenerational.

As social movements mobilize toward Climate COP 30 and the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, this edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter highlights the centrality of land and territories in shaping just and sustainable futures.

FIAN International, Friends of the Earth International, ETC Group, La Via Campesina

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Voices from the field 1

Global debt architecture violates human rights

La Via Campesina Ecuador

Currently, Ecuador holds a loan of 8.705 billion dollars with the International Monetary Fund, making it the fourth most indebted country globally. In the 23rd agreement between Ecuador and the IMF, the loan is described as supporting Ecuador’s policies to stabilize the economy and safeguard dollarization. It also aims to advance a structural reform agenda.

However, peasant, Indigenous, and civil society organizations have questioned the loan and warned of the impacts of the measures and conditions imposed by the IMF. Among the main agreements are the elimination of fuel subsidies, hourly labour, a new tax reform, and other conditions.

We affirm that this global debt architecture violates human rights, plunging peasants, Indigenous peoples, and the entire working class into poverty and indebtedness. We also denounce that we are facing a wave of criminalization, stigmatization, and persecution, intensified by our struggle and resistance in defence of a dignified life. Many leaders and social movement representatives are being prosecuted and are at risk, while complex measures loom that will carry an extremely high social cost.

Voices from the field 2

IMF and World Bank have intensified the push to privatize land in Sri Lanka

Anuka Vimukthi MONLAR, Sri Lanka

Two days before the September 2024 presidential election, Sri Lanka was forced to sign a debt restructuring agreement with international creditors—without public discussion or parliamentary debate. This secretive deal prioritized debt payments over the rights and well-being of our people.

For years, international financial institutions have pushed Sri Lanka toward export-oriented agriculture through structural adjustment programs. These reforms have favoured agribusinesses and capital-intensive farming, leaving us—peasants and small fishers—dependent on markets for seeds, fertilizers, nets, and boats, eroding our autonomy and food systems. 

Now, under the 17th IMF program, the burden of economic stabilization has fallen on the poorest. Austerity measures, including cost-recovery energy pricing, have nearly tripled fuel and electricity costs, devastating livelihoods. Increased taxes on equipment and inputs have driven many peasant farmers into poverty and debt.

The IMF and World Bank have long pushed for privatized land markets. With this latest program, their demand has returned, raising fears of mass land dispossession. 

As a member of MONLAR, I am part of a growing movement resisting these unjust measures. We are intensifying our campaign and urging the government to recognize food sovereignty and the rights of peasants and rural workers as central to Sri Lanka’s agricultural and economic policy.

Voices from the field 3

Kenya’s default on its debt obligations led to free trade agreements that criminalize peasants

Susan Owiti, Kenyan Peasants League 

Kenya has a massive public debt; the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio was around 68% in 2024.

Currently, the Kenyan government’s debt servicing obligations consume about 48% of the national budget and around 55% of the country’s income. This directly impacts peasants, as funds that were meant to support Peasant Rights in Kenya are being redirected to service debts. 

It also means that households are forced to borrow to survive and even pay for services that have been privatized. Rising costs, mounting debt, and severe pressure from lenders are pushing households into a deepening crisis. Farmers, who are trapped in the conventional agricultural system that relies on pesticides and fertilizers, are falling further into debt as the state removes or cuts all subsidies and incentives. In the absence of state planning or support for a meaningful agroecological transition, many peasants are left at the mercy of the market which consistently fails them. 

Kenya’s default on its debt obligations led to the negotiation of free trade agreements that promote laws criminalizing the peasant way of life, such as the Mung Bean Bill, (criminalizing unlicensed cultivation of green gram), or the Seeds and Plant Varieties Act. Another example is the ongoing US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership, which included conditions such as the lifting of the ban on GMOs.

Voices from the field 4

Argentina: food sovereignty is being pushed aside

Diego Montón, Argentine Indigenous Peasant Movement, MNCI Somos Tierra

 In March 2025, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a restructuring of Argentina’s debt, illegally granting it 20 billion dollars. This adds to the 41.052 billion USD it lent in 2018. 

Argentina’s debt represents 30% of the IMF’s total loans, making it the main debtor. The debt accounts for nearly 10% of the gross domestic product: it is unpayable. We ask ourselves, why does the IMF keep lending to Argentina? Laura Richardson, head of the U.S. Southern Command, stated at an Atlantic Council event, “Latin America is key because it has water, food, oil, and 60% of the world’s lithium.” Javier Milei enacted an investment regime (RIGI) that grants broad benefits to financial capital, without taxes or regulations. The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, urged Argentinians to vote to continue in that direction. 

Beyond the restructuring brought by each agreement with the IMF, the debt forces states to enable extractivism. The only path Argentina has today is to organize and struggle to repudiate the IMF debt and move together toward food sovereignty, economic independence, and social justice.

Boxes

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Box 1

Global finance dictates trade liberalization: A call to re-imagine trade between countries

The Washington Consensus—imposed by the IMF and World Bank through conditional lending—institutionalized neoliberalism. Its core policies included trade liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises, public spending cuts, deregulation and reregulation biased towards corporations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) further reinforces these principles through global trade agreements that favour transnational capital. 

La Via Campesina (LVC) emerged as a global peasant resistance force to neoliberal reforms and the WTO. While peasant mobilizations have helped stall WTO progress since 2001, its 1995 Agreement on Agriculture still permits powerful nations like the U.S. and EU to push aggressive trade agendas that penalize support to small-scale food producers. Bilateral and regional trade deals have further deepened rural poverty. These trade regimes limit governments—North and South—from implementing food sovereignty policies. They classify domestic market regulation, price supports for small-scale food producers, and public procurement as “trade-distorting”, prioritizing corporate access over public interest. 

In the past two years, peasant protests have erupted in over 65 countries, signalling the need for a new trading system. LVC is initiating a campaign to build a new, global framework for agricultural trade between countries that is rooted in principles of cooperation and transnational solidarity and defends each country’s food sovereignty. It is important that small-scale food producers’ and workers’ movements, and all those committed to food sovereignty join this collective effort to build a real economic alternative. For more: www.viacampesina.org  

Box 2

The role of financialization in driving land grabs

Financialization plays a central role in the global surge of land and natural resource grabs, driving land concentration and undermining communities’ ability to feed themselves and others. Since the 2008–09 financial crisis, land has increasingly been treated as a financial asset. Around 65 million hectares have been acquired globally, with pension, insurance, and endowment funds investing approximately US$45 billion in farmland between 2005 and 2017. By 2018, these entities accounted for 45% of all farmland investments.

The current ecological crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation—stem from capitalistic extraction. Yet financial and corporate actors now frame these crises as investment opportunities. Natural functions like carbon storage are rebranded as “ecosystem services,” assigned economic value, and traded. The estimated value of these so-called “natural assets” is US$4,000 trillion. Carbon and biodiversity markets, in particular, have fuelled a new wave of “green grabs,” with about 20% of large-scale land deals now linked to the bioeconomy. Carbon markets alone are projected to quadruple in value over the next ten years, intensifying pressure on land and dispossessing communities in the name of sustainability and “net zero emissions” claims.

Box 3 

Deregulation and the neoliberal shift in global agriculture

The IMF and WB—through conditionalities attached to loans and other financing, and policy advice—have played central roles in increased financialisation, market deregulation and corporate friendly regulation in the food, agriculture and related sectors. These have resulted in land grabs, greater exposure of smallholder farmers to high price volatility, the concentration of markets and financial power by agribusinesses, and the expansion of polluting industrial agriculture.

Most recently, Pakistan’s deregulation of its wheat sector, in line with IMF conditionalities, has eliminated the Minimum Support Price and is winding down the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO)[1]. In Argentina, the IMF-endorsed austerity measures have led to mass layoffs and cuts in social services, food market deregulation and deregulation of the Law of the Rural Lands. In Ecuador WB-backed shrimp farming destroyed mangrove forests and displaced local communities, underscoring the environmental and social costs of such policies.

Such changes in regulatory environments are not limited to developing countries, nor are they enforced through lending institutions alone.

A case in point is the 1992 Blair House Agreement—a key bilateral deal between the United States and the European Union on agricultural subsidies.  It led to the EU ending milk production quotas. Many small farmers in Europe faced increased competition and price instability. It is therefore no surprise that between 2007 and 2022 the number of small farms in the EU decreased by 44%, while the number of mega-farms increased by 56%.

The Blair House agreement later paved the way for the Agreement on Agriculture[2]—the first multilateral framework on agricultural trade, which dictated the contours of many subsequent FTA negotiations of the WTO—and enabled the globalization of agribusinesses, while marginalizing the peasantry. 

In the United States too, deregulation policies have significantly impacted the agricultural sector, particularly the dismantling of the parity pricing model[3] and the supply management system based on quotas that once provided stability to small farmers.

Autonomous deregulation in wealthy countries has also contributed to the expanding power of financial markets and actors within food systems. This has led to speculative trading, record-high food prices, increased price volatility worldwide, and the opening of new markets for genetically modified seeds.

It is therefore quite clear that the neoliberal economic ideology that prioritizes financial markets over people is deepening inequality, imposing austerity measures that are weakening rural economies, and eroding public accountability. The ongoing protests in various countries reflect a growing resistance to the withdrawal of the state from its obligation to serve the people, not the markets.

If anything, we need more market regulation to protect people’s interest, not deregulation.

[1] Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO), a government-owned entity which procures wheat and other staple crops at support prices to ensure fair returns to food producers, maintain strategic reserves, and stabilize market prices.

[2] The AoA is a WTO agreement aimed at reforming trade in agricultural products. It was established during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and came into effect with the WTO’s establishment in 1995.

[3] Under Parity pricing the government set support prices—such as through price floors or subsidies—based on the cost of inputs and living standards from the base era, adjusted for inflation.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

In the spotlight 1

Implications of global finance on food sovereignty

One of the biggest threats to food sovereignty is the power of global finance over the real economy, food systems, and food and economic governance.  Since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s, financial markets have expanded globally, with finance capital extending its reach into national and sub-national economies through banking, micro-finance, and extractive and speculative investment in critical sectors such as food, land, agriculture, water, mining, energy, property development and physical infrastructure. This has been made possible through changes in financial regulation and digital financial technologies (fintech) that enable capital to move freely across national borders and globally and reach communities through digital (via mobile phones) banking/payment applications. A wide array of financial instruments, from pensions, mutual and index funds to securities and derivatives have enabled corporations and individuals to profit disproportionately from such investments at huge costs to the real economy, biodiversity, the environment, stable jobs, access to food, and the climate. Financial globalization has enabled speculation in food and agricultural commodities where traders buy and sell futures contracts on food commodities and/or bet on futures prices to make profits, thus increasing the world’s vulnerability to recurring financial and food crises. 

Financial crises have severe negative impacts on the livelihoods, employment, incomes, food sovereignty and health of small-scale food providers, workers, and rural and urban poor communities, especially in the Global South. Impacts are compounded by weak (or non-existent) domestic measures for social protection, alleviating hunger and malnutrition, healthcare and debt relief, that are important buffers against economic shocks. For decades, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and austerity measures crafted by the WB and IMF have snared many countries of the South into vicious debt traps, the core components of which are trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation. In exchange for loans to keep national economies functioning and access to global capital markets, the WB-IMF continue to demand drastic cuts in state support for essential goods and services, removal of protections for workers, small-scale agricultural producers and the environment, and radical reforms of domestic policies and regulations to serve the corporate sector and free markets. 

SAPs and neoliberalism paved the way for the financialisation of food, which entails significant increases in the involvement of financial entities (commercial banks, sovereign wealth funds, private investment funds, asset management companies, etc.) in food systems, and in global transactions of financial products linked with food and land as well as other essentials for producing food. The 2008 food crisis accelerated food financialization, as states scrambled to secure food supplies, creating new profit opportunities for financial investors. 

Financialisation and weak anti-trust regulations have enabled corporations to consolidate market size and power in food systems through mergers and acquisitions. Bigger firms attract more financial investment from banks and asset managers, which in turn enable firms to consolidate further, resulting in corporate concentration in food systems.  Increased market and financial power allow corporations to shape food systems governance by influencing national and international policies, regulations, laws and research in their favour, at the cost of millions of small-scale food providers, workers, Indigenous Peoples, and rural, peri-urban and urban populations. An urgent task for food sovereignty movements everywhere is to develop strategic, legal, enforceable measures to roll back and prevent the infiltration of global finance into the world’s food systems.

In the spotlight 2

A global push for debt cancellation is necessary!

At the core of today’s global food crisis is a trade system shaped by neoliberal policies that prioritize profits over people and favour the interests of big and rich exporting countries. These policies promote market-driven approaches, allowing large agribusinesses to dominate at the expense of small-scale food providers who have nourished communities for generations. Market concentration pushes small scale food providers and workers to societal and economic margins, and access to food becomes a privilege rather than a right.

Neoliberal and market dominated policies are deeply intertwined with the politics of debt. Developing countries face significant economic challenges due to concentrated agricultural markets, decreasing revenues and crippling external debts to public and private creditors.  To retain access to international capital, governments of highly indebted governments are compelled to prioritize debt repayments over the well-being of their citizens and enact corporate and market friendly policies instead of programmes that support food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture.  This creates a vicious cycle where the needs of people continue to be marginalized in favour of financial obligations to international creditors.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), developing countries’ external debt reached a record $11.4 trillion in 2023, and 54 developing nations–nearly half of which are in Africa–dedicated at least 10% of government funds to debt interest payments. Today, 3.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt payments than on health or education.

The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, scheduled for September, will be held in Sri Lanka, a country that has faced severe economic challenges due to external debt. Sri Lanka defaulted on foreign debt payments in 2022, leading to an IMF-led restructuring program. The government was forced to prioritize debt payments over citizens’ rights, severely impacting the country’s ability to invest in food production, rural livelihoods, and social security for its people.

Current data shows that 60% of low-income countries and 30% of middle-income countries face debt distress, limiting their capacities to invest in food sovereignty and social services, thus worsening hunger and inequality. The 3rd Nyéléni Forum must become a space for building resistance and campaigning against such policies. Debt is not just a financial burden—it’s a shackle that limits governments’ abilities to prioritize the well-being of their people, and a weapon that enables continuing extraction of wealth from societies in crisis created by debt in the first place.

Debt cancellation is essential to breaking this cycle. It would allow countries to prioritize their people and communities, focusing on agroecological food systems where small-scale food producers can feed their communities in harmony with the territories.

In the spotlight 3

How to raise finances to build food sovereignty?   

Building food sovereignty and expanding agroecology require dedicated and continuing public social, physical, economic and financial infrastructure. Appropriate and sufficient kinds and amounts of financing are needed at multiple levels, to ensure that small-scale food providers have the funds and other resources (such as land, energy and water) needed to invest in production, processing, storage and distribution/marketing. At the same time, enabling policy environments are necessary to deliver the required financing, as well as strengthen the social, economic and environmental foundations of food sovereignty and agroecology; financing should not trap small-scale food providers into debt cycles, and policies must protect them from competition from agrifood corporations.

A crucial measure is redirecting national and global multilateral food, agriculture and climate budgets away from industrial, corporate food systems and value chains towards food sovereignty and agroecology. Eliminating the huge direct and indirect subsidies that agribusinesses get for production, exports, transportation, marketing and protection against social-environmental liabilities will free up vast amounts of money at various levels, which can be used to finance the infrastructure needed for food sovereignty.

Simultaneously, public revenue streams can be mobilized through various kinds of taxes:  general progressive taxation; taxing corporations appropriately, including for profits from hyper-markets and digital transactions; windfall taxes on profits from food/commodity/land speculation; taxes on junk and highly processed foods, etc. Offshore tax havens must be closed, and laws against fiscal evasion and corruption be instituted and enforced, including seizing assets of wealthy tax avoiders. Money from such measures can be used to cross-subsidize small-scale food provision, producer-consumer cooperatives, territorial markets, community food banks, community health and insurance programmes, and other collective services important for food sovereignty. Importantly, they can free up money for debt relief for rural-urban poor communities and access to adequate credit, enabling them to rebuild their economic capacities.

Food sovereignty is premised on the rights of people and communities to food and to living full, healthy, productive lives with dignity, justice and equality in present and future generations.  This demands ample, continuing investment by governments and society in transforming societal, political and economic systems, so that small-scale food provision gets the financial resources it urgently needs. These include measures such as public procurement of agroecologically produced food for school meals and other community food needs, public investment in territorial markets and environmental protection, ending food speculation, and policies that ensure living wages and safe working conditions for food system workers, especially women. Food crises are created and exacerbated by deregulated international finance, which undermine food sovereignty.  Actions as described above by governments and multilateral agencies are important in protecting our food systems and also give positive signals to all society to support food sovereignty.

Newsletter no 60 – Editorial

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Illustration: This illustration was created by members of Tricontinental’s art department, for the dossier no.88: Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund. The artwork illustrates the Faustian bargain that all African countries have to make, which comes at a cost to their financial, industrial, agricultural, and political sovereignty.

The 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum is set to take place in Sri Lanka this September. Sri Lanka is a deliberate choice: in 2022, a people’s uprising—known as Aragalaya—ousted a corrupt neoliberal regime that had plunged the country into a severe debt crisis and societal distress.

Of Sri Lanka’s staggering US $57 billion external debt, about 32% is owed to multilateral financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, World Bank (WB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and another 28% is owed to the Paris Club. Nearly a quarter of the government’s revenue is spent on repaying foreign creditors, and much of this debt comes with conditions that promote the privatization of public services and the commodification of land and natural resources.

Sri Lanka is not alone. Twenty African countries are facing debt distress and nearly half of the world’s population lives in countries that spend more on debt repayments than on public services. International financial institutions (IFIs) have reconfigured national budgets and financial architecture such that the interests of finance capital take precedence over the well-being and health of people and the planet. A global pushback is necessary to build food sovereignty and resilient agroecological food systems.

 At a recent dialogue hosted by the Committee on World Food Security, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism emphatically noted that there can be no food sovereignty without financial sovereignty! This edition of the newsletter delves into some of the salient issues related to this and proposals for a push-back.

Focus on the Global South and La Via Campesina

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Resisting the threat of global finance, no 60

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Voices from the field 1

Indigenous Peoples and the Treaty Right to fish

Rochelle Diver and Chief Gary Harrison, Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and IPC Working Group on Fisheries, Great Lakes Region and Alaska respectively

In the US and Canada, the rights for Indigenous Peoples to fish are affirmed by Nation to Nation treaties signed between colonial governments and Indigenous Peoples. However, in Alaska, the trawl industry has annihilated salmon populations, collapsing ecosystems that Indigenous Peoples protected for over 25,000 years. Colonization replaced sustainable stewardship with greed– trampling fishing rights and destroying nature. Trawlers decimate habitats, kill salmon indiscriminately, and drive entire rivers to extinction—all for profit. This is ecological genocide.

Additionally, mining, as well as coal-fired power plants are contaminating fish with mercury and other chemicals and in-turn are contaminating our people. Ten percent of babies born in the Great Lakes region are pre-polluted with mercury. What use is the right to fish if the fish are harmful for our people and future generations? The intergenerational impacts of mercury and forever chemicals in our lakes are both physical and cultural. Developmental impacts from mercury hinder our children’s ability to retain our languages, stories and traditions.

Supporting Indigenous rights is supporting human rights and small-scale fisheries. Please join us in our fight for a toxic-free food system.

Voice from the field 2

Gaza’s fishers: a beacon in the struggle for food sovereignty and liberation

Saad Ziada, Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Palestine    

The fisheries sector in Gaza has been totally destroyed – we speak about equipment, boats, storage facilities, everything. Fisherfolk already lived in extremely precarious conditions before October 7 as a result of the blockade which affected access to the sea, incoming materials and export opportunities. Now their livelihoods have been destroyed, and their lives and lifestyles are under serious threat of erasure. Fishermen have been killed trying to fish near the shore on improvised floating devices to avoid starvation.

Since the ceasefire many families have returned to their neighborhoods but have not found anything left. We were able to find one motorized boat that survived all destruction. The fisherfolk remain steadfast though and are eager to rebuild their livelihoods, but the ceasefire has not fulfilled its promises in terms of incoming fuel, equipment and other basic materials to restart life. Even nets are hard to come by leaving us few options to restart the fisheries sector. But we are fighting a struggle for existence, a struggle for food sovereignty and against cultural erasure. We cannot do that alone and call on WFFP, IPC and its members, to demand accountability for the crimes committed and support us in rebuilding a fisheries sector of cultural importance which will serve as a beacon in the struggle for food sovereignty and liberation.

Voices from the field 3

From abundant fish to struggling for sustenance: Resilience in Uganda’s fisher communities

Namaganda Rehema, FIAN Uganda and Margaret Nakato, Katosi Women Development Trust

Uganda’s once thriving lakes have become sites of militarized control. Soldiers now dominate the waters where small-scale fishers once freely worked to sustain their livelihoods. Fishers are struggling to comply with harsh new fisheries regulations from 2017, brutally enforced by the military’s Fisheries Protection Unit.

The military routinely arrests fishers, destroys their boats, and confiscates their gear– acts that disrupt families, markets, and the delicate web of local food systems. Women, who process and trade the fish, bear the brunt. Once a unifying force, fish has become a symbol of disintegration. Once an abundant and vital source of protein, it is now scarce.

Amidst the hardship, the fisher communities are responding with collective action. They have initiated petition letters, held numerous meetings with policy makers, and engaged the media to bring their struggles to light, leading to significant progress, including changes to fisheries law.

Their struggle is more than a fight for resources; it is a fight to sustain their families, their communities, and their culture.

In the face of continuing militarization, they remain steadfast in their focus on food sovereignty, refusing to let their rights be overshadowed. For in their hands lies the power not just to fish but to shape the future of the lake they have long called home. Theirs is a fight for dignity,  justice, and the right of every community to feed itself.

Voices from the field 4

Community-based transformation

Claudia Pineda, FIAN Honduras

Honduras is a biologically diverse Central American country whose communities were forged in the struggle for survival, particularly in the coastal areas of the Gulf of Fonseca. There, thousands of families that depend on marine species for small-scale fishing and shrimp farming suffer from the destruction of their ecosystem. They are victims of the rapid and detrimental transformation of their territory as a result of environmental pollution and the deforestation of their mangrove forests due to agribusinesses and shrimp farming practices.

They are witnesses of how these practices based on an instrumental vision of nature have socio-environmental effects, with the reduction and loss of livelihoods, and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events. Both situations trigger migration and extreme poverty. Access to food is one of the main drivers of internal displacement and migration to countries such as Spain and the United States. This phenomenon leaves families with social problems in terms of changes in population structure, family disintegration and loss of labour force, to name a few.

However, resistance to this model is mounting, and fishing communities are increasingly demanding the right to participate in the definition and control of food systems. This is how, since 2024, began the construction of a community management’s model of their natural goods, based on local knowledge and practices.

Voices from the field 5

The Blackchin tilapia outbreak: A major ecological disaster in Thailand

Network of Thai Citizens Affected by the Blackchin Tilapia Outbreak (19 Provinces)

A blackchin tilapia outbreak began in Thailand in 2010 when Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) imported the species from Ghana to breed at its farm in Samut Songkhram. Within a year, the fish had spread to public canals and aquaculture ponds, and to nearby provinces. The species aggressively outcompeted native aquatic life, destroying shrimp, fish, crabs, and mollusks, leading to massive losses for small-scale fish farmers and coastal fishers. Many faced debt, land loss, and even suicide.

In 2017, affected communities filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission, revealing CPF’s failure to comply with biodiversity protection measures. By 2024, the outbreak had spread to 19 provinces, threatening Songkhla Lake’s biodiversity and neighboring countries. Environmentalists called it “one of Thailand’s worst ecological disasters.”

On January 13, 2025, affected communities protested at CPF’s headquarters, demanding compensation and ecosystem restoration. “This serious problem originated from large corporations. We demand that environmental criminals be held accountable and that the state enforce strict biosafety laws to safeguard food sovereignty”, said Mr. Walop Khunjeng, a fisherman from Samut Songkhram.

CPF has yet to take responsibility and instead sued Biothai, an organization exposing the crisis. Experts warn that open-system fish farming may become unviable, forcing small farmers into CPF’s corporate-controlled closed systems.

Boxes

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Box 1

Mobilize at the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture

April marks a crucial moment for the Working Group on Fisheries of the International Planning committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC FWG) as we mobilize in Antalya, Turkey, to participate as observers in the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture , a subsidiary body of the FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI). This political arena serves as a platform for shaping aquaculture policies and development strategies. With its Bureau led by Turkey and including representatives from Indonesia, Mexico, Senegal, and the United States, this space demands our attention and advocacy to counter the push for aquaculture expansion aligned with FAO’s Blue Transformation roadmap—a menace to small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples’ food sovereignty.

Industrial aquaculture fuels land and resource grabbing, displaces fishing communities, and strips them of their customary rights and livelihoods, all while accelerating environmental destruction. This corporate-led model benefits the few at the expense of the many, deepening inequalities and undermining our survival.

The IPC FWG demands a shift toward a human-rights-based approach that uplifts small-scale fishers as essential stewards of food security and biodiversity. We call on governments to implement the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) and reject market-driven agendas. The fight for food sovereignty and the centrality of small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples must be the priority in these global discussions.

Box 2

In memory of Budi Laksana

Budi Laksana, Secretary General of Serikat Nelayan Indonesia (SNI) and a leading member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), passed away on 28 November 2024 in Brasilia. He had traveled to Brazil to join comrades at WFFP’s 8th General Assembly, where he embodied the next generation’s fight for food sovereignty before succumbing to a sudden thrombosis attack.

Budi Laksana played a leading role in formulating the UN Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines, endorsed by the FAO in 2014, and worked tirelessly for their implementation in Indonesia and beyond. Under his leadership, SNI fought to protect traditional fishers’ territories and way of life from oligarchic interests. He was always at the forefront of marches and protest campaigns, denouncing the oligarchic policies of the Indonesian government from the speakers truck in front of the masses.

Coming from a traditional crab fishing family, he strongly opposed corporate aquaculture and industrial fishing, which he saw destroying not just livelihoods but entire food cultures and local economies. His vision for fisher peoples was grounded in principles of sovereign rights over food systems, inter-generational knowledge, and environmental stewardship. In his final days at the WFFP assembly in Brasilia, his positive spirit, comradery and passionate speeches on food sovereignty infused energy and solidarity amongst the over one hundred fisher delegates from fifty countries.

Budi Laksana championed women’s leadership, helping initiate the woman-led Nyimas Kumambang Fisherwomen’s Cooperative. As a stalwart supporter of food sovereignty, he placed women and their role in the entire value chain of fisheries at the forefront. As a woman fisher leader who accompanied him in his final days noted, he was “fighting and refusing to submit to a system that is greedy and impoverishing fisherwomen.”

Budi Laksana was a family man, leaving behind his beloved wife and three sons of five, ten and twelve  years of age behind.

Our thoughts go to his family and close comrades. Budi Laksana’s spirit will forever bring inspiration and power to fisher peoples’ struggle for food sovereignty.

Comrade Budi Laksana, rest in power.

Box 3

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