Newsletters Nyéléni in English

Voices from the fields

Newsletter no 63 – Rethinking global trade in a time of geopolitical tensions

Voices from the field 1

Zainal Arifin Fuat, Serikat Petani, Indonesia

Current geopolitical and geo-economic tensions are reshaping trade relations and food systems across Southeast Asia. Trade policy is increasingly used as a strategic tool by powerful economies, placing pressure on countries in the region to open markets and adjust domestic regulations. US reciprocal tariff policies affect Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, which are urged to negotiate concessions to maintain export market access. These developments carry significant implications for agriculture and rural livelihoods, particularly for small-scale food producers facing volatile prices and unequal market access.

Indonesia’s Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) with the US illustrates the asymmetrical nature of emerging trade arrangements. While Indonesia is expected to increase imports of US agricultural commodities such as soybeans, wheat, and beef, Indonesian exports remain subject to tariffs and changing trade provisions that would favor the U.S but without equivalent guarantees for Indonesia. The agreement also obligates Indonesia to align with certain US trade restrictions toward other countries, raising concerns for state and food sovereignty.

For small-scale food producers across Southeast Asia, reciprocal tariff pressures and trade liberalization will intensify import competition, depress farm-gate prices, and weaken local food systems. These dynamics risk deepening dependency on global markets and undermining the ability of states to protect domestic agriculture. Defending food sovereignty requires reclaiming policy space to protect peasants, regulate imports, and strengthen local and agroecological food systems.

The conflict in West Asia, though geographically distant, significantly impacts Indonesia through soaring production costs. Rising global oil prices affect production and peasant welfare, as well as distribution by peasant cooperatives. Since oil is vital to food production and distribution for farming families, fuel price increases directly threaten agricultural viability.

Indonesian agriculture remains in transition from conventional to agroecological systems, meaning fertilizers are not yet fully produced domestically. High reliance on imported fertilizers substantially increases production input costs. Fuel price surges will destabilize food prices. With government food reserves still not sovereign, those most affected will be urban communities and peasants lacking sufficient food stocks. Food sovereignty and agroecological agriculture are essential responses to these cascading crises.

Voices from the field 2

Jose Maria Oviedo, National Union of Costa Rican Agricultural Producers (UNAG), Costa Rica / CLOC-La Vía Campesina

From a geopolitical perspective, the war in Iran highlights that the United States believes the world should belong to them and that they must hold power over all nations. They justify attacking Iran by claiming a need to destroy the region’s military capabilities, especially ballistic missiles, and to eliminate nuclear weapons. They also insist on changing Iran’s regime for supporting what they label as Western adversaries.

We have seen how the US believes that America is synonymous with the United States, where any government that disagrees with US policies must be intervened upon or invaded. For instance, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela serves as a recent example. Countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Panama have all faced threats for not adhering to American directives.

Economically, the conflict in the West Asia — a region producing twenty percent of the world’s oil—has serious implications. Rising oil prices could lead to global inflation and even famine due to the significant impact on economies, including China’s. With China as a major wheat producer, shortages in grains could result from this situation, exacerbating food scarcity.

We argue that the US empire is collapsing. Historical examples, like Jimmy Carter’s attempts at positive alliances with China in 1979, contrast sharply with the US focus on global warfare. The financial toll of these wars has reportedly cost the American public 300 billion dollars, which has not been invested in the US or in community development globally.

Economically, we anticipate a significant US fiscal deficit (government spending higher than tax income), along with increased tariffs on exports to the US, particularly affecting Central America. As many countries in our region depend on oil imports, inflation poses a critical challenge. The depreciation of the dollar and efforts to appreciate it further threaten to escalate global inflation, making the situation even more precarious for nations reliant on imported oil.

Voices from the field 3

Andoni García, Euskal Herriko Nekazarien Elkartasuna – EHNE Bizkaia, Spain

The EU’s trade policy, starting with the General Agreement on Tariffs Trade (GATT) and the inclusion of agriculture and food in the WTO, has been decisive in agricultural and food policy and has had devastating consequences for small farmers. This subordination eliminated the market and price regulation instruments that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contained until 1992. Despite the WTO’s failure, the EU has pursued Free Trade Agreements without restraint, where agriculture and internal markets have been bargaining chips.

Opening to international markets, reducing tariffs, lowering prices for farmers, and the EU’s aggressive agroexport policy has caused a severe reduction in millions of small farmers. From 2013 to 2023, five million farms were lost in the EU. The EU and its agroexport policy have been directly responsible for speculative escalation on food globally. The agricultural model in the EU is increasingly agroindustrial and based on economies of scale.

Yet the EU is also less food self-sufficient today, as its food sovereignty and strategic autonomy are subordinated to Free Trade Agreements and the economic interests of elites embedded in globalization. In the previous legislature, the EU addressed how to respond to climate, environmental, biodiversity, energy, and food crises through the European Green Deal, Farm to Fork Strategy, and Biodiversity initiatives—though without questioning its trade policy.

The fragility of these approaches and their contradiction with international trade lobbies has become evident in the new geopolitical situation. The EU is backtracking on its political stance to address crises and strongly pursues Free Trade Agreements to project strength globally, yet this crumbles when its subordination to the US in decision-making becomes apparent. The European Commission has proposed, for the EU budget from 2028 onward, increasing military spending while decreasing support for farmers. The CAP and environmental protection policies are rapidly retreating.

Additionally, the European Commission has accelerated Free Trade Agreements, disregarding European Parliament decisions and widespread farmer opposition. And now, the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, triggering a war with global repercussions, have sparked fierce speculation on fuel, production costs, and food—again exposing risks to food sovereignty, food access, and the fragility of globalized food systems caused by EU policies.

Voices from the field 4

Annette Hiatt, National Family Farm Coalition/Land Loss Prevention Project, USA

Multilateral and international trade agreements often heavily impact small producers, but do not benefit or engage small producers. Many small farmers, such as those in North Carolina (southeast region of the US), are not directly involved in international trade, but the decisions made behind closed doors at the international level to shape and influence power relationships have a direct impact on those same growers and the communities they live in.

In January, it was estimated that trade tariffs could have a devastating impact on North Carolina’s agricultural economy with $1.2 billion in revenue losses and a possible loss of 8000 jobs. In the absence of price support for small-scale producers, the erratic use of trade tariffs can mean smallholders get further pitted against large-scale corporate agriculture for access to domestic markets.

More than 50% of North Carolina farms operate on less than fifty acres and more than 50% of farmers make less than $10,000 annually from farming. These are not the farmers engaging in international export, but often are the bedrock of local food systems feeding their communities. But they feel, deeply, that groceries cost more, and the costs for inputs, like fuel and fertilizer are rising. With farmers’ costs of production systematically exceeding the prices they are paid, mounting farm debt is pushing our small producers—the root of our rural communities—off the land. Those same small farmers hold the key to resilience and community building but are treated like pawns in a game and there is little value placed on production that also builds our local economies. Trade policy should strengthen the livelihoods of our small farmers and rural communities, facilitate land access and food sovereignty, and allow for stewardship that supports resilient and agroecological food production in the USA and abroad.

Boxes

Newsletter no 63 – Rethinking global trade in a time of geopolitical tensions

Box 1

A new international trade framework that works for all

At the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum held in September 2025 in Sri Lanka, La Via Campesina laid out the essential principles for a Global Framework on Agricultural Trade Based on Food Sovereignty.

Guided by the foundational definition of food sovereignty established at the 2007 Nyéléni Global Forum and grounded in international human rights law, this framework articulates an ethical paradigm for trade that prioritizes human dignity, environmental justice, and democratic governance of food systems at all levels—local, regional, and global.

It asserts that all trade mechanisms must be designed to respect the inalienable rights of peoples and nations to determine their own agricultural and food policies, recognizing food as a fundamental human right rather than a commodity.

It firmly emphasizes that trade mechanisms shall neither be weaponized nor subordinate basic rights to commercial interests. Instead, trade shall be reconstituted as an instrument of mutual benefit, replacing exploitative practices with equitable exchange and shared prosperity among nations.

Integral to this vision is the commitment to protecting the planet by preserving biological diversity and respecting planetary limits, recognizing the crucial roles of Indigenous Peoples as custodians of ecosystems, and advancing regional food systems alongside agroecological methods rather than corporate-controlled supply chains.

It insists that such a global trade framework must be inclusive, transparent, equitable, and empowering; it shall prioritize and protect small-scale food producers (farmers, farmworkers, fishers, pastoralists) and food system workers, Indigenous Peoples, and historically marginalized groups, with particular attention to women and gender minorities.

It calls for a system of trade governance that ensures decent incomes and safe working conditions across food systems, democratic participation in trade decision-making, public accountability in market operations, and strong market regulation.

A global framework for agricultural trade should lead to a systemic transformation of trade relations to realize food sovereignty, climate justice, and social equity for both present and future generations. It affirms that the implementation of these principles shall be measured by their concrete advancement of human rights, environmental protection, and economic and social equity for all people.

Box 2

Global finance and trade bodies enabling the aggression on oceans, rivers, and fisher peoples

Imperialistic nations’ relentless accumulation of wealth is not only exploiting and expropriating the historical, traditional and Indigenous customary homelands of fisher peoples and coastal communities, but is simultaneously annihilating their sovereign rights over lands, waters and fisheries, ethnically cleansing and violently uprooting their ways of life, their socio-ecological identities and their cultural belonging from coasts, oceans, rivers, inland waters, mangroves, islands, seas and all their traditional territories.

Ocean and land grabbing, including fisheries, has accelerated through extractive industries (mining, oil, gas); destructive industrial fishing; mega infrastructure projects (waterways, industrial wind farms, pipelines, smart cities, reclamation, port construction); financialized conservation schemes like 30×30 and OECMs (Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures); marketization and privatization of nature; and corporate industrial aquaculture (fish factories or blue foods).

Narratives such as “blue growth”, “blue economy”, and “blue transformation” promise sustainability but accelerate grabbing and amount to greenwashing. These initiatives are embedded into national economies through blue finance programs, binding nations to fiscal conditionalities that subordinate sovereignty to transnational capital, reducing even democratically elected states to “rentier states” leasing oceans for corporate profit. This drives the climate crisis and the criminalization of fisher peoples, who resist commodification of oceans, fisheries, and coasts and advocate at all levels against false solutions and territorial grabbing under fraudulent “green” or “blue” claims.

The WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and free-trade agreements have been used to dismantle national policies that protected people’s sovereignty over natural resources and local markets.

Movements such as the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) denounce those who persistently push this agenda, including large international environmental organizations, the World Bank, regional development banks, and corporations; and call for genuine community-led, rights-based development shaped by fisher peoples.

They also remain committed to engaging in legitimate multilateral policy platforms on food, fisheries, agriculture, climate, biodiversity, and human rights to advocate for their political autonomy and customary governance. WFFP and others recognize the FAO, the Committee on Fisheries (COFI), the Committee on Fisheries Subsidies (CFS), and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) as the appropriate UN bodies for global governance in which social organizations actively participate.

Box 3

The peoples of the seeds confront the tyranny of global trade

From January 19 to 21, 2026, the Latin American Seed Collective hosted the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) in Cartago, Costa Rica, to “highlight the urgency of defending the relationship between peoples and their fundamental crops and seeds”—an ontological relationship dating back to time immemorial, that is crucial for leading humanity and the planet into the future.

The PPT heard about the threats faced by various communities around the world in their efforts to preserve and reproduce their seeds independently of the market, intellectual property restrictions, and biological and digital technologies.

The structure of politics —the PPT explains— has led to food and nutrition being progressively transformed into a sector of the economy, where everything related to sustenance is separated from people’s actual lives and becomes a part of the global market. Oligopolies seek to turn people into a homogeneous mass of consumers, and natural diversity into profitable commodities.

Now that trade is also being used as a weapon of war, an initiative like this is vital.

“The peoples of the seeds,” says the TPP, is a cross-cutting term that transcends borders and refers to those facing diverse yet overlapping and complementary challenges in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If we do not view it this way, peoples that still care for their seeds and crops find themselves fragmented in the face of the brute force with which global trade is being restructured. In the face of the dismantling of international law, peoples with their seeds can bring sustenance everywhere, challenging not only global capitalism and supply chains, but also the commodification of the foundations of life.

Statement by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal.

Box 4

MC 14 Collapses—that’s good!

The WTO’s 14th Ministerial conference (MC 14) held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, has collapsed, without even a Ministerial Declaration. Negotiations on the e-commerce and TRIPS Non-Violation Complaints moratoria, fisheries subsidies, agriculture, WTO reform and a Least Developed Countries (LDC) package have been deferred to the General Council in Geneva.

The collapse is a welcome victory in a larger battle. Although many developing countries refused to let the US and its cohorts advance their agendas through the deception of multilateralism, this is not a straightforward rebellion of the Global South. Many South countries remain wedded to the logic of free trade, advancing proposals that undermine food sovereignty and benefit agribusiness at the expense of working people and small-scale food providers.

For 30 years, wealthy countries have used the rhetoric of rules-based trade and reciprocity, promises of increased development aid, and outright bullying to break alliances among South countries and extract greater concessions from them. WTO rules have always been skewed in favour of former colonizing powers. They lock in outcomes that favour their economies, their elites and their businesses, and consolidate transnational corporate power in food systems, public health and all sectors vital for life with dignity.

But even if competition were perfect and power games eliminated, the WTO framework is unacceptable. We reject the premise that all things on earth and our labour should be treated as merchandise, and a vision of human relations based on perpetual competition.

It is futile to expect any meaningful reform of the WTO that will advance the well-being, rights, aspirations and needs of the working peoples of the world. It is also damaging and dangerous for participatory democracy and accountability, since in too many countries, trade-investment negotiations and agreements are not subject to domestic scrutiny.

While we intensify our core demands of ending the WTO, we also need to use effectively and forcefully the entire body of international human rights law and our governments’ human rights commitments to challenge the power of the WTO over our domestic policies. The rights of working people and small-scale food providers cannot be traded away for corporate profit. We want food sovereignty, not free trade!

For more info read the Yaoundé Declaration: The WTO And Free Trade Cause Hunger, Poverty And Inequality.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 63 – Rethinking global trade in a time of geopolitical tensions

In the spotlight 1

The US demolition of the post-World War II global order and the Global South

A dying global order

In the second year of Donald Trump’s second term, beginning with the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, followed by the war he has waged against Iran alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president has continued his demolition of the 80-year-old global order set up by the US in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The dying regime is a structure of rules, practices, and policies maintaining the hegemony of the US and the rest of the capitalist west that was promoted with the rhetoric of freedom, free trade, and democracy. The US has replaced its rules and practices, which were already unfair to the Global South, with the unilateral exercise of coercion and force, and the rule that might makes right.

We are only in the first three months of 2026, but Trump has already succeeded in dismantling the political fictions of the old regime, among them the central principle of the UN that expressly prohibits “the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The kidnapping of Maduro and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were the hegemon’s announcement to the world that no country was exempt from outright, brazen intervention should Trump see it fit to do so. Nor were foreign territories belonging to close allies, such as Greenland, immune from annexation should Trump decide it is in the US national interest to grab them.

Transforming the multilateral economic regime

But before dismantling the political-military fiction of the old regime, Trump assaulted its economic fiction in 2025, resuming what he began during his first presidency, from 2017 to 2021. During that period, he continued the policy of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of blocking appointments and reappointments to the Appellate Court of the World Trade Organization (WTO), effectively paralyzing the body. But even more brazenly, he declared a unilateral trade war against China, undermining the system of rules and conventions of global trade that the US led in institutionalizing in 1994 with the founding of the WTO.

In 2025, Trump expanded his trade wars to about 90 other countries. Among them were 50 African countries, some of whom received some of the highest, most punitive tariff increases in the world, like Lesotho (50 per cent), Madagascar (47%), Mauritius (40%), Botswana (37%), and South Africa (30%). There was little reason to the rates imposed, though in the case of South Africa, it was partly as punishment for bringing Israel to the International Court of Justice for committing genocide in Gaza.

Foreign aid as an instrument of US policy was a pillar of the old international regime. As Thomas Sankara, one of Africa’s foremost fighters for liberation, observed, “He who feeds you controls you.” To please his far-right base that did not see foreign aid as important for the maintenance of US hegemony, one of Trump’s first acts, undertaken with Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, was the abolition of the Agency for International Development (AID). For some, this was a tragedy since USAID programs were allegedly funding important public health and reproductive health projects in the Global South. For others, it was no loss at all since most of the funds for these initiatives went to pay the US contractors delivering or managing them.

But Trump and Musk did not make any move to dismantle or reduce the flow of US funds to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and regional development banks through which the US channels money for dominating the Global South via “development assistance” or “structural adjustment”, and in which the US has veto power.

These institutions continue to maintain poverty-creating structural adjustment programs, especially in Africa, promote wrong-headed so-called export-led industrialization efforts even as the US imposes massive punitive tariffs on imports from the Global South, and block all efforts to solve the massive indebtedness of developing countries (over $11.4 trillion).

Towards a global alliance of resistance and change

Trump’s moves are mainly directed at people and countries in the Global South. There is a logic to this strategy since it is mainly the Global South that has shifted the balance of global power and created the crisis of US hegemony. Among the landmarks in this historic process have been the rise of China to becoming the second most powerful economy in the world, the massive defeats of US arms in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan over the last 25 years, the rise of Iran as a regional power despite all the efforts of the US and Israel to contain it, the ability of developing countries to stymie the WTO as an engine of trade liberalization, and the rise of the BRICS as a potential counterweight to the western alliance.

Also central to the weakening of the hegemon has been the deepening crisis of the global capitalist regime, the key manifestations of which are the deindustrialization of the US and Europe, the financialization of the leading capitalist economies where speculation rather than production has become the investment of choice, the astounding rise in global income and wealth inequality, and the sharpening contradiction between planetary survival and the ever more intensive drive for profits.

Trump’s regime of unilateralism is savage. But there is no going back to the old regime of US hegemony exercised through a multilateral order systematically biased against the Global South behind a façade of liberal democratic rhetoric. For us in the Global South, indeed, for all who are partisans of justice, peace, and planetary survival, there is no choice but to bravely meet the challenge of navigating the turbulent waters of this period of transition if we are to get to the haven of a new global order that will serve the common interest of humanity and the planet.

In the spotlight 2

State autonomy and small-scale producers’ mobilization are key to strong market regulation, food sovereignty, and a fair-trading system

Strong market regulation and territorial markets are essential for building autonomous food systems and ensuring food sovereignty. By defending national autonomy and using it wisely, countries can effectively implement regulations that prioritize the needs of their small-scale producers. Small-scale producers across regions are mobilizing to demand necessary policy measures that allow them to continue farming, fishing, herding, and producing food for all. Those engaged in family farming often find themselves squeezed by an unregulated global market that prioritizes corporate and speculative interests.

The global pandemic and geopolitical conflicts have highlighted the vulnerabilities of the global trade system and the challenges posed by dependence on imported food and inputs. In Africa, some governments have co-opted the concept of “food sovereignty” to refer to domestic food self-sufficiency through modernized agriculture. Despite this distortion, there is growing recognition of the resilience of family farms and the advantages of territorial markets versus global supply chains.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) reports and recommendations from the UN Committee on World Food Security reveal that most food consumed worldwide flows through various territorial markets rather than global supply chains. These markets are linked to local, national, and regional food systems; they are more inclusive and diversified than single commodity value chains, particularly for women and youth. Territorial markets perform multiple economic, social, cultural, and ecological functions, contributing significantly to local economies by allowing wealth to be retained and redistributed at the farm level.

Market regulation is crucial for defending these markets and ensuring fair revenues for small-scale producers, covering their production costs while providing healthy food at stable prices for consumers. This goal requires addressing structural issues through proactive public policies and instruments, such as public food stocks, import quotas, and minimum price regulations.

Over recent decades, market regulation tools have been undermined by structural adjustments and neo-liberal policies that have worsened food insecurity and favored speculation and corporate consolidation in global supply chains, detracting from healthy local food production. The current context presents opportunities to advocate for the reintroduction of regulations at the core of sustainable food systems development.

In West Africa, movements like the Network of Peasant and Agricultural Producer Organizations (ROPPA) implement actions aimed at strengthening market regulation and building local markets to ensure fair prices. These efforts promote family farms and support local food systems that protect markets and develop shorter marketing channels connecting producers with consumers.

Moreover, organized peasant networks often hold agricultural fairs that enhance local and urban markets, positively impacting farmers’ incomes. At the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum held in Sri Lanka in September 2025, small-scale food producers emphasized the need to generate analyses and evidence for effective advocacy. Movements are working to identify global examples of effective market regulation initiatives supported by researchers to document proactive benefits.

In this challenging geopolitical era, it is vital for non-aligned governments to unite and craft policies that defend their small-scale food producers and protect food sovereignty.

Newsletter no 63 – Editorial

Newsletter no 63 – Rethinking global trade in a time of geopolitical tensions

Rethinking global trade in a time of geopolitical tensions

For much of this century, the multilateral system established after World War II has been corrupted and hijacked by a cohort of wealthy, powerful nations that are reshaping the (so-called) global rules-based order and redefining what cooperation, justice, shared prosperity and stability are. Leading the charge is the United States of America, which, through the combined power of capital and military might, is bypassing collective rules and imposing unilateral decisions that are fundamentally reshaping global politics and trade. This has led to a fragile international system where all rules are changeable and brute power determines outcomes.

This is not to say that the besieged international/multilateral system is fair, equitable or democratic. Its foremost bodies—the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—have long been instruments to advance the interests of former colonial powers. The bitter irony nowadays is that even the rules imposed by these institutions are in disarray.

Global trade and investment—whether negotiated through WTO agreements, bilateral Free Trade Agreements or Strategic Economic Partnerships—have morphed into weapons in geopolitical conflicts. Tariffs, sanctions, and financial restrictions are wielded not to correct trade imbalances but to exert ruthless political pressure and vanquish nations and peoples. Economic measures target those who dare to chart any alternate path to global capitalism and fascist ideologies.

As the latest war in West Asia shows, these actions ripple far beyond the nations involved. For developing countries, the consequences are devastating. Fluctuating tariffs, aggressive sanctions, and volatile commodity prices threaten working-class livelihoods, strain food systems, and deepen dependence on increasingly unreliable external markets.

Small-scale producers and workers—the backbone of local economies—find themselves caught in a vice of global price swings, escalating production costs and decreasing incomes.

When economic policies are driven by imperial and settler colonial ambitions, the expectation of fair and equitable trade evaporates. Cuba, Palestine, and Venezuela illustrate how trade weaponization combined with colonial assertions leads to the collective punishment of peoples.

However, this moment of crisis also offers a critical opportunity. As faith in existing systems wanes, countries and social movements are rising to demand a renewal of genuine multilateralism—one based on cooperation rather than oppression, and on participatory democracy rather than opaque representation.

Focus on the Global South, La Via Campesina

Rethinking global trade, no. 63

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Voices from the fields

Newsletter no 62 – 3rd Nyéléni forum: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

Voices from the field 1

Shaping the future of Nyéléni through convergence from the ground up!

Tammi Jonas, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA)

Shaping the future of Nyéléni demands a concrete and radical approach grounded in the lived struggles of peasants, fishers, pastoralists, food and fish workers and local communities. At the Nyéléni Global Forum in Kandy, we affirmed that food sovereignty is a political project of liberation, whose strength lies in convergence from below, where we build unity through shared strategies of resistance and transformation.

Accepting the challenge to bring more movements together, AFSA came to Sri Lanka as a delegation of peasants, Indigenous Peoples and labour organisers rooted in everyday struggle against the corporate capture of food and land in so-called Australia. While we organise in a context where settler-colonial capitalism continues to dispossess Indigenous Peoples, and industrial agriculture dominates policy and palates, we also carry concrete victories from the ground that show what food sovereignty looks like in practice.

Through collective organising, we have fought for over 15 years for state and national recognition of the critical role small-scale farmers play in feeding local communities while cooling the planet. We have changed planning laws to support agroecology and processing infrastructure on our farms, resisted oppressive food safety regulation, and embedded the principles of UNDROP in our national advocacy. These wins were not granted by governments—they were won through grassroots mobilisation and democratic organising. This is the approach we brought into Sri Lanka: convergence through organising, not consultation; power built from below, and in solidarity with but not delegated to our NGO allies.

At the forum, we worked in solidarity alongside comrades to defend feminist leadership and youth and gender and sexually diverse peoples’ participation in decision making. We manifested our intersectional approach, advocating shoulder to shoulder with pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, and workers to ensure their struggles are visible across our collective actions and campaigns. We insist that Nyéléni must remain accountable to social movements, with clear political coordination and collective decision-making led by peasants, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, fishers, and food and fish workers.

We came home charged with Nyéléni’s vow to rise against the chains of extractive debt, ready to tear down the lie that our future must be mortgaged to the powerful. Together, we will build a world free from financial imperialism—because the revolution will not be borrowed.

Voices from the field 2

Nyéléni in Kandy: Strengthening Sri Lanka’s social movements

Anuka De Silva, Movement for Land and Agrarian Reform (MONLAR), La Via Campesina

In 2022, due to a severe debt crisis, widespread corruption, the hegemony of power, and high food inflation, the country faced major political, social, and economic crises. People took to the streets demanding political reform, democracy, justice, and national sovereignty. Sri Lankan citizens played a pivotal role in changing the political landscape of the country. This is why the Nyéléni Forum has become increasingly important to us as a social movement.

As part of the IMF’s conditions for the financial bailout, Sri Lanka has been urged to implement a series of austerity measures, which include selling off some government-owned assets. One of the institutions affected by this is the National Institute of Cooperative Development (NICD), which is among the properties under consideration for privatization. With the support of Nyéléni, we stopped the privatization of the NICD.

Why is the Nyéléni Forum important for social movements in Sri Lanka?

Hosting the Nyéléni Forum helped strengthen the collective power of different local struggles and emphasized the importance of solidarity in addressing common challenges. The convergence at Nyéléni brought together grassroots movements to demand collective action aimed at dismantling systems of oppression.

Given the country’s agricultural struggles and food insecurity, food sovereignty is a vital tool to push back against corporate-driven agricultural systems that prioritize profit over people’s well-being. Building a collective vision for food sovereignty and creating a political action agenda through the Kandy Declaration continues to strengthen our movement’s impact. The convergence of struggles and solidarity remains the force that can lead to true transformation — one much greater than a single political change.

It’s clear that the Sri Lankan steering committee for the forum has laid a solid foundation for long-term movement building by keeping the community central to these efforts, aligning local struggles with the broader global agenda, and engaging with the government for policy reforms and real systemic transformation.

Voices form the field 3

Women building systemic transformation

Sarah Luiza and Bianca Pessoa, World March of Women Brazil

Since the 1st Nyéléni Forum, we have affirmed that there can be no food sovereignty without feminism. Building on our achievements, at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, feminism was recognized as a fundamental part of the common political agenda, based on its popular, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-heteropatriarchal perspective. It is not possible to bring about systemic change without transforming the relationships of inequality and violence experienced by women everywhere in the world. This was our breakthrough: the creation of a common struggle for all who want to see radical change in society and in the world we live in. In this sense, the Women’s Assembly was a fundamental space for convergence.

We had women from all movements, regions, sexualities, and ethnicities, affirming the importance of diversity in this process. Women have a lot to teach. From their different realities, they share experiences of resistance, of building alternatives from the territories, showing that feminism is not an empty banner. It is built from everyday practice.

The impacts of the false solutions of green capitalism displace women from their territories and threaten their lives. That is why women defend the struggle for energy sovereignty and climate justice that is good for the people and not for the market. For us, the solution lies in the territories and in life. In the way women relate to nature and to people. It is the care of life and good living with equality that will, in fact, build a new world.

We affirm feminist economics as fundamental, recognizing women’s work and all their contributions to the social reproduction of life, from the perspective of care, equality, and good living. At the same time, we face daily the violence that heteropatriarchal and racist capitalism inflicts on our lives. Based on this, fundamental banners of the feminist struggle such as equality, freedom, justice, peace, international solidarity, demilitarization, the defence of democracy, rights, and peace, as well as food sovereignty and agroecology, are affirmed and concretized in the 3rd Nyéléni and in the path forward.

Voices from the field 4

Nyéléni and beyond: Indigenous leadership and perspectives in the global movement for food sovereignty

Nicole Maria Yanes, Opata, International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and NDN Collective

For Indigenous Peoples, Food Sovereignty is a way of life. It carries the survival of our territories, languages, cultures, ceremonies, stories, clothing, and every part of who we are as Peoples. Across the world, Indigenous Peoples’ territories are on the frontlines of colonization and extraction, framed as “sacrifice zones” for military testing, extractive projects, and so-called development. As a result, Indigenous Peoples now face the harshest impacts of the climate crisis caused by governments and corporations.

At the Nyéléni Gathering, Indigenous delegates played key roles. From sharing our communal leadership practices, approaches to consensus-building, traditional knowledge and ceremonies to our grounded experience in advocacy, negotiation, and movement building.

We successfully represented our Peoples collectively, gathering support from global movements for our ongoing efforts including the full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; for the UN Food & Agriculture Organization to fulfil its commitment to amend the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management to include Indigenous Peoples’ collective rights, especially our right to free, prior, and informed consent; for the UN to separate and not conflate, in all its documents and decisions, the concepts of Indigenous Peoples with local communities; and for Indigenous Peoples’ LandBack work in regaining territories that were illegally stolen.

Though participants came from distinct ecosystems and histories of colonization, Nyéléni reminded us that defending our food sovereignty requires solidarity, collaboration, and shared strategy. Connecting the work we do in our territories to international arenas is not easy and goes beyond us gathering in Sri Lanka. True solidarity takes commitment and a willingness to understand one another’s histories, struggles, and goals across diverse ecosystems, languages, and political realities. In addition, it is important to note that the political agenda and declaration’s impact is dependent on the use and implementation that the people give it through its use.

In moments like these, Nyéléni reminds us that our collective freedom and future are deeply interdependent. Our liberation is bound together. Strengthening alliances across Peoples, regions, and movements is not only a strategy but a responsibility. It is an act of survival in these times of rising fascism and authoritarianism.

Voices from the field 5

From Nyéléni to Belém: the struggle for climate justice as an element of convergence

Martín Drago, REDES/Friends of the Earth International

Those who are responsible for and drive climate breakdown and environmental degradation are inextricably linked to the social, economic and gender inequality that prevails globally. They are also a fundamental part of the construction and perpetuation of the current energy system, around which multinational companies and states in the global North have deepened colonial relations. Therefore, when we talk about climate justice, we are talking about changing the whole system.

To achieve climate justice, we need to transform economic, social, political and energy systems, gender relations and our relationship with nature through the widespread implementation of grassroots initiatives to build a new model based on global solidarity and social, economic, gender, racial and environmental justice.

In order to achieve this, it is essential to strengthen the power of the people and their organizations and to transform the multilateral system based on an internationalist, solidarity-based approach and the integration of peoples. This commitment will be possible through different paths that share common principles, characteristics and strategies, and that lead to the construction of popular power in the way that each people define it in their own territory^.[1]

Building climate justice is one such path and is therefore a central element of grassroots efforts to change the system.

Voices from the field 6

Nyéléni – On why RIPESS joined

Ruby van der Wekken, RIPESS

RIPESS intercontinental, the solidarity economy network, responded positively to the Nyéléni invitation to join its process two years ago. Since that moment we have been involved in the Steering Committee for the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum. RIPESS as such participated in the preparatory process of convergence towards a common political action agenda and travelled with a delegation of 21 representatives from all over the world to the forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

RIPESS had already been advocating for 10 years through members present within the Nyéléni process, that working towards food sovereignty can not be achieved without economic systemic change, which importantly implies a changing of the economy as a whole. Whilst movements having joined the Nyéléni process were already familiar with concepts as feminist economy and care economy, the Solidarity economy, both as a methodology and a vision that places community agency and social and ecological values at the core of the building of another economy, was less well known at a global level.

Importantly also, RIPESS joined the Nyéléni process out of an acknowledgment of the great potential the changing of the food system has for systemic change in our communities and through this society, and wants to contribute to this process of change with the values, principles and objectives of Solidarity economy building as a bottom-up transformative process.

Voices from the field 7

Converging struggles in the Global Fight Against Industrial Aquaculture

Feini Yin, North American Marine Alliance (NAMA)

Nyéléni’s “Global Fight Against Industrial Aquaculture” campaign aims to address the pressing challenges created by industrial seafood farming, and to block the further development and expansion of such operations around the world.

Just like agriculture, aquaculture — the cultivation of seafood in the ocean, in freshwater, or on land — can be practiced in many ways. This ranges from traditional and agroecological forms, such as Native Hawaiian fish ponds, to corporate-driven and industrial-scale aquaculture. With the latter, transnational agribusinesses, banks, Big Green NGOs, and governing bodies promote the export of the factory farming model to our oceans, using catchphrases like “blue economies” and “blue revolution.”

In reality, industrial aquaculture displaces small-scale fishers from their livelihoods and territories, pollutes our waters, and furthers the commodification of our foods. The production of fish feed drives greater production of industrial soy and corn. It also plunders small pelagic fish from off the West African coast, extracting protein from the Global South, where millions rely on small pelagic fish for food and livelihood, to produce protein for consumers in the Global North.

This is an umbrella struggle that bridges food sovereignty issues between land and sea, between the Global South and Global North, and across environmental justice, global health, labour, and women’s movements. As a movement of movements, Nyéléni commits to building coordinated campaigns to secure food, health, and economic sovereignty and to resist corporate control over these by stopping and preventing industrial aquaculture and fishing, blue economy, and the privatization of ocean commons.

Voices from the field 8

The importance of public health in guaranteeing food sovereignty

People Health Movement (PHM)

Starting from the definition of food sovereignty (FS), it is obvious that good health within households (including animal health) is key to sustaining FS. The reverse is also true: FS ensures that households have access to sufficient, nutritious food throughout the year to keep their members in good health.

In the realm of Nyéléni, public health (PH) ought to cover preventive measures: a) water and sanitation (and vector control where applicable – such as mosquitos); b) access to a working Primary Health Care infrastructure (including primary curative health and immunizations); c) access to primary animal health; and d) health promotion measures.

Health and nutrition education will be necessary for achieving the above: we are referring to education that goes beyond technical or clinical aspects – one that explains the structural causes of preventable ill-health, malnutrition, and deaths, and highlights the actions needed to address them.

In the spirit of FS, people must actively participate in decision-making and in monitoring the implementation of these PH components. This is not yet the case and remains a challenge for the Nyéléni constituency. PHM will be able to provide needed inputs and backstopping to our wider Nyéléni community drawing on the activities it has been carrying out for two decades. (PHM has a Nutrition and FS thematic group that met a couple times but has not worked regularly. In parallel, the Latin American region of PHM set up a regional FS group that has been active and successful -they were represented in Kandy).

For all these reasons, PHM enthusiastically joined the Nyéléni 3 Process from the very beginning in the spirit of the right to food and the right to health –and in the shared spirit of jointly tackling the social determination of both. The joint struggle for health, agroecology, and food sovereignty is still in its infancy, and we must emphasize the need to recruit more movements and organizations within Nyéléni to join us in this struggle.

Voices from the field 9

2026: International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists

Fernando García-Dory, World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Pastoralists (WAMIP)

We, as global pastoralist movement, place a lot of hope in Nyéléni as a space to stand shoulder to shoulder with other food producer movements to examine the current political frame that impacts our livelihoods and lands and to formulate joint proposals for alternatives to the current crisis. We urge other movements to look at our claims, from understanding core aspects of pastoralists’ rights, to expanding agroecology to pastoralism. Nyéléni is a valuable convergence space with other movements that has enabled important achievements, such as the UNDROP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas). Next year, 2026, is the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. We want to ensure that pastoralists are placed at the centre. FAO and other bodies should understand we represent a model of production with cultural, social, and political value that empowers communities, contributes to the endurance of indigenous nomadic peoples, and advances food sovereignty.

Voices from the field 10

Global advocacy action for migrants and refugees

Paloma Chen, Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe (TMP-E)

The food sovereignty movement present at the Nyéléni Forum 2025 has not been limited to the initial core of small-scale food producers, such as farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, and rural workers; it has also expanded to include feminist and climate justice movements, migrants, conscious consumers, academic researchers, artists.

The struggle of migrant and refugee peoples is inseparable from the struggle for food sovereignty and livelihood. Migration is deeply linked to the corporate global food industry built on exploitation, dehumanization, and utilitarian narratives that reduce migrant workers to cheap labour. The migration struggle is a common struggle for racial, gender, and economic equality, food sovereignty, and a just transition that aims to weave resistance and alternatives to the corporate system that profits from our displacement, repression, exploitation, and death. But sites of food production can also be sites of resistance, dignity, and future-building. Our participation at the Nyéléni Forum is part of a broader effort to strengthen convergence across struggles (from regularization campaigns in Europe to cross-border mobilizations like the Caravanas) to demand housing, health, labour rights, land and food sovereignty and justice for everyone.

Through debates, presentations, workshops, and working groups, the effort at the forum has sought to build a unified political vision against the dominant, patriarchal, imperialist, colonialist, racist, caste-based, and supremacist capitalist system with the production of two political documents: the Kandy Declaration and the Common Political Action Agenda. The Kandy Declaration, read out on September 13 at the forum’s closing ceremony, includes among its next steps actions such as a global day of mobilization against imperialism, genocide, war, and the use of hunger as a weapon. This aligns with the Global Advocacy Action presented by the Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe at the forum on systemic narrative change on migrants and refugees.

Voices from the field 11

When academia meets the movement: Knowledge exchange on the path of convergence

Bruno Prado, Bhoopendra Kuma, Yukari Sekine, Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the South

At the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, in the first ever Dialogue between Researchers/Scholars and Movements at the forum, with over 70 participants, a shared commitment emerged to bring scholars and movements into deeper dialogue, recognizing that the struggles for food sovereignty and systemic transformation are inseparable from the democratization of knowledge.

The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the South (CASAS)^[2] was invited to contribute to this process, supporting the creation of spaces where researchers, community leaders, and movement organizers could meet as equals: all knowledge-makers and knowledge-holders. These exchanges emphasized that genuine transformation requires horizontal relationships among diverse knowledge systems, where learning flows in all directions.

Across the conversations, participants called for decolonizing knowledge production and challenging extractivist, corporate, and top-down research practices. Scholar activists shared experiences of co-producing knowledge with communities and reaffirmed that research must serve people’s needs rather than the interests of capital.

The discussions also pointed to the importance of building broad, intersectional knowledge coalitions that connect social movements, universities, and public institutions. Participants agreed on the need to support younger and early-career scholar-activists, foster collective research agendas, and communicate knowledge in more accessible ways through community forums, podcasts, and creative visual formats.

Moving forward, the collaboration between academia and movements should continue as a collective and participatory journey. The Nyéléni process reminds us that knowledge is not a privilege, but a shared tool for systemic transformation: grounded in trust, equality, and solidarity, and built through the ongoing convergence of diverse struggles and ways of knowing.

Voices from the field 12

Bridging movements: Unions meet Nyéléni

Chris Spindler, AMWU, IndustriALL Global Union

Even when the Union movement represents only a minority of workers, it is often the organized labour movement that sets the agenda for industrial and working conditions. This is what capitalist powers seek to break — they want to see an end to organized labour.

Today, the Union movement faces many challenges. In no particular order, and by no means exhaustive: technology and automation; political influence; confronting and organizing against anti-union laws; organizing beyond the workplace – and even internationally. How it responds to these issues will dramatically affect its relevance, growth, and ability to win better conditions for members and the broader community.

The Nyéléni process also presents challenges to the Union movement: to work with broader social and community movements, not just traditional political parties; to strengthen involvement in the community as a progressive force alongside industrial campaigning; and to challenge the political system rather than accept its conservative framework.

The Nyéléni movement opposes the idea that food is primarily a commodity or an export earner, and that countries should compete for ever-higher productivity. Community organizations and Unions, each in their own way, are challenging these assumptions about food and the way the current political system governs it.

Nyéléni 2025 brought together a remarkable collection of committed activists doing extraordinary work in their communities. This is a movement for social change that Unions should engage with and – where possible – join in relevant campaigns.

I began with key questions the Union movement needs to answer for its own sake and for the sake of the wider community, and I believe the Nyéléni process should also reflect on similar issues:

How will the Nyéléni process engage with the Union movement, given that we share common ideas but work in different ways and spaces?
Are there campaigns where Nyéléni can identify common ground with the Union movement?
How does the Nyéléni process move from community and social groups to a movement for social change? Although the forum spoke of fundamental change, this question remained unaddressed.
Are there plans – in the near future – to discuss these and any other questions regarding Union involvement?

Nyéléni was an amazing, thought-provoking event – challenging both for my own campaigning work and, I imagine, for many others as well.

Voices from the field 13

Linguistic Justice as a practice in the Nyéléni process

Stepping out of the shadows: upholding linguistic rights is also part of the struggle

Collective for the Self-organisation of Interpreting Technologies (COATI)

The Nyéléni process has incorporated Linguistic Justice as an essential practice, recognizing that upholding linguistic rights is also part of the struggle. More than 750 people from around the world participated in the meeting held in Kandy, and for the first time, simultaneous interpretation was provided in 18 languages.

COATI participated in the entire process, providing technology, coordination, and political commitment. Seventy-three volunteer interpreters and four technicians from the Asia-Pacific region were recruited, also contributing to regional technological autonomy.

The Interpreting Working Group (WG) formed a diverse and inclusive team of interpreters, translators and technicians representing different dialects from the global South and North, different ages, genders and activist and professional backgrounds. This diversity, rather than a conscious decision, was a natural consequence of the network that had been built, where the plurality of voices generated a profound human exchange and strengthened collective work for food sovereignty.

COATI also took on an unprecedented technical and logistical challenge, demonstrating that self-management and free technologies can achieve, and even surpass, what market service providers fail to do: support complex processes with care, creativity and cooperation.

Linguistic Justice is an exercise in speaking and listening, which builds equality. Those who make it possible are not mere service providers, but committed individuals who are actively involved in the struggles.

For the first time, the Final Declaration of the Nyéléni Global Forum recognized interpreters and translators as part of the struggles. We want to extend this to all technical teams and volunteers as a fundamental part of collective struggles, since they made it possible for the word to circulate in pursuit of full and fair participation. Our deepest gratitude goes out to all of them, who put their hearts and souls into making Linguistic Justice a living reality at Nyéléni.

More info in the Fanzine produced by COATI (in English, Spanish and French).

Voices from the field 14

Popular Communications at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum

Rohan Antony, A Growing Culture

For the 3rd Nyéléni Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka, popular communications was not an afterthought but a vital tactic in shaping the collective voice and political imagination of the process. It was a way of ensuring that the voices of grassroots leaders echo far beyond the halls where they were spoken, into the everyday struggles that unfold across streets, fields, factories, and communities around the world.

The Nyéléni Communications Space brought together a team of fifteen communicators from movements and allied organisations, alongside a dedicated group of Sri Lankan volunteers. With microphones, cameras, brushes, and pens, they worked collectively and tirelessly to enliven the forum with energy, imagination, and joy, and make the moment accessible to everyone within and far beyond Kandy.

The Nyéléni Radio filled the halls with conversations, reflections, and songs of resistance from across movements. The audiovisual team captured powerful and intimate moments that will shape the visual memory of this gathering for years to come. A text team distilled the day’s debates, decisions, and celebrations into a daily multilingual bulletin, ensuring that every participant, and those following from afar, could stay informed. Through social media and press, updates and voices from the ground reached thousands around the world. The artists transformed walls, walkways, and shared spaces into living canvases holding the emotional truth of the forum, featuring resistance art from around the world, creative corners where delegates could draw, paint, and unwind, and a participatory mural that immortalised our collective moment in Kandy.

This collective effort also revealed a deeper truth: communication is not separate from struggle, but part of it. It is where narratives are contested, solidarities forged, and power reclaimed. The Kandy Declaration and Common Political Action Agenda affirm this by recognising grassroots feminist popular communication as a strategic front for systemic transformation, and by reminding us that sovereignty is not only about control over what we grow, but also about reclaiming power over our stories — stories of who we are, why we resist, and the world we dream of.

[1] Friends of the Earth International (2023) Pathways to system change: Transforming a world in crisis into a sustainable and just future.

[2] Aguiar, D., et al. (2023). Transforming critical agrarian studies: Solidarity, scholar-activism and emancipatory agendas in and from the Global South. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 50(2), 758–786.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 62 – 3rd Nyéléni forum: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

Nyéléni: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

Eighteen years after the Nyéléni Declaration on Food Sovereignty, the third and expanded Nyéléni process brought together global social movements, organizations, and networks to converge around systemic transformation. This multi-year process united thousands of grassroots groups and allies to develop a strong Common Political Action Agenda (CPAA) advancing food sovereignty, climate justice, and social, racial, and gender justice. It was a major effort to build alliances and shared political strategies across regions and territories. Drafting the CPAA took nearly two years, following multiple regional and global consultations.

Context and process

At the IPC global meeting in Rome (September 2022), strategic directions were agreed upon to continue building the third Nyéléni process. The focus was on multi-sectoral convergence and alliances among movements fighting corporate capture and reclaiming democracy from below, grounded in the food sovereignty movement’s experience. During the second global meeting in Rome (June 2023), new allies beyond the food sovereignty movement joined, and an International Steering Committee was established to guide global and regional processes.

The zero draft of the CPAA was developed by the Methodology Working Group based on the first round of consultations held in 2024 across all regions and global organizations. This participatory, bottom-up process continued in regional consultation meetings:

Latin America & Caribbean – Chile (February 2024)
North America – Virtual (March 2024)
Europe & Central Asia (May 2024)
Middle East & North Africa – Turkey (June 2024)
Asia-Pacific – Sri Lanka (June 2024)
Africa – Ethiopia (July 2024)

The first draft of the CPAA was then presented at the in-person Nyéléni Global Steering Committee (GSC) meeting in Bangalore, India (Aug 31 – Sept 6, 2024).

A second round of consultations (Jan 20 – Mar 14, 2025) allowed regions and global organizations to refine the Common Political Action Agenda and Action Plan. To ensure broad engagement, two global briefing sessions were held (Jan 28–29, 2025). The second draft was submitted to the GSC meeting in Sri Lanka (May 5–9, 2025). The final version was then shared for internal regional and global review and validated by pre-forum assemblies of Women, Youth, and Diversities, as well as regional assemblies and global movement meetings. The process culminated at the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka (Sept 5–15, 2025).

Why the CPAA matters

The Common Political Action Agenda lies at the heart of the Nyéléni process. Structured in five sections, it addresses global challenges through an intersectional approach:

Section 1: Who We Are — Describes the diverse sectors and actors engaged in the process.
Section 2: Why We Take Action — Analyses interrelated global crises rooted in oppression and systemic inequality, including capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, racism, casteism, and discrimination against marginalized communities. It denounces corporate capture of governance, land and resource grabbing, exploitation by profit-driven agro-industries, worsening climate impacts, precarious labour conditions, and “false solutions” promoted by capital-driven systems, including digital colonialism and speculative financial markets.
Section 3: What We Seek to Achieve and How — Outlines six thematic areas:
- People’s democracy and rights
- Peace and international solidarity
- People’s economies
- Food sovereignty and agroecology
- Land, water, territories, and agrarian reform
- Health, climate justice, and energy sovereignty

Section 4: Strengthening Our Movements — Defines strategies for mobilization, movement building, solidarity, political education, knowledge sharing, and popular communication.
Section 5: The Path Forward — Declares a collective pledge for systemic transformation and operational conclusions.

The CPAA aims not just to present proposals but to unify struggles for food sovereignty, economic, social, gender, racial, and environmental justice within a shared systemic vision. Its strength lies in its participatory origin—each section reflects collective analysis, debate, and revision by hundreds of organizations worldwide.

Once finalized, the CPAA will be presented at global convergence events (it will be shared at the World Social Forum (WSF) in August 2026) to strengthen alliances and expand collective action. Facing multiple interconnected and systemic crises, the challenge ahead is to move beyond fragmented efforts and shape a shared future through emancipatory initiatives already being built across movements.

Read the Kandy declaration.

Newsletter no 62 – Editorial

Newsletter no 62 – 3rd Nyéléni forum: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

3rd Nyéléni forum: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

Photo: Mural created by the Fearless Collective during the 3rd Nyéléni Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The mural is the result of a methodology developed and practiced by the Collective: starting with the emptiness of an empty plate, participants discussed issues of food security, sovereignty, and justice, and reflected on what it feels like when rights are taken away. These reflections were then brought to life in the mural: a farmer fighting against sugarcane, a fisherwoman battling windmills — images that give visibility to a segment of society so often taken for granted: the farmers who produce the food we eat. Artists are political actors, and at the Forum, art was not a byproduct but a central, powerful political tool for conveying struggles and messages globally.

From 6 to 13 September 2025, the city of Kandy in Sri Lanka hosted the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum. Small-scale food producers, consumers, Indigenous Peoples, trade unions, human rights defenders, climate and health justice advocates, urban poor communities, women and gender-diverse groups, practitioners of the social and solidarity economy, scholars, artists and other representatives from grassroots movements and civil society organizations gathered at the National Institute of Co-operative Development. Together, they built a Common Political Action Agenda (CPAA) for systemic transformation towards economic, social, gender, racial and environmental justice.

Over the years, the Nyéléni process has enabled collective movement building, offering a space where grassroots movements share struggles, analyse trends, and work together toward common solutions. Building on the legacies of the first and second Nyéléni fora, both held in Mali, this third forum expanded its reach by joining forces with the climate justice, people’s health, and social solidarity economy movements.

Reflecting its diversity, the forum brought together participants from all regions of the world, with a team of 72 volunteer interpreters organised by the collective COATI, working tirelessly to ensure language justice and interpretation into 18 official languages.

At its core, the forum reaffirmed that food sovereignty is inseparable from global solidarity. From Palestine to Congo, from Haiti to Sudan and beyond, participants voiced their commitment to resist oppression in all its forms and to build a world rooted in dignity, justice, and care. Standing with Palestine — and with all peoples facing occupation, war, and dispossession— was recognized as a shared responsibility and a reflection of the movement’s collective vision of justice.

The forum culminated in the acclamation of the Kandy declaration and the anticipation of an enriched CPAA, both intended to serve as a political compass guiding the actions and vision of movements worldwide striving for food sovereignty and justice.

This edition of the Nyéléni newsletter shares a selection of the forum’s highlights, capturing several of the participants’ perspectives. As the Kandy declaration states: “Across all the diversities we represent—to strengthen our struggles – we are raising our voices together, declaring: Systemic Transformation—Now and Forever!”

IPC for Food Sovereignty, Transnational Institute (TNI)

Building solidarity, no 62

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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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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.

Newsletters Nyéléni in English

Rethinking global trade, no. 63

Building solidarity, no 62

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