Food S_________ty

by Lara Shirley

We have just published a primer on food sovereignty and how it’s different from food security: check it out here!

(In a nutshell, food security means everyone having enough to eat, but without taking into consideration where the food is coming from and what effect it has on the communities it is bought or distributed in. Food sovereignty means the right of everyone to grow their own food, with their own seeds, methods and land, without being dependent on large and often transnational corporations. This reinforces local economies, strengthens local communities and in general stabilizes and improves people's lives. Half of the world's hungry are farmers: the problem is not merely a lack of food, but rather a deeper structural inconsistency, and food sovereignty explicitly addresses this.)

It’s so interesting to think about how these terms are created. ‘Sovereignty.’ ‘Security.’ Who is coming up with these phrases? What interests are vested in each?

Let’s start with security. Security is comforting, reassuring, an older sibling that will take care of you when times get tough. Thus, it is also a little condescending. It assumes that you need protection. More recently, security also rings uncomfortably close to a pretext for foreign, often military, interventions in fragile situations: Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are the first that come to mind.

Sovereignty brings up a completely different range of connotations. Firstly, it’s immediately more complex: unlike security, which conjures up images of big guns and muscular men, sovereignty is a sophisticated concept which requires you to sit back for a minute and think about it. It is omnipresent at the UN, in one form or another, and most often employed by the G77, often in opposition to the previous concept of 'security'. Its latest manifestation in the negotiations leading up to Rio+20 has been as 'the right to development'. Perhaps sovereignty is a little too intellectual for everyday chitchat, it’s true, but in UN negotiations it is the equivalent of a fierce rallying cry from the developing countries. (That is not to say that sovereignty is a purely good thing – it can also be used to justify human rights abuses and environmental exploitation - but relative to 'security' and foreign interventions, it is an important notion to have around.)

It’s essential to be aware of how ideas are being framed. To be aware of not only what is being said, but how it is being said – and how we can use that to convey at every level exactly what it is that we want to say, instead of weakening and confining our ideas by presenting them through another lens.

It is absolutely fascinating to see how language is manipulated within the UN, especially because it does not initially seem to be. Words are fairly understandable, not too jargonized, and yet inherent within them are so many levels of meaning: history, past debates, expected disagreements, unspoken arrangements and tenderly subtle power dynamics. It is not just that words tend to take on new layers of meaning – that is inevitable, to a certain extent – but rather that they almost completely shed the meanings they had before. It epitomizes what an antiquated institution the UN is: you have to spend so much time and effort to just scratch the surface of what these seemingly innocuous words are really saying. Security isn't a bad thing, right? It's necessary to see not only what the words mean, but what they don't mean, and that is only possible by learning about new concepts that don't neglect those fundamental gaps – concepts like sovereignty.

RIO+20: Entrevista a Roberto Troya de WWF Latinoamérica y el Caribe

RIO+20: Entrevista a Roberto Troya de WWF Latinoamérica y el Caribe

No more brackets, at least for now

By Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler

So the night before last the Brazilian government came up with a new negotiating text, and from now on they will be chairing the negotiations.  Being the host country has its perks.  The consensus seems to be that the new version isn’t terrible but it leaves out a lot of important stuff, like an Ombudperson for Future Generations.

The interesting part is that the negotiations will no longer be done by going line by line through the text.  Comments will be about concepts instead of changing language like “should” to “will” and “technology transfer” to “research into technology, innovation and science.”  This means no more brackets.  It will be up to the chair to decide what the important points of consensus or disagreement are, and to incorporate those into a new text. 

A couple people in the briefing were pretty outspoken that this was the right move.  One man said that “forgetfulness” has always played an important part in negotiations.  If a suggestion was not echoed or built upon by other delegations, it did not get written down by the chair, and thus did not make it into the new document.  But with laptops and projectors, every new suggestion gets typed in and projected for all to see.  If countries can’t agree on some language it gets put in brackets, and before long the text is chock full of square parentheses.  Going back to the way negotiations were done ten or fifteen years ago delegates to the chair the power of crafting something that will be mutually agreeable.  Negotiators register major objections instead of bickering about individual sentences.  And in this way the process moves faster. 

What are your thoughts about negotiations, the role of the chair, and brackets?   

Selling Indigenous at the People’s Summit

by Lara Shirley

I went to the People’s Summit yesterday. It was its first day, and was inaugurated by an impressively large gathering of indigenous people. It was very powerful: they were dressed in their traditional clothes and dancing. I stopped by a few hours later as well and noticed that, while there were still some events going on, many of the indigenous people had set up around the tents and started selling pieces of jewelry and trinkets. There were feathered headbands, peacock earrings, golden straw hats and wooden beaded bracelets.

This really disturbed me. My first thought was concerning how genuine the objects were: some of them looked like souvenirs that I’ve seen in places all over the world. If these products are indeed ‘genuine’ (a strange concept in itself), then how does their value – not economic, but social and cultural – change when they become souvenirs put out for sale instead of being made, earned or given?

This also occurred to me while they were dancing – there was a tremendous media flurry – but I would like to note that I don’t think that is my place to judge. I am not saying that it is bad, necessarily: I am saying that it is interesting, and merits further thought.

In all honesty, I found it fairly depressing that these people who passionately demand change and justice are still participating in the current economic system that is one of the main causes of the injustices and pain they are suffering from. Capitalism and consumerism are wreaking havoc on all parts of the world, and especially on the areas and people that are most vulnerable. But, again, I am not imposing my morals on their choices. I find it disheartening that current conditions are such that this is the choice they want to make, these people who are so strongly affected by this culture of excess and materialism.

Do not misunderstand me: I am not suggesting that everyone stop doing everything that has a bad effect because that would be incredibly naive, and also very hypocritical. At this point in time – and at almost any point in time, really – to live without negative impacts is impossible. But we should always be conscious of the implications of our actions, because they are always there. Every action has good effects and bad effects. Question everything. Just because it seems ‘good’ – because it’s sold by indigenous people, because a big NGO says so, because it has some certification sticker on it – doesn’t mean it is. The only opinion you can trust completely is your own.