The Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) is a community of like-minded scholars, development practitioners and activists from different parts of the world who are working on agrarian issues.
It is based at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, Netherlands.
In recent years, the growth in collective land struggles, consumer-producer networks, community supported agriculture and other initiatives which are putting Food Sovereignty into practice at a local level have emerged.
Some of these different groups and organizations have already established links and networks – and many of them are involved in this Forum. The "FoodSovCAP" network is one example of this.
We want to strengthen these movements, and strengthen the work we do locally, regionally or nationally through supporting and complementing the work of others. Together, we are stronger.
The movment for Food Sovereignty in Europe should also reflect the changes we want in society – and so we see it being based around key values – trust, transparency and participation.
The Nyeleni Europe Forum is a first step – a catalyst for reinforcing our collective objectives, and for helping us to move forward – please, get in contact, and get involved!
Biofuelwatch actively supports the campaign for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures. Agroenergy monocultures are linked to accelerated climate change, deforestation, the impoverishment and dispossession of local communities, bio-diversity losses, human rights abuses, water and soil degradation, loss of food sovereignty and food security.
Focus on the Global South combines policy research, advocacy, activism, and grassroots capacity-building in order to generate critical analysis and encourage debates on national and international policies related to corporate-led globalisation, neo-liberalism and militarisation.
FIAN is an international human rights organization that has advocated for the realization of the right to food for more than 20 years. FIAN consists of national sections and individual members in over 50 countries around the world. FIAN is a not-for-profit organization without any religious or political affiliation and has consultative status to the United Nations.
The mission of Global Justice Ecology Project, based in the US, is to build local, national and international alliances with action to address the common root causes of social injustice, economic domination and environmental destruction.
One of the leading journals in the field of rural development. It was founded on the initiative of Terence J. Byres and its first editors were Byres, Charles Curwen and Teodor Shanin. It provokes and promotes critical thinking about social structures, institutions, actors and processes of change in and in relation to the rural world. It encourages inquiry into how agrarian power relations between classes and other social groups are created, understood, contested and transformed. The Journal pays special attention to questions of ‘agency’ of marginalized groups in agrarian societies, particularly their autonomy and capacity to interpret – and change – their conditions.
La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.
La Via Campesina comprises about 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Altogether, it represents about 200 million farmers. It is an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent from any political, economic or other type of affiliation.
Rising Tide North America is part of the international Rising Tide grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the roots causes of climate change and promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.
The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN) based in the US works in partnership with citizens groups nationally and globally on environment, human rights and development issues with a focus on energy, climate change, environmental justice, gender equity, and economic issues, particularly as these play out in North-South relations.
Globally, powerful transnational actors are tapping into lands outside their own borders to provide sufficient food and energy security at home.
The original North-South dynamic to this 'global land grab' is developing into a North-South-South dynamic with economically powerful non-Northern countries now getting involved.
This phrase - 'global land grab' - has become a catch-all to describe and analyse this explosion in transnational commercial land transactions. The reaction to this trend by state, corporate and civil society groups has been varied, moving between the extremes of seeing it as a major threat to the lives and livelihoods of rural people, to seeing it as an economic opportunity for the rural poor worldwide.
LDPI aims to provide in-depth and systematic enquiry into the global land grab in order to have deeper, meaningful and productive debates around causes and implications.
