At World Social Forum, Global Peasant Movement Offers the 'Peoples Solution'

'Another world isn't just possible, it makes sense'

As the World Social Forum (WSF) being held in Tunis, Tunisia continues this week, one group is highlighting a "peoples solution" to the "corporate assault" transnational corporations pose to people and the planet.

The global peasant and food sovereignty group La Via Campesina, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, was among thousands of groups at the WSF, and sees the climate justice struggle the world faces as intertwined with the stranglehood corporations have over the global population.

Ibrahima Coulibaly of Mali, part of La Via Campesina network, described at a press conference at the WSF on Thursday the global threat of multinational corporations:

Agribusiness and transnational corporations are a major threat to the world. They consume too many resources. They control the best land, and are grabbing even more land everywhere. Instead of producing food for people, they produce crops for export markets- bio-fuels for cars or animal feed for industrial meat factories. But farmers are also uniting globally and we will defend our lands.

The group also highlighted the dangers of genetically modified crops (GMOs), which are being pushed worldwide, are "dangerous for the planet and people" and "consume massive amounts of chemical herbicides and weedicides that are made of fossil fuels."

Josie Riffaud, La Via Campesina network member in France, slammed the "corporate assault" on "land, seeds, markets and water," resources that belong in the commons.

As the Forum has been a place to show "another world is possible," La Via Campesina offered a "peoples solution."

Indian farmer Nandini Jairam said,

We are not just resisting the threats from capitalism, but we also have a positive agenda with concrete alternatives - food sovereignty and agro-ecology. LVC is taking agroecology very seriously, we are organizing ourselves and sharing the best practices of agroecology with each other. We have countless examples of successful farming models that don't rely on expensive chemical inputs, and produce much more than inefficient monoculture of agribusiness. They also end farmers debt, the main cause behind a wave of farmers suicides in India. These are the real peoples solutions to the climate, food and job crisis. Governments need to help us to scale up our efforts.

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Some live reactions from the WSF via Twitter:

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Flickr user Amine Ghrabi has this slideshow from the WSF:

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Flickr user Abraham Canales has more:

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'Another world isn't just possible; it makes sense.'

World Social Forum TV has video from March 27, the second day of the WSF:

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Also, Global Revolution is live streaming some of the events:

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

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