SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Postcard From...Copenhagen
Last weekend, women farmers from Africa and Latin America gave President Obama a message that he can't afford to ignore. In a letter delivered to the president and U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen, the women argued that the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the world hold the key to resolving the biggest global challenge of our time.
Dec 17, 2009
Last weekend, women farmers from Africa and Latin America gave President Obama a message that he can't afford to ignore. In a letter delivered to the president and U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen, the women argued that the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the world hold the key to resolving the biggest global challenge of our time.
For those of us accustomed to thinking of climate change as a purely scientific or economic matter, it may seem strange to consider that someone like Amal Mahmoud has a crucial role to play in stabilizing the climate. Amal never went to school. Like many young women in rural Sudan, she married at the age of 15 and now ekes out a living on a small plot of land that she does not own. Thanks to her grueling hours of farm work, Amal's family is poor, but not starving.
So what does Amal's humble life have to do with fixing the climate? For one thing, her farming practices avoid the deforestation, the fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, the monoculture plantations, and the worldwide food transport and storage system that account for a whopping half of all carbon emissions. We've known for a while that industrial agriculture is a major culprit in climate change. Now, evidence is mounting that sustainable agriculture--the type practiced by Amal and millions of other smallholder farmers--actually cools the planet by attracting carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.
The vast majority of the world's smallholder farmers -- 80 percent -- are women. The specialized knowledge these sustainable farmers have developed over generations -- about preserving biodiversity, collecting water, breeding and exchanging seeds, and enhancing soil -- are the very practices we must now adapt and replicate in order to confront climate change.
These aren't the high-tech solutions put forward by the U.S. delegation in Copenhagen, to the delight of Big Farming. And they're not the esoteric carbon trading schemes that the United States and other wealthy governments prefer over actually reducing emissions.
In fact, the women farmers argue that these commercial fixes are just more of the same profit-above-all mentality that brought us the climate crisis in the first place. Instead, they're calling on Obama, who leads the country with the world's highest per-capita emissions, to support sustainable agriculture and smallholder women farmers as our best hope to stabilize the climate and feed a growing world population.
An Unconstitutional Rampage
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
© 2023 Foreign Policy In Focus
Yifat Susskind
Yifat Susskind is the Executive Director of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization. She has worked with women's human rights activists from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa to create programs in their communities to address women's health, violence against women, economic and environmental justice and peacebuilding. She has also written extensively on US foreign policy and women's human rights and her critical analysis has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy in Focus and elsewhere.
Last weekend, women farmers from Africa and Latin America gave President Obama a message that he can't afford to ignore. In a letter delivered to the president and U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen, the women argued that the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the world hold the key to resolving the biggest global challenge of our time.
For those of us accustomed to thinking of climate change as a purely scientific or economic matter, it may seem strange to consider that someone like Amal Mahmoud has a crucial role to play in stabilizing the climate. Amal never went to school. Like many young women in rural Sudan, she married at the age of 15 and now ekes out a living on a small plot of land that she does not own. Thanks to her grueling hours of farm work, Amal's family is poor, but not starving.
So what does Amal's humble life have to do with fixing the climate? For one thing, her farming practices avoid the deforestation, the fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, the monoculture plantations, and the worldwide food transport and storage system that account for a whopping half of all carbon emissions. We've known for a while that industrial agriculture is a major culprit in climate change. Now, evidence is mounting that sustainable agriculture--the type practiced by Amal and millions of other smallholder farmers--actually cools the planet by attracting carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.
The vast majority of the world's smallholder farmers -- 80 percent -- are women. The specialized knowledge these sustainable farmers have developed over generations -- about preserving biodiversity, collecting water, breeding and exchanging seeds, and enhancing soil -- are the very practices we must now adapt and replicate in order to confront climate change.
These aren't the high-tech solutions put forward by the U.S. delegation in Copenhagen, to the delight of Big Farming. And they're not the esoteric carbon trading schemes that the United States and other wealthy governments prefer over actually reducing emissions.
In fact, the women farmers argue that these commercial fixes are just more of the same profit-above-all mentality that brought us the climate crisis in the first place. Instead, they're calling on Obama, who leads the country with the world's highest per-capita emissions, to support sustainable agriculture and smallholder women farmers as our best hope to stabilize the climate and feed a growing world population.
Yifat Susskind
Yifat Susskind is the Executive Director of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization. She has worked with women's human rights activists from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa to create programs in their communities to address women's health, violence against women, economic and environmental justice and peacebuilding. She has also written extensively on US foreign policy and women's human rights and her critical analysis has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy in Focus and elsewhere.
Last weekend, women farmers from Africa and Latin America gave President Obama a message that he can't afford to ignore. In a letter delivered to the president and U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen, the women argued that the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the world hold the key to resolving the biggest global challenge of our time.
For those of us accustomed to thinking of climate change as a purely scientific or economic matter, it may seem strange to consider that someone like Amal Mahmoud has a crucial role to play in stabilizing the climate. Amal never went to school. Like many young women in rural Sudan, she married at the age of 15 and now ekes out a living on a small plot of land that she does not own. Thanks to her grueling hours of farm work, Amal's family is poor, but not starving.
So what does Amal's humble life have to do with fixing the climate? For one thing, her farming practices avoid the deforestation, the fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, the monoculture plantations, and the worldwide food transport and storage system that account for a whopping half of all carbon emissions. We've known for a while that industrial agriculture is a major culprit in climate change. Now, evidence is mounting that sustainable agriculture--the type practiced by Amal and millions of other smallholder farmers--actually cools the planet by attracting carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.
The vast majority of the world's smallholder farmers -- 80 percent -- are women. The specialized knowledge these sustainable farmers have developed over generations -- about preserving biodiversity, collecting water, breeding and exchanging seeds, and enhancing soil -- are the very practices we must now adapt and replicate in order to confront climate change.
These aren't the high-tech solutions put forward by the U.S. delegation in Copenhagen, to the delight of Big Farming. And they're not the esoteric carbon trading schemes that the United States and other wealthy governments prefer over actually reducing emissions.
In fact, the women farmers argue that these commercial fixes are just more of the same profit-above-all mentality that brought us the climate crisis in the first place. Instead, they're calling on Obama, who leads the country with the world's highest per-capita emissions, to support sustainable agriculture and smallholder women farmers as our best hope to stabilize the climate and feed a growing world population.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.