Resistance is Ripe: Agriculture Protest & Protesters Invade Climate Group Business Meeting

15th Decem­ber 2009

The Resis­tance is Ripe Agri­cul­ture protest start­ed today at 12pm and has marched through the cen­tre of town under a ban­ner read­ing “Food Cli­mate Jus­tice, not Cli­mate Change” [pic]. Hun­dreds of peo­ple stopped out­side the Net­to super­mar­ket for speech­es about the impor­tance of food sov­er­eign­ty and the links between cli­mate change, agri­cul­ture and exploita­tion of peo­ple.

See Indy­media Time­line | Mod­kraft Time­line [en] | icop15 on Agri­cul­ture action

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Pre-event press release:

To farm­ers around the world the false solu­tions that are pro­posed in this cli­mate sum­mit are as much a threat as drought, tor­na­does and new cli­mate pat­terns.

At this moment the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UNFCCC) is dis­cussing how to include farm­land into CO2 emis­sion trad­ing. To high­light that this is a false solu­tion we will hit the street on the 15th of Decem­ber.

Bente Hes­sel­lund of the Dan­ish CJA: ‘In spite of the urgency of the cli­mate cri­sis the UNFCC process fails to ques­tion an eco­nom­ic mod­el that is based on infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et. Gov­ern­ments have done noth­ing to move beyond set­ting up mar­ket mech­a­nisms to com­bat the cli­mate cri­sis. These mech­a­nisms are not aimed at push­ing back the use of fos­sil fuels or green­house gas emis­sions in the indus­tri­al coun­tries. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of includ­ing agri­cul­tur­al land into CO2 emis­sion-trad­ing is one of the false solu­tions to cli­mate change. It can lead to farm­ers being forced into depen­den­cy of agro-indus­tri­al projects. Instead, agri­cul­ture needs to be removed from the prof­it-dri­ven mar­ket in order to devel­op a rad­i­cal­ly eco­log­i­cal food sys­tem that cools down the plan­et.’

To make clear that large scale indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture aggra­vates cli­mate change rather than solve the cli­mate prob­lem, Cli­mate Jus­tice Action (CJA) is organ­is­ing a demon­stra­tion in Copen­hagen on the 15th of Decem­ber. Our mot­to is “Food Sys­tem Change, not Cli­mate Change”. CJA is one of the net­works that active­ly mobilis­es the crit­i­cal voic­es around the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit.

The agri­cul­ture man­i­fes­ta­tion will be tak­en to the streets of Copen­hagen, call­ing atten­tion to the pos­i­tive alter­na­tive that non-com­mer­cial, organ­ic agri­cul­ture for human needs offers. In a cre­ative man­ner, the atten­tion will be drawn to com­pa­nies that are respon­si­ble for the indus­tri­al food mod­el. Will it be a block­ade on the Mon­san­to premis­es or do the agri­cul­ture activist have some­thing else in store? Let your­self be tak­en by sur­prise on one of the many stops on their way through town.

To farm­ers around the world the false solu­tions that are pro­posed in this cli­mate sum­mit are as much a threat as drought, tor­na­does and new cli­mate pat­terns.

In the South, forests are burnt or cut down and small farm­ers are cleared off their land to make way for large scale indus­tri­al mono-cul­tures as soy and maize to sup­ply the Euro­pean inten­sive live­stock breed­ers. In fac­to­ry farms, mil­lions of ani­mals are fat­tened as fast as pos­si­ble, cre­at­ing vast amounts of dung and methane and con­sum­ing a great deal of ener­gy.

Stim­u­lat­ing agro­fu­els and bio-plas­tics to com­bat the cri­sis will only increase the pres­sure on the peo­ple cur­rent­ly liv­ing from the land. Already in the devel­op­ing coun­tries large areas of land are grabbed by multi­na­tion­als, small farm­ers and indige­nous peo­ple dri­ving off their ter­ri­to­ries.

‘Small scale, organ­ic agri­cul­ture remains the best way to com­bat hunger, mal­nu­tri­tion and the food and cli­mate cri­sis.’ argues activist Flip Vonk of Cli­mate Jus­tice Action (CJA) and part time farm hand on an organ­ic farm. ‘Native seeds offer the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for adap­ta­tion to cur­rent and future changes in the cli­mate. Sus­tain­able local food pro­duc­tion costs less ener­gy, makes us inde­pen­dent from import­ed ani­mal foods, cap­tures CO2 in the soil and improves bio­di­ver­si­ty.’

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Ear­li­er in the day activists protest­ed at an exclu­sive meet­ing between busi­ness and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters organ­ised by The Cli­mate Group, an inter­na­tion­al lob­by group who rep­re­sent busi­ness inter­ests — there were 17 arrests see report below [ video]

At around 4.45pm, police sud­den­ly arrived unan­nounced at the Can­dy Fac­to­ry (Boljse­fab­rikken) in the city’s north­west dis­trict. In this space, activists from the ‘Bike block’ have been build­ing bicy­cles for tomor­row’s ‘Reclaim Pow­er’ action. Peo­ple inside the Can­dy Fac­to­ry were told to leave the build­ing while it was being searched, and then they were even­tu­al­ly brought back inside, into the library, and their details were tak­en. An activist who was in the build­ing at the time describes the sit­u­a­tion:  “We all got placed in one room, after that the police start­ed to search the place. Peo­ple got reg­is­trat­ed before they were allowed to leave the place. They got some kind of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion-forms, where they not­ed name and address, but also length, hair col­or and which clothes peo­ple where wear­ing”. By 18.15 the search seemed to be over. The coach that police had brought left with one arrestee. Police then blocked off the build­ing with red and white tape and set up spot­lights onto the build­ing. By 19.45 reports came in of police trucks tak­ing away two bicy­cles as well as some com­put­ers [pho­tos | report]. Due to this raid, an indy­media ben­e­fit par­ty had to be can­celled.

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Cli­mate Activists Invade Meet­ing of Senior Politi­cians in Copen­hagen

Sev­en­teen cli­mate activists invad­ed an exclu­sive meet­ing between busi­ness and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters at a Copen­hagen hotel this morn­ing. The meet­ing, called the “Cli­mate Lead­ers Sum­mit” was organ­ised by The Cli­mate Group, an inter­na­tion­al lob­by group who rep­re­sent busi­ness inter­ests in tack­ling cli­mate change.

The activists entered the invite-only meet­ing at the DGI Byen com­plex at 11.00am, with a ban­ner say­ing “Cli­mate Group: Lead­ing us into Cli­mate Chaos”. They invad­ed the foy­er and got to the entrance of the meet­ing room, where politi­cians includ­ing Sego­lene Roy­al of France, First Min­is­ter Alex Salmond of Scot­land, Pre­mier Mike Rann of South Aus­tralia, and Prince Albert of Mona­co [1] were address­ing busi­ness lead­ers and a wide
cross-sec­tion of the glob­al media. The activists dis­rupt­ed the meet­ing with loud chants of “Cli­mate Jus­tice not Cli­mate Prof­its” before being seized by secu­ri­ty guards and police and dragged out of the build­ing. The pro­test­ers were placed on the pave­ment out­side the entrance of the build­ing with their ban­ner. How­ev­er, they refused to remain silent and instead dis­played their ban­ner, chant­ed, sang, and read a pre­pared state­ment to the watch­ing media and mem­bers of the pub­lic. The state­ment [full text at the bot­tom of this press release] began:

“We’re here today because cli­mate change is not a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is already respon­si­ble for 300,000 deaths per year — it’s a glob­al emer­gency, not a chance to make mon­ey. The Cli­mate Group sup­ports car­bon trad­ing as the “solu­tion” to the cli­mate cri­sis, but car­bon mar­kets are noth­ing more than an excuse to con­tin­ue to pol­lute as usu­al, while also prof­it­ing from a whole new mar­ket in hot air.”

The Cli­mate Group meet­ing was tar­get­ed not just for the poli­cies being dis­cussed, but in protest at the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic way in which these kind of events give priv­i­leged access to indus­try lob­by­ists. Accord­ing to one of the pro­test­ers, Sara Horne: “It’s not sur­pris­ing that del­e­gates from the Glob­al South have start­ed walk­ing out of the COP15 sum­mit, when the inter­ests of their peo­ple are being side­lined in favour of busi­ness
inter­ests at cosy back­room meet­ings like this one. The Cli­mate Group is push­ing an agen­da based on prof­its, dubi­ous tech­ni­cal fix­es and failed mar­ket ‘solu­tions’. We need real cli­mate solu­tions — food and ener­gy sov­er­eign­ty, local­i­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion and full recog­ni­tion of Indige­nous peo­ples’ and local com­mu­ni­ties’ rights. These solu­tions don’t make any prof­it for indus­try, how­ev­er, so you won’t hear them dis­cussed by the Cli­mate Group.”

The activists were then led away one by one by police and arrest­ed. The last pro­test­er was removed at around 12.00 noon.

ENDS

ACTIVISTS’ STATEMENT IN FULL:

“We’re here today because cli­mate change is not a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is already respon­si­ble for 300,000 deaths per year — it’s a glob­al emer­gency, not a chance to make mon­ey. The Cli­mate Group sup­ports car­bon trad­ing as the “solu­tion” to the cli­mate cri­sis, but car­bon mar­kets are noth­ing more than an excuse to con­tin­ue to pol­lute as usu­al, while also prof­it­ing from a whole new mar­ket in hot air.

We’re here as part of Cli­mate Jus­tice Action [2]. Like you, we have trav­elled to Copen­hagen because of a deeply-held belief that the world must act now to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change. Unlike you, we believe that the solu­tions to cli­mate change must be based on effec­tive­ness and glob­al jus­tice, not the needs of big busi­ness.

The Cli­mate Group presents itself as a net­work of organ­i­sa­tions who are seek­ing equi­table solu­tions to cli­mate change. Yet with mem­bers from the oil, avi­a­tion, and glob­al finance indus­tries [3], it is hard to believe it is free from vest­ed inter­ests. Rela­tion­ships with prof­it-seek­ing multi­na­tion­als are at the very heart of the organ­i­sa­tion.

We want to high­light the deep hypocrisy of this meet­ing. The Cli­mate Group claim that they want to “rec­on­cile devel­op­ment goals and cli­mate pro­tec­tion”, but car­bon trad­ing is sim­ply a way for the Glob­al North to retain its dom­i­nance and effec­tive­ly pri­va­tise the future of our plan­et. Sim­i­lar­ly, the exclu­siv­i­ty of this meet­ing is an excel­lent exam­ple of the way in which cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions favour the rich coun­tries who have caused the cli­mate cri­sis in the first place. Where are the cosy meet­ings with indige­nous peo­ples and South­ern farm­ers’ move­ments? Why are the voic­es of those most affect­ed by cli­mate change being exclud­ed, while busi­ness gets this kind of exclu­sive access? None of this can “rec­on­cile devel­op­ment goals and cli­mate pro­tec­tion”.

Mar­kets fun­da­men­tal­ly can­not solve cli­mate change. Their pur­pose is to max­imise prof­its, not reduce emis­sions. Putting busi­ness con­cerns, rather than social con­cerns, at the fore­front of solv­ing cli­mate change com­plete­ly ignores the fact that cor­po­ra­tions and eco­nom­ic growth have caused this prob­lem in the first place. There are real solu­tions to cli­mate change, but you won’t find them in this room.”

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. The full list of atten­dees was: Steve Howard (CEO, The Cli­mate Group); Helen Clark (Admin­is­tra­tor of UNDP); Prince Albert II of Mona­co; Shai Agas­si (CEO of “Bet­ter Place); Alex Salmond (First Min­is­ter of Scot­land); Pres­i­dent Nasheed (Mal­dives); Pre­mier Jean Charest (Que­bec); Pre­mier Mike Rann (South Aus­tralia); Gov­er­nor Jose Sier­ra (San Pao­lo); Min­is­ter Christa Thoben (North Rhine-West­phalia); Pre­dis­ent Jean-Paul Huchon (Ile-de-France); Pres­i­dent Jose Mon­til­la (Cat­alo­nia); Gov­er­nor Jim Doyle (Wis­con­sin); Pre­mier Greg Selinger (Man­i­to­ba); First Min­is­ter Car­wyn Jones (Wales); Pre­mier Gor­don Camp­bell (British Colom­bia); Pre­mier Eva Aari­ak (Nunavut); Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire (Wash­ing­ton); Min­is­ter Kate Jones (Queens­land); Min­is­ter Erik Van Heljnin­gen (South Hol­land); Min­is­ter John Ger­ret­sen (Ontario); Min­is­ter Dr. Markus Soed­er (Bavaria).

2. http://www.climate-justice-action.org/
3. Mem­bers of The Cli­mate Group include BP, Tesco, Vir­gin Atlantic, HSBC and Bar­clays. See http://www.theclimategroup.org.