The plan
We wanted to organise a global festival and Congress of diversity to serve as a counter weight to the government negotiations of the Rio-Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Protocol on Biosafety in Bonn, Germany, May 2008. We wanted to celebrate biodiversity, the cultural diversity of farming, gardening, and food cultures. We wanted to discuss how the different movements of farmers, consumers, food producers and their communities could cooperate to enrich, share and defend this diversity.
Food and agriculture lie at the very heart of the unprecedented challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity caused by man. Technocratic concepts of agriculture as increasingly rationalised commodification of biomass for global food, feed, fuel and fibre industries are accelerating drivers of the problem. While time is running out to stop irreversible destruction and extinction, key governments, global industries and scientific institutions hold on to a dangerous faith in centralised, technology-driven mega-solutions.
Hope, however, comes from below: communities, local and regional governments, grassroots movements and NGOs have begun to make a real difference in thousands of places in a variety of ways. "Planet Diversity" has brought together representatives from local and regional grassroots movements and institutions working on food and agricultural innovation and reconciliation based upon cultural and biological diversity.
From a global perspective, these seem like small, time-consuming steps. Conserving traditional knowledge and wisdom, attention to details, complexities and interdependencies and respecting the dignity of the people involved may prove essential virtues for survival and sustainability through step by step adaptation and learning. Unfortunately, this usually requires adamant resistance to corruption and the short-term temptations of industrial agriculture as well as arduous battles with companies, governments, landowners and their experts.
The global movement of resistance against genetically modified organisms in agriculture and food has been one of the most successful social movements with respect to food and agriculture in recent years. "GMO-free" has long become an icon and symbol for much more than just the rejection of a specific technology. It encompasses resistance to vertical corporate control of the food chain, against patents on life and the destruction of rural livelihoods and a general critique of industrial agriculture. It combines progressive and conservative, rural and urban, global and regional thinking. It is also a common denominator for a plethora of movements concerning sustainable agriculture: organic and eco-agriculture and gardening; maintenance and defence of agricultural and horticultural diversity; free exchange of seeds and know-how; preservation of traditional farming practices; fair trade; slow food; women’s agricultural networks; globalisation critique; new gardening experiments and health food.
Purpose
1. The overall purpose of "Planet Diversity" was to strengthen the above-mentioned initiatives, movements, and institutions, boost their global co-operation and networking and provide them with a forum to identify common goals and strategies. In particular, it aimed to overcome the view that these are primarily reactive and even backward approaches. In reality, these movements address the most fundamental environmental and social challenges we face and offer true innovation both from the consumer and the producer perspectives; they have the potential to bring about real and constructive change. However, it appears that the public at large does not yet fully understand and appreciate this common goal and many of the actors themselves still lack the feeling of being part of a bigger, common and global approach. Planet Diversity aims to contribute to a "coming out" of these many different initiatives under the common banner of diversity and food sovereignty.
2. Organising such an event parallel to the 4th Meeting of the (141) Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety aimed at impacting and lobbying these important international negotiations, which focused on minimum standards of liability and redress for damages caused by genetically modified organisms. That companies wanting to impose this technology upon farmers and consumers should be held liable for the risks involved should go without saying. However, as the negotiations stand today, public pressure will desperately be needed to achieve any progress on this matter. In addition, we want to send a clear and bold message to the government representatives from around the world that there is no market for GMOs and a majority of citizens (not only in Europe) will continue to resist them.
3. Holding this Congress at the beginning of the Rio-Convention aimed to influence the perception of national and international media and to set the public agenda. Biodiversity is not simply an issue of nature and wilderness protection or the maintenance of an asset to be used (and patented) for industrial and scientific purposes in the future. Natural and cultivated biodiversity is actually a global commons and an issue of cultural diversity and dignity, of global justice and self-determination. The diverse perceptions and traditions of living with biodiversity, this wealth of experience and knowledge are threatened by extinction just as the diversity of organisms itself is threatened by a uniform, industrial and technocratic approach. As the host of the last CBD, in the city of Curitiba, Brazil, put it: "Diversity is in the people"
