TNI’s Agrarian & Environmental Justice programme focuses on the nexus between agrarian and environmental justice in the context of agro(aqua)-industrial development strategies and market-led climate strategies. TNI works to reframe policy discussions in the direction of energy democracy which foregrounds universal access and socialised control; a just energy transition such that the costs are not disproportionately borne by the poor; and local agro(aqua)-ecological production as the best means to secure food sovereignty and sustainable food production. To this end, TNI works with international organisations of small-scale food producers, trade unions, and environmental organisations, as well as collaborating in a number of relevant academic research initiatives.
Results
In 2018, through the production and dissemination of well-used information resources as well as workshops and technical support, TNI contributed to stronger advocacy by the World Forum for Fisher Peoples (WFFP), its affiliates and allies. This included engagements with the Food & Agricultural Office (FAO) on adherence to the Small Fisheries Guidelines adopted in 2014, and in countering the Blue Economy narrative as an attempt to privatise the oceans in the name of addressing climate and sustainability.
Longstanding TNI support for the advocacy of small-scale farmers’ organisations and environmental movements, that agroecology is an important means of securing food sovereignty and the basis for sustainable future farming, received a major boost in 2018. The FAO launched the ‘Scaling up Agroecology Initiative’, which incorporated some of the demands of civil society organisations, and announced an award which will recognize the best enabling policies for agroecology. In Uruguay, the government adopted a new national plan for agroecology after concerted efforts by TNI’s partner REDES.
Meanwhile, TNI also helped to link struggles against austerity with the right to food through publication of a well-researched report on the impact of Troika-prescribed austerity in Greece. The report concluded that EU institutions and the IMF were responsible for violating the right to food, generating considerable media attention in Europe. Follow-up litigation is now being considered by the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
TNI contributed to building greater trust and a common agenda among trade unions and other social movements in Latin America through a conference on energy, environment and labour held in Costa Rica convened by the Trade Union Congress of the Americas (TUCA), with support from TNI and FES Uruguay.
