Shannon Duncan's blog

Right now, government representatives from around the world are gathered in Durban, South Africa, for the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference – better known as the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17).  Historically, these closed-door meetings are where some of the world’s largest polluting countries – including the United States – discuss (and occasionally adopt) global climate policy.  At last year’s COP16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, these governments negotiated the details of polluting and land-grabbing projects like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and other carbon-trading schemes, which are fundamentally about profit – not forests, not people, and not global w

At the request of the community assembly of Amador Hernández in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, Grassroots International along with the Global Justice Ecology Project, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Carbon Trade Watch, the Global Forest Coalition, the Timberwatch Coalition, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project are circulating a communiqué and sign-on letter (posted below) that were written by the assembly

Emerging out of the US Working Group on the Food Crisis, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance will be the first of its kind in the United States. Grassroots International is a member of this new alliance. To celebrate its launch, we encourage people fighting for food justice and sovereignty to take actions during the week of October 10-17.

In solidarity with people all over the world, we call on food justice groups to hold community events that educate, celebrate, and create affordable access to safe, healthy, and culturally appropriate food while turning our food systems into engines for local economic development. We call for actions to build food sovereignty in the US.