You are here:
This campaign highlights the destructive environmental and social impacts of unsustainable resource use in the global North and South. We are seeking to defend community territories, protect land rights and increase awareness of corporations' agendas, strategies, abuses and violations.
Francisco Morosini, Argentina - 8th placeAn elderly woman holds on to the fence separating her land, where she rears goats, from the advancing soya plantations, in Cordoba, Argentina.For centuries, communities have been intimidated to abandon – or forcibly removed from – their land in a seemingly endless battle to control natural resources. Today, these problems still occur and are manifesting in more direct and disturbing ways: multinational corporations occupy large swaths of community land that provides critical supplies for local populations in order to extract profitable resources – including crops for agrofuels, food, carbon offsets or minerals – for the benefit of often quite distant national and international elites.
Driven by greed and materialism, the destruction of local communities and their environments often results in the violation of both human and community rights. We have seen increased militarization and criminalization of communities who resist the appropriation of their communal lands. We have also witnessed severe environmental degradation and the destruction of natural commons for the longevity of communities.
More: Read our report on Land Grabbing in Uganda
More: Watch this true story about resistance to Land Grabbing
This system continues to perpetuate the gross inequity in the distribution of natural commons (healthy ecosystems, water and air), create a poor underclass in both Global North and South, all of which further divide our world in to the haves and have-nots. Meanwhile, the consumers of these ill-begotten resources are not necessarily happier as a result of their consumption.
This campaign seeks to stop the destructive consumption race by creating, protecting and enforcing community and individual rights to land and their commons. It will also challenge the current unsustainable consumptive patterns of elites and target specific commodities with the aim of significantly reducing their consumption.
Find out more about what we're doing.
Image: An elderly woman holds on to the fence separating her land, where she rears goats, from the advancing soya plantations, in Cordoba, Argentina. Photo by Fransisco Morosini