During the past two years, agrofuels have been a top advocacy priority for the federation, cutting across almost all of our program areas. During this period, more than 35 FoEI groups in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, El Salvador, England Wales & N Ireland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Malta, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Uganda, Uruguay and US, worked in solidarity to achieve this goal.

accomplishments

We received a lot of press attention and succeeded in helping to shift public opinion on agrofuels, not just in Europe but throughout producer countries. The fact that increasing attention has been paid to food production, because of the global food crisis, meant that we were presented with an important opportunity to raise concerns about competition between crops for food and crops for fuel (although we approached this issue cautiously as we believe that the food crisis is driven by many significant factors, including speculation in agricultural commodities, and false solutions such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and increased dependence on artificial inputs to agriculture).

Our various activities also reinforced national and regional alliances with social movements fighting for food sovereignty and resisting large scale monocultures, raised FoEI’s profile in debates about energy and climate justice, and contributed to the implementation of FoEI’s Agrofuels campaign internationally.

FoEI has also consolidated the joint work with social movements and organizations around Agribusiness. This will allow the Federation to strengthen their resistance strategies, as well as the promotion of solutions, throughout the joint fight with our allies.

FoE groups have produced materials (documented studies, briefings, fact sheets and websites in different languages, and short films) and have made strategic use of the internet for media outreach and advocacy work to fight corporate control over food systems. This corporate control includes monopolistic technologies such as the production and commercialization of GMOs, agrofuels, industrial fishing and aquaculture. For example:

• FoE EWNI’s Food Chain Campaign and report “What's feeding our food?” (December 2008), which highlights the environmental and social impacts of the intensive livestock sector.
• FoE Australia’s Real Food Campaign.
• FoE Uruguay’s influential research work and publications on agribusiness such as: “Agronegocios Ltda. Nuevas modalidades de colonialismo en el Cono Sur de América Latina”; and their documentary: Soberanía Alimentaria en marcha. Recuperación del Molino Santa Rosa.
• The report “Malaysian palm oil - green gold or green wash?” (October 2008), which reveals that Malaysian palm oil exported for use in food, biofuels and cosmetics is far from 'green', contrary to claims by Malaysian palm oil producers.
  

These materials are helping to mobilize people; they help European consumers to make informed choices; help to ensure that social and environmental issues are taken into account by companies; mobilize the public and decision-makers to support changes that will help to build a more equitable North-South relationship in a key area affecting biodiversity, food security and poverty reduction; and contribute to the debate about Europe’s overall levels of consumption.

The EU is one of the world’s biggest importers of agriculture commodities, to supply a range of needs, from the food on our plates to animal feed for our livestock. In addition, in response to demands to reduce dependence on oil imports, and in order to minimize climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions, EU and national energy policies are now resulting in the rapid increase of a new commodity – agrofuels.

This has raised new and complex challenges for developing countries that are expanding agricultural production to meet Europe’s demand. In 2008, FoE groups in Europe (Austria Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England Wales & N Ireland, Estonia, France, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain) developed a campaign called “Feeding and Fuelling Europe” to raise public awareness in the EU about the impacts of the food commodities trade, on food security, rural livelihoods and the environment in developing countries. The campaign provides opportunities, solutions and recommendations for citizens, policy makers and industry. The work is coordinated with national campaign activities aimed at fighting agribusiness and promoting food sovereignty in FoE groups in Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines), Africa (Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).

what happened?

Federación Amigos de la Tierra Argentina / Friends of the Earth Argentina is collaborating with other organizations around the word who have formed a new and vibrant international movement challenging the corporate control of this precious resource, and defending water as a public good and an inalienable right.

Visitors to the park on those days were able to enjoy ten different activities, all of which had been designed to convey messages about healthy natural water and some of the problems associated with its management. Professional artists gave performances using stilts and juggling, magic and mime, violins and flutes, murals, cartoons, stories and more, and all the activities were carefully sequenced to allow visitors arriving at different times to enjoy them all. Extra information was available in many different forms too – oral, written and illustrated.

what changed?

Visitors to the park enjoyed finding out about people’s right to water in a novel way. They came away from AGUARTE inspired and informed about the use of and access to water, water quality, community management, and the sale of water. They also found out about the social, ecological, political and economic dimensions of water use. This project in Argentina is another example of activities coordinated within the Blue October campaign by FoE member groups in Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Malta, Denmark, Finland, France, UK, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Nigeria, and FoE affiliate groups like the Council of Canadians and the Corporate Europe Observatory, effectively contributing to build the movement of people demanding access to water as a human right.

lessons learned

A comprehensive and colorful 35-minute audio-visual record of the event was made, for other groups to use and learn from. This has already been shared with other organizations around the world, when it was shown at the International Conference of Affected People in Honduras, November 2008.

Ministers from Austria, Germany, Norway, Malta, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were presented with messages from young people from over 30 countries. The messages collected by Young Friends of the Earth Europe urged politicians to take urgent and drastic action to secure the future of their generation from the worst impacts of global warming.

Youth climate advocates wrapped a giant globe in messages and asked governments to 'wrap up' a just global solution to climate change.