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Friday, May 2, 2008 |
| WOMEN AND BIODIVERSITY DECLARATION
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South Asian Conference Statement
WOMEN AND BIODIVERSITY DECLARATION
March 12, 2008
Tangail, Bangladesh
Women farmers, local artisans, grassroots' activists, NGOs, representatives from the women's movement, biodiversity networks and concerned citizens from across South Asia – Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka gathered in Tangail Bangladesh during 10 -12 March, 2008 in peace, solidarity and friendship on the occasion of International Women's Day, 2008 to share concerns about the deepening crisis of biodiversity and with that the impacts on
women's lives, community livelihoods and diverse cultures.
Our governments continue to keep women issues INVISIBLE in biodiversity planning both domestically and globally. The text of the global biodiversity treaty – Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) -- recognises the roles of women in preserving biodiversity. The Ninth
Global Conference of Parties (COP9) of the CBD (of which all our governments are parties) will be held in May 2008 in Bonn, Germany. We demand that globally governments reaffirm the key role of women as biodiversity keepers and knowledge holders and pledge to further that in their national and sectoral programmes.
TECHNOLOGY – The violence and violations
The main cause of the increasing disenfranchisement of women is the modern technology employed to further the profits of multinational corporations and private enterprise. Apart from devaluing women's knowledge, several "modern" technologies are doing great harm.
Chemicals are poisoning our food, our water and all forms of life in our farms. The heavily mechanised garment industry is using women as cheap labour and ruining our own local industry, which for centuries has taken advantage of the skill of local women to produce a wide
diversity of extraordinarily beautiful fabrics, particularly in silk and cotton. Our rich heritage of thousands of local seeds is being wiped out by imported so-called high yielding varieties and hybrids.
More recently, the threat is intensified with the widespread application of genetic engineering in agriculture encouraged by our governments in collusion with the biotech majors. Reproductive
technologies for fertility control and infertility treatments are turning women's bodies and body parts into commodities and pose threats to women's health and their social condition. We also decry the increasing use of military technologies in many parts of the South Asian region, including in Afghanistan. Increasing industrialization, dominated by corporate multinationals, means more women are being forced into dangerous trades. Trafficking, prostitution and the trade of body parts have been increasing.
Foreign investment and aid for agriculture have been leading to the takeover of common resources and local knowledge: this knowledge is then repackaged and sold back to the people in patented form. This is happening as part of a process that also imposes superfluous and toxic
technologies, such as the 'Green Revolution package' and now GMOs.
This is creating permanent dependency and a captive market, which means that economic sovereignty is taken away from countries, with women being the most seriously affected.
IDEOLOGY – The enclosures and injustices
Not only is the present corporate-sponsored, government-supported global pattern of production and consumption destroying biological resources, but is also continuing to the destruction and misappropriation of the biodiversity-related traditional knowledge of
our grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters, our midwives, women healers, farmers and artisans. Privatisation of both this women's wisdom and the living matter to which it is linked is putting trade concerns over and above the real needs of peoples. This misappropriation of local resources and knowledge is justified by a new ideology, the ideology of privatization. A new international order is being built on the basis of this ideology, the foundation of which is so-called Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). This ideology has no room for women's traditional knowledge. Every time a woman is removed from her territory, a part of our culture and knowledge dies. In contrast with the enormous support from the authorities for foreign
investment and export-oriented industry, traditional practices, which have been guaranteeing the health and the nutrition of millions of poor people for centuries, receive very little official support.
OUR STRUGGLES AND SURVIVAL – The diversities
Women's cultures, dignities and women's skills -- our songs, our dances, our arts, our crafts, are severely threatened. These jewels, which are of inestimable value in their own right, also play a vital role in preserving biodiversity. If they - and the biodiversity to which they are linked -- are to survive, they need urgent support.
Biodiversity in crises, creates food and farm crises which pushes women into unsafe lives and demeaning livelihoods such as trafficking and prostitution. If our biodiversity-based ways are destroyed, our souls will be shredded and the world will be pushed at an ever increasing pace into environmental disaster.
Never before have our identities were at such risk. Our farmer sisters can not be farmers any more if they do no have seeds. Our traditional health practitioners can not cure and be still revered as healers, if they are denied access to herbs or the habitats of medicinal plants
are destroyed. Our fisher folk sisters can not be called fishers, if they can not fish in their waters. Our tribal sisters can not keep their cultural practises in their society, if they are driven off
their lands.
Our own practice across South Asia has demonstrated that women can take care of their families and the social and natural environment, regenerating commons and improving the health of their families, when they have received some support. Biodiversity and its keepers need to be nurtured as an insurance as tomorrow's threats become today's reality. The region has been particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, such as cyclones, tsunamis and earthquakes. With the climate change crises making the region even more susceptible to god-made calamities, trade adds to the man-made disasters. If life, culture and identities of peoples of South Asia has to not only go on but thrive then both its women and biodiversity warrant due attention.
We call upon the governments in the South Asian region:
-- to support the efforts of small and marginal farmers to promote
ecological agriculture;
-- to protect indigenous knowledge by refusing to patent life forms;
-- to stop the onslaught on natural resources and local ecosystems
through trade—oriented and profit-focused policies;
-- to prevent any so-called "development" programmes that come in the
way of biodiverse farming practices;
--to support women's efforts to maintain and improve crop and forest diversity;
-- to secure agricultural land for women and to put an end to
anything that severs good community relations;
-- to stop imports of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid
seeds &GE seeds;
-- to help us help ourselves to conserve and control our own
indigenous seeds and animal breeds;
-- to put an end to our eviction from our homes and lands;
-- to remember that any assault against food, farm and feed is also a
violence against women.
[ This statement was adopted by 245 women participating in the South
Asia Women and Biodiversity conference held during 10 – 12 March, 2008
in Tangail Bangladesh. The conference was organised by UBINIG,
Narigrantha Prabartana, Nayakrishi Andolon and GRAIN]
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