WUNRN
Argentina - Rural Women Speak Out on Climate Change
By Marcela Valente
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RESISTENCIA,
Argentina, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) - Rural and indigenous women in northern
Argentina, hit hard by the expanding agricultural frontier, deforestation and
the spraying of toxic pesticides, spoke out about their problems and set forth
proposals for discussion at the next global summit on climate change.
They did so
at the Women's Hearing on Gender and Climate Justice 2011-
These
women are on the front line of indiscriminate logging, erosion, loss of
biodiversity, drought, floods and pesticide pollution. They are all too
familiar with the impact of the productive model that is exacerbating global
warming, and they are demanding a stop to it.
"When
the trees are cut down, we lose the rain, we lose everything, we are left
without water, without firewood and without crops," said Basilea
Barrientos from Colonia Aborigen, in
"When
the forests are felled, the wind blows the soil away, cold and heat become
extreme, campesinos (small farmers) emigrate and agribusiness companies
fumigate us," Jorgelina Córdoba, of the Indigenous Campesino Assembly of
Formosa province, told IPS.
Córdoba is
well aware of what she is talking about. A widow with 11 children, she lives in
the place where she was born, Bañado La Estrella (a wetland created by annual
flooding of the
"We
know how to raise cattle on arid land, but now the campesinos are leaving, and
the trees on their lands are being felled to make way for soy," she
complained.
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Soy is now
Cándida
Fernández of the Formosa Campesino Movement told IPS that in her village, Loma
Senés, children are being born with malformations caused by the toxic
herbicide. Local people are also being affected by the spread of cattle
feedlots.
Unlike
traditional ranching in Argentina, in which cattle range freely and feed on
natural pasture, expansion of soy crops has caused cattle to be raised in
feedlots where the animals are confined in pens and fed on grains. "The
smell is unbearable, and they are only metres away from houses and the
school," Fernández said.
Next to the
fields where small farmers grow crops using sustainable techniques, waste
channels from feedlots carry endless flows of animal dung, urine, and even
carcasses.
The hearing
was convened by Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP),
a coalition of NGOs, and the Feminist Task Force,
affiliated to GCAP, which works on underlining poverty as a women's issue and
calls for "gender equality to end poverty."
Similar hearings and tribunals will be held
in October and November in another 14 countries in Latin America, Africa and
In
The hearing
was presided over by a tribunal made up of one member of INDES and two women
from organisations affiliated to GCAP.
A report
documenting the women's testimonies and proposals will be drawn up and sent to
the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (COP 17), to be held in
Delssin said
climate justice is about highlighting the fact that some groups are more
vulnerable to climate change than others. Among the more vulnerable groups are
women, and especially rural women. "They have to walk further to fetch
water, firewood, and craft materials, and they struggle to care for their sick
children who get respiratory illnesses from exposure to pollution," she
said.
But women
are also the people who are most knowledgeable about the problem, and they are
part of the solution, so they should participate when decisions are taken about
measures and financing for adaptation and mitigation of the effects of climate
change. In fact, several women brought valuable experiences of mitigation to
the hearing, such as teachers in rural schools in
Lucrecia
Marcelli, head of the
Maria Amelia
Bertoldi, from a primary school near Pampa del Infierno, in
Examples of
eco-friendly agricultural production were also presented, for instance by
Zunilde Poggio of the Bella Vista Ecological Association, in a rural area in
"The
goals of agroecology are food sovereignty, respect for biodiversity and natural
resources, avoidance of toxic chemicals and of air, water and soil pollution.
And it is not large-scale farming, it does not use hired labour but instead
encourages families to stay rooted to the land," she told IPS.
However,
this form of environmentally friendly farming is under threat. "We have
three large rice plantations nearby, where they use pesticides, and we have not
been able to get the 1994 law against toxic agricultural chemicals
enforced," Poggio complained.
"We
must change the large-scale agricultural production model, which causes
pollution and employs only a few people. That is what summits like
And it is
the Durban summit that the dozens of rural women - whose meeting in Resistencia
was held just ahead of the International Day of Rural Women, to be celebrated
Oct. 15 - are determined to reach with their proposals and testimonies about
the impacts they are already feeling on their environment, production and way
of life.