Promoting Farmers' Rights in ADB's NRM Projects and Investments

Convention on Biological Diversity's Cartagena ProtocolImage by _ Krystian PHOTOSynthesis (wild-thriving) _ via Flickr

By Elpidio Peria

For quite some time, even as farmers are asked about the matter of natural resources management, some have said this as an issue for the governments only though it cannot be denied there are also active groups of farmers worldwide who have fought for the recognition of their rights, especially on the farmer's right to own the land, especially at the international level. Indeed, farmers have rights, not only from Art. 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources on Food and Agriculture of the FAO which talks about Farmers' Rights, but also from the UN Human Rights instruments, which includes the Right to Food.

With unabated biodiversity loss, climate change, lack of funds of developing country governments in Asia-Pacific, and the uncritical tendency to use modern biotechnologies to meet food security challenges, it is important to ensure and institutionalize the rights of farmers on matters relating to agriculture and natural resources management, more importantly on their rights to land, which is best concretized by the recognition of farmers’ right to land and to directly manage productive resources. This is the only way to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth.

In the context of a tendency to use modern biotechnologies to foster productivity improvements in the farm, the rights of farmers are also an important complement to the forthcoming international instrument shepherded into completion by the Convention on Biological Diversity's Cartagena Protocol, the Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress from Damage caused by GMOs - shielding the small farmers from liability or enabling them to claim for redress and compensation for crop loss and any untoward effects on their health and their farming environment.

A clear articulation of what the rights of farmers are also ensures that farmers, along with indigenous peoples and local farming communities, have clear rights to recognition as well as to benefit-sharing from the uses of plant and animal genetic resources. It also guarantees their participation and decision-making on matters that relate to their well-being, including access to financial and other resources and technology. Ultimately however, the rights of farmers to manage natural resources are best guaranteed by the recognition and institutionalization of their rights to land and productive resources in agriculture. This should be the fundamental principle where any initiative of ADB on NRM should stand. If the ADB cannot change its ways now to address this, then it should be considered a failure.

oOo

Natural Resources Management in ADB

Natural Resources Management in Asian Development BankImage by Virens (Latin for greening) via Flickr

By Elpidio Peria

Natural Resources Management or NRM is nowhere in the priorities or core areas of operation of ADB's Long-Term Strategy (2008-2020) or Strategy 2020. In that document, the environment is next to infrastructure, but it deals mainly with issues relating to urban environment issues, such as climate mitigation, livable cities, etc. The ADB's own Evaluation Report in 2008 however states that Strategy 2020 has placed the sustainable management of natural resources high in its agenda particularly as it seeks to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth in developing member countries (DMCs).

The ADB's Agriculture and Natural Resources Research (ANRR) agenda derives from ADB's own 1995 paper on Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy, which has the following items : (1) developing remunerative farming systems for poor farmers; (2) enhancing income and living standards of women; (3) improving sustainable management of agriculture and natural resources; (4) enhancing the productivity of agriculture; (4) enhancing the capacity of national agriculture research stations (NARS); and (5) conducting research on socioeconomics and public policy.

ADB's own assessment of the current challenges in Asia-Pacific include : population growth and rapid urbanization, increasing competition for resources, trade liberalization and globalization of markets, including globalization of agricultural food systems where the specific challenge now is on the ability of small producers to overcome the barriers posed by concerns of food safety and quality standards and inevitably, climate change. But the real key challenges of the region relate to increasing poverty and inequality, worsening environmental degradation, growing competition for resources and climate change, all of which are actually outlined as the challenges confronted by the Strategy 2020.

The ADB's Operations Evaluation Department in a 2008 report recommended that the current ANRR Policy must be updated, to align it more closely with Strategy 2020, in addition to giving the usual support for short- and long-term research, restoring the level of ANRR funding such that it will be at US$5million per specific technical assistance and lastly, to promote the wider utilization of ANRR products.

Before CSOs may be persuaded to support these recommendations at their face value, they, and the public in general should be aware of the following :

1) for now, ADB has categorized agriculture under "Other Areas of Operation" when the bulk of Asia's poor are in the agriculture sector (including fisheries and forestry). In the ADB's 2009 Annual Report, "Agriculture and Food Security" is categorized as "Cross-Cutting Initiatives", with only 7 loans allotted with a measly $443 million in 2009, including ANR as a whole. This is a dismal failure, considering that ADB targeted to increase its lending for agriculture and rural development to more than US$2 billion in 2009

If ADB is serious in actualizing its vision of “inclusive” economic growth, agriculture should be part of its Core Area of Operation. Even in the Environment core area, the key areas there have nothing to do with forestry, fisheries and agriculture which comprise the area/sector of "Natural Resource". It should not be that ADB's notion of environment be limited only to the urban environment, as that is not where the bulk of Asia-Pacific's poor live.

2) the ADB's support for short- and long- term research, and even restoring the level of ANRR funding at US$5 million should be reconsidered. The ADB's ANRR investments are virtually allocated to the International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs), specifically the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

What must be asked here is : what kinds of projects has the CGIAR implemented using the technical assistance money from the ADB? The CGIAR has been mainly responsible for the environmental, social and economic problems attributed to its active push for the Green Revolution and now with this recommendation that the bulk of ADB's support to the CGIAR are "restricted funds" - which means that the funds have to be spent exclusively for specific projects that the ADB agreed to fund, we have to ask, what are those projects that are allocated with "restricted funds" from the ADB? From ADB's own documents, we can see that most of these projects are in advanced rice genomics, biotechnology, seeds extension programs, etc. involving partnerships between the CGIAR and NARS and increasingly with the private sector.  The ADB believes that the future of ANRR should be based on public-private partnership (PPP), but this open push for this kind of collaboration should be reviewed. For example, IRRI's PPP, the Hybrid Rice Consortium, the public and the political leaders of the region should be made aware of the details of auctioning out the hybrid parentals to the highest bidders from the private sector.

Another aspect of this research support relates to the National Agriculture Research Systems (NARS), which the ADB does not fund directly, unless one of these NARS, like, for example, PhilRice, has a long-time partnership with the CGIAR or the project will involve co-implementation with the CGIAR. ADB says this is done to reduce project transaction costs and to avoid thinly spreading already limited resources for ANRR, thus they want to deal only with the CGIAR.

The problem with this set-up is that the NARS cannot then develop their capacity to do agricultural R&D tailored for the specific needs and situation of the country and their farmers; what is worse, they will now become eternally dependent on the CGIAR for expertise and technical capacity since that's the only way for them to access funds from the ADB.

3) The capacity building priorities on ADB's ANRR are on advanced genomics, applied genomics (marker development), and seeds extension training for farmers, which are what the CGIAR capacity building is all about. To address the concerns on the lack of participatory approaches in CGIAR research, ADB funded the Consortium for Unfavorable Rice Environments (CURE) in 2002 which uses participatory modes of problem identification and solution.  The ADB also boasts of supporting the CGIAR's project promoting zero tillage in wheat and rice production which they say has reduced the use of diesel by more than 50 liters per hectare, but silent on the increased use of herbicides in zero-till systems.

This kind of top-down capacity building priorities, palliative participatory approaches in agricultural research, and technology fixes to the problems of farmers should not be continued. It must be noted that it was the ADB that funded the development and promotion of hybrid rice seeds in the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, etc. under a program coordinated by IRRI.  It was ADB too that funded the Asia Maize Biotechnology Network in 1998 which bore the fruit of commercially introducing GM corn in the Philippines. These are projects that has leveraged private sector investments in rice, corn and wheat in Asia. Who has benefited from the foray of these giant companies, definitely not the poor farmers whose numbers have not been reduced.

The Philippine Organic Agriculture Act, a Measure for Environmental Protection, by Indirection?

Philippine Organic Agriculture ActImage via Wikipedia

GREEN FIELDS
Elpidio V. Peria
18 June 2010
The Philippine Organic Agriculture Act, a Measure for  Environmental Protection, by Indirection ?
Just today, a long-time environmental activist-friend sent me a text message that Republic Act 10068 or the Organic Agriculture Act of 2010, as it is otherwise called,  has just been published, in the national daily Philippine Star, in its page B-11.
Counting fifteen days from today, or on 3 July 2010, this law shall have taken effect all over the country.  Along with other bills passed into law by the recently-adjourned 14th Congress, this is one of the most awaited measure  by most advocacy groups, especially those espousing organic agriculture, farmers' groups pushing for the upliftment of the livelihood of farmers, consumers' groups who have just been recently awakened to the  benefits of eating pesticide-free farm produce, including those that are not contaminated by genetically-modified organisms, and perhaps even environmental activists who consider themselves protectors of the environment, or of clean air, clean water and a healthy functioning ecosystem.
Wait a minute, you would say, why would the latter group be excited in  this kind of legislation when this measure is supposed to promote, what can be considered a booming part of the agriculture sector whose rate of growth is much faster now, compared to conventional agriculture ? As naysayers would say : what is this law doing masquerading as an environmental protection measure,  it cannot be many things all at once to so many people, and to environment, and to agriculture and to the economy, in general.
But it seems the new law has managed to do just that.
The Declaration of Policy in Sec. 2 of the Act makes it explicit that : “It is hereby declared the policy of the State to promote, propagate, develop further and implement the practice of organic agriculture in the Philippines that will cumulatively condition and enrich the fertility of the soil, increase farm productivity, reduce pollution and destruction of the environment, prevent the depletion of natural resources, further protect the health of farmers, consumers and the general public, and save on imported farm inputs.”
Contrary to what the title of this column indicates, this law is an outright or direct environmental protection measure, not only as indicated by the underlined phrases from the law's Declaration of Policy but also from sec. 13 of the law itself, which reads :
Sec. 13- Organic Agriculture and the Protection of the Environment – The National Organic Agriculture Board (NOAB) shall constantly devise and implement ways and means not only of  producing organic fertilizers and other farm inputs and needs on and off the farm but also of helping  to alleviate the problems of industrial waste and community garbage disposal through appropriate  methods of sorting, collecting and composting. The BAFPS ( or the Bureau of Agriculture, Food and Product Standards) shall conduct continuing studies , xxx to advise local governments, from the  barangay to the provincial level, on the collection and disposal of garbage and waste in such a way as  to provide raw materials for the production of organic fertilizer and other farm inputs.
While this provision can be interpreted to mean that the first law passed by GMA in her then heady days in 001 as a newly-installed President via People Power II,  the Solid Waste Management Act, or Republic Act 9003, has largely failed, (for, if the law had only succeeded, this provision would be unnecessary) then it is time for another approach to solving this seemingly intractable problem of solid waste, and presto, here it  is now -  organic agriculture -  a savior for our collective sins on our modern tendency to dispose mindlessly what we use day in or day out. .
But, how then can this law be applied, to, for example,  mining, which is out and out destructive as an environment-friendly activity notwithstanding the claim of MGB officials about responsible mining, and which, has blanketed almost all environmentally-rich areas of the Philippines ?
Or how about aerial spraying, which has spread  specks of harmful chemical all over where there are plantations, of mainly, banana, for now,  but inadvertently affecting the people living nearby in these
plantation sites?
Or how about genetically-modified organisms, of which the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines, under the DOST is currently undergoing multi-location trials of genetically-engineered eggplant
(Remember this plant in Tito Vic  and Joey's ditty/spoof of the Beatles' The Long and Winding Road : “Talong at bagoong, ang ulam namin ngayon, talong at bagoong, ulam buong taon!”)  in order to, for the first time, feed it to us, directly? This law however subscribes to International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (IFOAM) standards of organic agriculture, thus it even explicitly states  that GMOs are not contemplated by the law when it talks about biotechnology, which is  one of its approaches to achieve its aims.
The implementor of the law, the BAFPS (Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Product Standards)  of the  Department of Agriculture (DA), is in a quandary on this issue, that is why, the DA should not be promoting and regulating biotechnology, all at the same time as it is in obvious conflict of interest, but that's another story for another write-up.
It must be noted that this Act has been passed, almost in parallel with similar local issuances, like the one in  Davao City and just very recently, in Negros Oriental Province.
What, then, can environmental advocates do, to strengthen the law'spotential as an environmental protection measure?
The law provides the answer in its sec. 26 (a), which penalizes any person who willfully and deliberately obstructs the development or propagation of organic agriculture, or the manufacture, production, sale or use of organic agriculture inputs.
The potential of the law as an environmental measure lies in the ability of advocates not only in LGUs where there are Organic Agriculture ordinances but in all areas of the Philippines, to stop any environmentally-harmful activity, such as the ones mentioned above, by invoking said sec. 26 (a). Of course, if one has not engaged in organic agriculture yet, or is just planning to, that can be another question that will be known later if someone litigates on precisely this issue, or perhaps the drafting of the IRR of the law can clarify that.
Of course, organic agriculture advocates would insist, and this goes without saying, the basic allure of organic agriculture is its being kind to the environment, and recent studies bear this out. Recently, the Third World Network Information Service on Sustainable Agriculture, reported studies by two organic agriculture research institutions – the Rodale Institute in the US and the FiBL, or Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland  - which found that organic agriculture is well placed to mitigate as well as help farmers adapt to climate change.
   
These research institutions said that the mitigation potential, or ability to reduce over-all greenhouse gas emissions, amount to about 9–13 percent of the global total. This is due to its significant capacity to sequester or capture carbon in soils. Organic agriculture also reduces emissions as it emits less nitrous oxide (due to lower nitrogen input), less nitrous oxide and methane from biomass waste burning (as burning is avoided), and requires less energy, mainly due to zero chemical fertilizer use.  At the same time that this is happening, organic agriculture increases soil organic matter, and improves soil quality thereby reducing vulnerability of farm areas to extreme weather events. Furthermore, the high diversity of crops and farming activities in organic agriculture, together with its lower input costs, reduce economic risks for farmers.
 Indeed, this law has potential, and it is high time that not only organic agriculture advocates know that.
oOo