Just Transitions to Sustainable Alternatives

Sustainable Alternatives

Promoting a fair and viable transition to the use of alternatives to extremely hazardous pesticides used in public health and agriculture.

Our vision is the creation of local, national and global food and farming systems that protect community and individual health, advance food sovereignty, and rely on precaution and democratic control.

Our goal is to strengthen and support the creation, further development, adoption, and widespread recognition of equitable, socially just and environmentally sustainable approaches to pest management in California, the US, and internationally.

PAN’s Current Priorities:

• We are promoting the adoption of sustainable alternatives to extremely hazardous, “Bad Actor” pesticides.
• We are working to transform domestic and international development policies and aid to support equitable and environmentally sustainable farming, in our role as authors and facilitators of the United Nations International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development.
• We are helping build marketplace incentives to reward farmers for good practice by negotiating a new U.S. domestic fair trade label that includes farm labor standards.
• We are working to promote food sovereignty in the US and around the world, in partnership with Pesticide Action Network centers in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

Adopting Sustainable Alternatives

PANNA promotes the adoption of sustainable alternatives to Bad Actor pesticides, especially organochlorine, organophosphate, and fumigant pesticides. We document the contribution of agroecology to sustainable development (PDF), profile the successes of local organic farmers and provide technical support on alternatives to our pesticide-focused campaigns. We are also helping build linkages between the pesticide activist and sustainable farming communities, to strengthen our respective campaigns (these include, for example, banning specific pesticides and reforming the US Farm Bill to support organic farming and community food security).

Shifting Domestic and International Policies and Investments towards Sustainable Agriculture

PANNA is working to ensure that USDA and USAID policies and investments support a transition towards more equitable and sustainable food and agricultural systems at home and abroad.

Current work includes:

• Providing input to the USDA's development of a new "Roadmap for Agricultural Research, Education and Extension" -- see comments to USDA, submitted by PANNA and other groups on 30 May 2009 (PDF)

• Mobilizing public and Congressional resistance to the provision in Senate Bill 384 (Global Food Security Act) mandating that U.S. taxpayer dollars go towards GMO research to "aid" developing countries. See April 23, 2009 PANUPS: "Get GE research out of foreign aid," and April 16 press release.

• Campaigning with the US Working Group on the Food Crisis — a coalition of environmental, labor, health, faith-based and hunger groups, of which PANNA is a founding member. Together we are crafting a grassroots and policy-oriented campaign that aims to build U.S. public support for and pressure on policymakers to transition towards safe, clean, healthy and green food and agricultural systems, at home and abroad.

• Promoting implementation of the findings of the UN's International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has been a major effort led by the United Nations that brought together governments and civil society, including farmers, NGOs, the private sector and research institutions, in a three-year evaluation of agriculture around the world and the policies and institutions that affect it. Its report was released in April 2008. The IAASTD asked the question:

“How can we reduce hunger and poverty, improve livelihoods and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development through the generation, access and use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology?”

The UN Agriculture Assessment presented a unique opportunity for civil society to help shift national and international policies, as well as billion dollar flows of donor development aid towards equitable and environmentally sustainable food and farming systems.

• Evaluated local and Indigenous knowledge and innovation on an equal footing with formal “scientific” knowledge;

• Provided technical and policy options to support a shift from harmful agricultural systems towards sustainable and equitable agriculture; and

• Highlighted the need for a fair and just trade and economic policy environment.

 

Rewarding Excellence on the Farm in the Marketplace: Domestic Fair Trade

PAN North America has joined farmworkers in their efforts to introduce labor standards in a Domestic Fair Trade label for food grown and sold within the United States. Negotiations for the development of a domestic fair trade label address social justice for farmworkers, farmers, and consumers in the production of food that is healthy and socially just.

PAN actively supports the participation of farmworkers so that their voices are heard in the development process of a Domestic Fair Trade (DFT) label. In 2007 PAN participated in a farmworker conference on Dometic Fair Trade that formulated guidelines for the development and implementation of a DFT label.

Advancing a Vision of Food Sovereignty

PAN defines food sovereignty as: the freedom and power of people, their communities and nations to assert and realize the right to food and to produce food in a sustainable way, and to fight the power of corporations and other forces that destroy people’s food production and consumption systems.

We are working with PAN centers in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Europe and Latin America to advance food sovereignty platforms and policies in the Global South, or developing world. We are working together to create a training module for people in the global North, including the U.S. and Europe, to learn more about food sovereignty, peasant farmer movements around the world and how we can advocate for increased global fairness and sustainability as part of U.S. and Canadian agricultural policy.