Environmental for Food Justice

Mayan bee glyph. Moderator’s Note:   When we last reported on the situation with GMOs in the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán, there were many reasons to celebrate since a federal judge had overturned the approval of GMO soy plantings in this region as a threat to the indigenous beekeepers of the region (see our posts of March 16 2014 and July 24, 2014 ). Those rulings profoundly recognized Mayan indigenous autonomy. As quoted in our report of March last year: According to press reports…(Mar 11, 2014) the court “determined that the effective protection of indigenous rights requires the exercise of certain human rights of a procedural nature, mainly the access to information, participation in decision-making and access to ensure justice.”   Moreover, this decision was based on the violation of the right to free, prior and informed consultation for indigenous peoples protected by Article 2 of the Mexican Constitution and Convention 169 of the ILO (...

Climate change chaos . Beehive Collective .     Part 2 | The panacea of GMOs INDIGENOUS RIGHT LIVELIHOODS and CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 8, 2014 One result of the current wave of transgenic crop failures is that it further undermines the sustainability argument for models that purport to follow a capital-intensive, industrial mass production monoculture strategy. Our global food systems are now more vulnerable precisely because of the widespread adoption of GMO technology and concentrated larger-scaled operations, which combine a decisive lack of structural and species diversity. A significant number of scientific studies show that diversity is the key to resilience in biological systems and social systems. In an article appearing in the prestigious journal, Bioscience , Barbara Lin ( 2011 :183) argues “that climate change could have negative consequences for agricultural production [and] has generated a desire to build resilience into a...