People's Food Sovereignty Forum was held in Rome-Italy from November 13 to 17. Hundreds of representatives from civil society, non governmental and people's movements of small scale food providers, Indigenous Peoples, food and rural workers, youth, women and food insecure city dwellers met in Rome to share and articulate their findings, proposals and actions at local, regional and global levels.
The objective of this Forum is to create humans present and future by declaring their proposal on food sovereignty and decision making at all levels worldwide in which 642 persons from 93 countries representing 450 organizations have participated.
TEAM EDUCATION had a discussion with Kalpana Ambepitiya who represented Global Young Greens -The international Organization for Environment protection and sustainability.
What made you to get involved in this project?
As an Asian, I really believe we need to give our attention to agriculture and its sustainable development which is the only solution for the food crisis. But our youth involvement and interest on agriculture is reducing due to westernization which controls the youth and their lives. And farmers can't cover the investment cost sometimes.
These reasons make agriculture an unwanted industry and it is the image on youth minds too. This causes the parents not to allow their children to study agriculture. They want to see their children in another industry and to be rich. The youth who has an interest also cannot involve in agriculture because it is not recognized by society. Hence we really require to have the right to enter into a decision making process as the future generation on this planet.
What did you discuss?
"I discussed about global youth food security and climate change. At the youth caucus discussion I had to explain about the Asian youth's points of view on agriculture industry in Asia. I started my speech by describing the population of Asia. "Asia accounts for 60% of the current world population and it is growing yet. Many of our country economics depend on agriculture and most of them under the developing category.
Any interesting thing happened?
Yeah Sure..! A wonderful thing happened at the youth caucus final declaration discussion. By mistake they included one sentence explaining "Access to food is extremely important in conflict zones" and they added Sri Lanka as an example. As a responsible person of Sri Lanka I stood up against this statement and explained "it is insulting my country's goodwill because Sri Lanka is not a conflict zone anymore. I can say it respectively and I have the right to tell it internationally since I am a citizen of Sri Lanka and I am living there. Therefore none has the right to discuss about my country's situation than me". In that way I have protected my country's good name which was misleading to the world food summit 2009.
About the final declaration?
The final declaration included four sub topics such as who decides, Ecological Food provision, control over food producing resources and civil society commitments. Suggestions and solutions from 642 people from 93 countries was presented to the World Food Summit on November 18 2009. Now we look forward to see their response. |
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