Background

Rural people’s movements are rising to confront unprecedented global hunger, displacement, and environmental and climate destruction. They are holding into account imperialism – the global empire of the wealthiest countries’ finance oligarchs and their monopoly corporations. We need to continuously strengthen and expand these movements for truly deep-rooted policy reforms to take place and address the multiple crises plaguing the world’s peoples, including the rural sectors, which are most vulnerable.

The Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice builds on these movements’ current and previous campaigns, such as the Global People’s Summit for Just, Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Food Systems and Fight for our Future. It aims to physically mobilize tens of thousands of rural communities and advocates for their rights and interests across all global regions and around the inter-related issues of food, land, and climate justice.

Through the Caravan, we will widely popularize our vision of a world without imperialist domination and with genuinely sustainable, pro-people development in terms of policies and programs related to food, land and resources, and climate. The Caravan will provide a platform to forge greater solidarity among rural peoples and their movements for their ongoing struggles and campaigns to assert their rights and demand accountability from governments and corporations.

The Caravan will culminate at the UN’s so-called Summit of the Future in September 2024. The UN Secretary-General proposed the high-level gathering to “forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like”. The world’s working peoples, including the rural sectors, must take an active and leading role in shaping the future of the people and planet. We should not allow big corporate interests and the governments and multilateral institutions that represent their agenda to continue to dictate the narratives and policy direction of our food, land, and climate.

Overall design

For 2023, the Caravan will build up to the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the UN Climate Change Conference happening in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), on Nov 30 to Dec 12. COP28 provides an excellent platform to draw global attention from the public, mass media, and policymakers to the rural people’s demands to address the interconnected issues of hunger, land and resource grabs, and the climate crisis.

With leaders and members of rural peoples’ movements from different countries, the Caravan will kick off in the Philippines around the third week of October 2023. That will signal the start of similar caravans or actions in various countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other regions throughout November.

Participating countries shall organize a two or three-day caravan and combine it with other activities (e.g., conference or a public forum, educational or cultural festival, etc.) to gather and reach out to the largest number of people possible, including allies or supporters from other sectors. These local events shall serve as the Caravan’s central platform to raise awareness, organize, and mobilize rural peoples and their supporters around our calls on food, land, and climate justice. Each country caravan will call attention to the issues and demands of the local communities related to land, food, and climate justice and highlight the rural peoples’ vision of genuine development and the future they need, as gathered through different community mobilizations (see below).

Community mobilizations and national people’s declarations

At the national and local levels, the Caravan will mobilize and bring together various rural communities to discuss their shared vision for a just, equitable, healthy and sustainable food system–or a future that truly advances the rights, interests, and aspirations of the rural peoples. The Caravan will organize community consultations to highlight local struggles and campaigns and the communities’ concrete policy demands asserting their rights to food, land, and climate justice, captured through a national people’s declaration. These declarations will make clear policy directions on food, land, and climate justice that rural peoples from different countries demand–as opposed to the “future” being envisioned by big corporations. The Caravan aims to bolster the ongoing efforts of movements and advocates of rural peoples to radically transform global food and agriculture, such as the work towards an international convention on food sovereignty.

Public forums, rallies, festivals, and other mass actions that call attention to rural peoples’ struggles, campaigns, and demands will also form part of community mobilizations. The Caravan will build on the outcomes of the community consultations and mobilizations, as it gears up for mobilizing rural peoples to forward their vision of the future of food systems in response to the UN Summit of the Future in 2024. Solidarity actions to further strengthen, consolidate, and expand the global rural peoples’ movements as they build a future without hunger, dispossession, and destruction will also be sustained.

A Million Voices for Food, Land, & Climate Justice

The Caravan will organize a petition campaign addressed to policymakers and negotiators attending COP28. Dubbed “A Million Voices for Food, Land, & Climate Justice,” the petition campaign will be held in the months leading up to the UN climate talks. It contains the specific demands of rural peoples concerning the climate negotiations, stressing the assertion of peoples’ rights to food, land and resources, and a healthy planet while demanding accountability from big corporations behind the climate crisis.

Aside from collecting online and physical signatures for the petition, the #AMillionVoices campaign will include various forms of public mobilization, action, and solidarity to educate the public on the need to end fossil-fuelled food systems and forward the Four Pillars of just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems as a climate solution. The petition will be presented at the Global People’s Speak Out during COP28.

COP28: Global Peoples’ Speak Out on Food, Land, & Climate Justice

Representatives of rural peoples who organized caravans in various countries will gather in Dubai for the Global People’s Speak Out on Food, Land, & Climate Justice. The Speak Out will present the petition and give prominence to the outcomes of the community consultations and other activities under the Caravan. It will produce a People’s Pledge to reaffirm the commitment to build and expand rural peoples’ movements for food, land, and climate justice beyond COP28.

General timeline

2023
March 29	Day of the Landless: Public announcement of the Caravan and call for solidarity
May onwards	Community mobilizations and national people’s declarations; #AMillionVoices campaign
July 24	UN Food Systems Stocktaking Moment – Global Day of Action
September	UN SDG Summit – Global Day of Action
October 16	World Hunger Day: Public announcement of the details of the Caravan and plans for COP28
October to November	Caravans in various countries
Nov 30-Dec 12	COP28: Global People’s Speak Out
2024
January onwards	Community mobilizations and national people’s declarations
September	UN Summit of the Future (Caravans TBA)

Organizers

The Caravan is jointly organized by the following: International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS), Asian Peasants Coalition (APC), Indigenous Peoples’ Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS), Peoples Rising for Climate Justice (PRCJ), PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP), and the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN). ###