Asia regional webinar: Unsustainable livestock farming and its alternatives in a time of COVID-19

27 Apr 2020
Zoom meeting (in English), 9:00 am India Standard Time

[Recording available here]

 

The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) invites you to participate in a regional webinar focusing on unsustainable livestock farming and its alternatives in Asia on 27th April, part of a series of webinars taking place throughout April and May. These webinars build on three regional open dialogues that GFC recently hosted, starting with an African regional dialogue in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in September 2019 which took place back-to-back with the 3rd African Animal Welfare Conference. The Latin American dialogue was then held in Santiago de Chile at the People’s Summit in December 2019 and lastly, the Asian regional dialogue took place in February 2020 in Bogor, Indonesia.

These events highlighted commonalities between the different regions, as well as dynamics specific to them. The extent to which agro-industrial livestock and feedstock production is responsible for deforestation, biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, land grabbing, rights violations for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and health issues in both urban and rural contexts was made clear by participants, who shared their experiences. A comprehensive report on the outcomes of the dialogues can be found here.

To build on the conversations that have already started and take stock of the stark changes that the world is facing as the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly expands, we are organizing 3 follow-up regional dialogues the coming months, including a global dialogue. The webinars will present the results from each of the regional dialogues, and discuss at a regional level the links between the coronavirus outbreak, industrial livestock farming, climate change, deforestation & biodiversity loss, food sovereignty, health, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

Recently, international bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have recognized the livestock industry as one of the most harmful sectors, which has put a spotlight on the issue globally and given campaigning on livestock and feedstock production momentum in international and national policy arenas.

Guest speakers will address the impacts of agro-industrial livestock and feedstock production in their countries, as well as the traditional and agro-ecological practices that are threatened because of it. They will also look at the implications of COVID-19 for Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, and peasant farmers, and the struggles that they face. Finally, we will discuss strengthening the Global Alliance on Unsustainable Livestock and ideas for effective advocacy work.

The proposed program for the Asia-Pacific dialogue is as follows:

• Facilitator: Hemantha Withanage (Centre for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka)
• Introduction to the dialogue: Isis Alvarez (Unsustainable Livestock Campaign Coordinator, Global)
• Presenting results from Asia regional dialogue in Bogor (Feb.2020): Anara Alymkulova (Institute for Sustainable Development Strategy Public Fund, Kyrgyzstan)
• Country-specific presentations:
  • Azra Sayeed (Roots for Equity, Pakistan) – Women Agricultural Workers
  • Kannayian Subramaniam (La Via Campesina, India) – Small-peasant farmers and Free-Trade Agreements
  • Khadidja Razavi (CENESTA, Iran) – Nomadic peoples of Iran
  • Giovanni Reyes (ICCA Consortium, Philippines) – Territories of Life and COVID-19
  • Elvira Maratova (National Association of Pasture Users, Kyrgyzstan) – Kyrgyz Pasture: COVID Made Us Think Deeper
  • Jian Yi (The Good Food Fund, China)
• Q&A + Open space for dialogue
• Closing

To participate, please register here (before April April 24th). The webinar will take place on Zoom, which you can download here.