Making Peace with the Earth – Through Diversity, Mutuality, Non-Violence & Care – An Ecofeminist Manifesto
In the first week of March 2023, SID's Director of the Global Health Justice Program, together with over 150 women from more than 20 countries, from all across 21 states of India came together for the Diverse Women for Diversity International Festival. The Festival celebrated over 25 years of the DWD movement, and of showcasing the central role of women in the protection of food sovereignty, seed sovereignty, biodiversity and health.
The movement started in 1997 as an international network to strengthen women’s movements on the ground and provide a common international platform to join forces against the commodification of life, food, and cultures. And during the festival, the women of DWD once again came together to reflect on the current state of the world, share local struggles, and discuss common solutions to our overlapping crises.
Out of those discussions one common thread emerged: the need for diversity at all levels. Diversity connects us, and in order to move forward toward a hopeful future, we need the protection and practice of biological, cultural, economic, political, and knowledge system diversity. This Manifesto reflects how the voices of 150 women, all on the vanguard of defending biodiversity, seed freedom, and food sovereignty, see the state of our world and our interconnections with Mother Earth.
Women activists, scientists and scholars are at the forefront of shaping new scientific and economic paradigms to reclaim seed sovereignty and food security across the world. As seed keepers and food producers, as mothers and consumers, women are engaged in renewing a food system that is better aligned with the ecological processes of the earth’s renewal, the laws of human rights and social justice, and the means through which our bodies stay well and healthy.
The future of food and the future of life on earth, as well as the solutions to the ecological collapse cannot be found in the logic and hands of those who caused it in the first place. Solutions are in the hands of women, agroecological farmers, social movements and networks that are resisting the disruption of nature and society.
The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch is the flagship publication of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition, which SID is an active member of.
This report tells the stories of those most affected by this crisis. They provide rich evidence of the actions taken by women, young people, Indigenous Peoples, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolks, landless, to provide practical and strategic responses to the food crisis.