By Anil Netto
This week’s column comes from an international conference on food crisis and climate change in Penang. It is perhaps a sign of the times that the conference is being held in the wake of massive flooding in the Philippines, which held up the delegation to the conference from that country.

At the conference, speaker after speaker has expressed concern about the direction that agriculture is taking as well as the impact of climate change.

A United Nations Environment Programme report said on Sept 24 that the speed of climate change is surpassing worstcase scenarios forecasted only two years ago. Meanwhile, traditional farming is being destroyed. In its place comes the corporate domination of agriculture, which has stepped up pace with the so-called “Green Revolution”.

This corporate domination has had a number of adverse impacts. It harms the ecology and undermines food security by clearing rainforests and traditional farm lands. As a result, biodiversity and the intricate ecological network suffer. Corporate domination takes the form of monoculture, cash crop plantations, chemical-based pesticides and artificial fertilisers.

As I write this, I am in one of the parallel workshops at the conference, this one focusing on climate justice. It’s a two-way process, feeding into each other and spiralling out of control. The destruction of the environment as a result of corporate agrobusiness and domination and carbon emissions are affecting climate change, which in turn further damages the ecology and undermines agriculture.

More and more, some are saying that “climate change” is too mild a description to describe the changing weather patterns and global warming. Some prefer to use the terms “climate chaos” or “climate destruction”.

The displacement of traditional farmers in favour of cash crops has been going on since time immemorial. Even during the time when Jesus walked the earth, he would have noticed peasant farmers falling into destitution as they fell into debt and their lands were seized and their farms aggregated and turned into large estates for cash crops. Those peasant farmers who fell into the debt trap lost their food security and their sources of livelihoods. Once they lost their livelihoods, they were forced to become casual labourers or agricultural workers.

Since then, over the centuries, the process has gathered pace as traditional, more sustainable forms of farming gave way to cash crops. In the process, a wealth of knowledge of organic, sustainable farming has been lost, along with the natural biodiversity.

Over the last hundred years ago, the situation has become more dire as more threats to sustainable farming emerge with corporate domination of agriculture. We are seeing rainforests disappearing as a result of excessive logging and plantations.

Transnational corporations are trying to gain control of the entire food chain from the ownership and control of seeds to cultivation of cash crops to food processing to wholesale and retail sales (including sales via hypermarkets).

Tropical cyclones, floods, landslides and mudslides are becoming more frequent while uncontrolled development and construction is further tilting the ecological balance.

If sea levels rise by five metres, about a quarter of Vietnam, mainly the Mekong Delta, could be submerged. As temperatures rise, we could see climate hotspots emerging including in Southeast Asia.

Rural populations are especially dependent on the natural environment for their livelihoods. Once these are damaged, they may even lose their food sources. This is what is happening to the Penan in Sarawak, who are losing their land to logging and plantation companies.

Climate destruction will create serious vulnerabilities in terms of food and fibre, water resources, coastal ecosystems and human settlements.

The only questions now are, what is the scale of the problem, how serious it is going to be and how is it going to be tackled? The US administration has been against the Kyoto Protocol to curb climate change. Developing countries meanwhile are sitting tight and saying that unless the world provides them with finance and technology, they are not obliged to sacrifice their development goals.

Meanwhile, different quarters are fighting for free carbon credits under the carbon-trading scheme to curb emissions, which has become a business of sorts. Some environmentalists describe such a system as a sham: it dilutes the move towards sustainable development in developing countries while absolving the polluters in developed countries from cleaning up their act.

A new global movement around the issue of climate justice emerged in Bali and now moves to Copenhagen, where the United Nations Climate Conference is going to be held in December 2009. Expectations for this conference are not very high as governments and large corporations do not have the will or the motivation to seriously reduce climate destruction as they have other motivations. People of faith and goodwill thus must make the difference by applying public pressure to create a more sustainable planet.

The real solution to climate justice is to change our lifestyle — which is probably anathema for the corporate agenda. The planet simply cannot sustain the mass consumerism driven by corporate marketing and the quest for economic growth at all costs.

That is why Jesus’ message of renunciation and simplicity, echoed down the ages by the likes of the Buddha and Gandhi, has become increasingly urgent and relevant. More and more, it appears that the ethical and moral dimension and a radical re-orientation is the only way we can stop climate chaos from destroying our planet.