Pathogens repeatedly are emerging from a global agrifood system rooted in inequality, labor exploitation, and unfettered extractivism by which communities are robbed of their natural and social resources. A crisis-prone economic system that prioritizes production for profit over meeting human needs and ecological preservation is organized around intense monocultural production that, along the way, allows the deadliest of diseases to emerge. The PReP Agroecologies working group focuses on how agriculture might be reimagined as the kind of community-wide intervention that could stop coronaviruses and other pathogens from emerging in the first place. We address how mainstream science supports the same political and economic systems that helped produce the pandemic. Then we introduce agroecology, an environmentalism of the peasantry, the poor, and indigenous, long in practice, that treats agriculture as a part of the ecology out of which humanity grows its food. Agroecology—a science, movement, and practice—combines ecological science, indigenous and peasant knowledges, and social movements for food and territorial sovereignty to achieve environmentally just food systems.
Peasant- and indigenous-led agroecology is uniquely positioned to limit the spread of zoonotic viruses: Post-capitalist agroecology champions the indigenous and smallholders who protect agricultural biodiversity. A diverse agroecological matrix of farm plots, agroforestry, and grazing lands all embedded within a forest can conserve animal biodiversity in the landscape. Agricultural biodiversity can make it more difficult for zoonotic diseases to prevail. Such a mode of conservation also takes into account the economic and social conditions of people currently tending the land, rather than a conservation that uproots people to foster the private accumulation of capital.
Joachim Zeller
The collaborative anthology focuses on the profound inequalities and injustices as a result of “1492”. The authors and artists look closely and stumble upon the violence resulting from the colonial past, which is inherent in global inequality. Lights are being topped the coloniality of our everyday life today. At the same time, reference is made to the decolonializing potential of the everyday struggles of activists. The detailed introduction explains the postcolonial approach of the book. The collaboration on the artistic level, through dialogue and solidarity, has given hope, it says. Last but not least, the non-profit project sees itself as a contribution to the commitment to development education. A literature list in the appendix rounds off the volume. The moving “Episodes from a Colonial Present” must not be missing in any postcolonial library! Joachim Zeller https://www.iz3w.org/artikel/rezension-zeller-episodes-colonial-present-bendix
CLIP-Editorial
In nine stories, (post)colonial conditions are linked to the personal experiences of the authors and the historical conditions of colonial life are made transparent. This is what the story is about the story of tracking trauma. The German Genocides at Home and Abroad, the complexity demanded by the FES and illustrated, as the Nama groups changed alliances in connection with the German colonial aggression: “The Witbooi (/Khowesin) initially fought against the Ovaherero, then closed peace and fought side by side with the Ovaherero under German command against other peoples. 43). An explanatory text states: “Today, 70 percent of the private land belong to a few thousand whites, most of which are German-speaking farmers” (p. 45). They wanted a German version in all waiting rooms of our perpetrator country. https://www.cilip.de/2024/12/05/literatur-78/