The People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) joins the farmers, indigenous peoples, small-scale food producers, environmentalists and peoples of the world in marking Earth Day 2017.

We reiterate the historical accountability of agro-corporations and other monopoly capitalists and their allies in the developing countries for the destruction of the environment and the ensuing global warming and climate change.

Farmers and the peoples of the world are the most vulnerable to the negative effects of the destruction of the environment. They suffer the most when, because of climate change caused by global warming, typhoons, droughts, and other disasters destroy their livelihood.

They are also victimized by the false solutions being promoted by agro-corporations and other monopoly capitalists and the elites of both developed and developing countries. They are victimized by the widespread and intensifying landgrabbing currently being justified in the name of climate solutions, including so-called “Climate-Smart Agriculture.”

This is most clearly illustrated by the phenomenal expansion of oil palm plantations in the world. In 2000-2009, Indonesia supplied more than half of the world’s palm oil and presided over the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of tropical rainforests and other countryside land. This has meant not only the destruction of endangered species of plants and animals, but the displacement of farmers and their communities.

This is also illustrated by the promotion of genetically-modified seeds in Africa which are being heralded as enabling farmers to overcome the effects of climate change. This has meant the tightening control of giant global agro-corporations over the agriculture and food system in Africa and the growing cost of farming for the farmers in the continent.

We are calling on the farmers, indigenous peoples, small-scale food producers, environmentalists and peoples of the world to reject agro-corporations’ and monopoly-capitalists’ false solutions to environmental destruction, global warming and climate change and to seek genuine solutions to these. Let us continue to struggle for land and food sovereignty, and an end to monopoly-capitalist control over agriculture and food systems.

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We also mark this year’s Earth Day by celebrating the verdict of the Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague: that the giant agrocorporation is guilty of violating the basic human right to a healthy environment, to food, and to health, as well as scientists’ right to freely conduct research. It said that Monsanto is guilty of ecocide, a crime which still needs to be formally recognized as a crime by international criminal law.

We mark this year’s Earth Day by reiterating our opposition to mega-free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement or TPPA and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP. Aside from intensifying current policies that destroy the environment, these agreements contain investor trade dispute settlement provisions that undermine the capacity of governments to defend the environment and uphold human rights.

We mark this year’s Earth Day by expressing our support for the “March for Science” which carries the call for “evidence-based policies in the public interest,” especially against all forms of lies and deception being manufactured by monopoly-capitalists currently under the reign of US President Donald Trump. Global warming and climate change are real phenomena and deserve the immediate and comprehensive response of all countries, especially the US and other advanced capitalist countries.