Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
V. Violations of the right to food through destruction of
the water cycle
A. Water – a look at FIANs work on the issue
The main means of action at FIANs disposal is to intervene against violations of the human right to food
at the international level. How does FIAN "intervene" against these violations? Interventions can take
different forms: protest letter campaigns distributed through the FIAN international network or advocacy
of the FIAN International Secretariat reminding authorities of their legal obligations, long term work of
local FIAN groups on specific cases, international fact finding missions enabling to document specific
cases of violations, personal advocacy with authorities etc. However, in the narrow sense, the word
interventions refers to “hotlines”, i.e. international letter campaigns which target states’ authorities failing
to meet their obligations under the right to food standards (national and/or international).
During the last 7 years, FIAN launched 142 hotlines. In the framework of the FIAN studies on the right to
food and ecodestruction, an evaluation of these hotlines has been carried out based exclusively on
international letter campaigns and not including case work by local groups, special interventions of
FIANs Secretariat or international fact finding missions. In a first study, the evaluation identified 45
hotlines against violations of the right to food accompanied by severe damage to local ecosystems as to
topsoil, marine and forest resources. Those 45 hotlines proved to contain what has been called an
ecological “link of the first kind”: Here, the ecodestruction leads to a violation of the right to food
(depriving people of their access to food or food producing resources). Due to the intimate relation
between the different categories of ecosystems, most of these 45 cases entailed a serious threat or an
erosion of biodiversity and not rarely a degradation of water quality or water supply. For instance,
industrial activities on former agricultural land can not only imply the loss of precious topsoils but also
the loss of water supply to the detriment of marginalized groups. Pollution of soils due to mining or
industrial activities go most of the time hand in hand with pollution of ground water and rivers.
Destruction of ecosystems (such as forest and marine ecosystems) can have ultimate and severe
repercussions on biodiversity. This is especially the case in areas where a significant part of the species
(plants and animals) are endemic or even still unknown to the scientific world. The Amazonian rain
forests belong to these ecosystems such as the mangroves in Madagascar.
Water and biodiversity issues can therefore be found in many of the hotlines linked to ecodestruction. In
the FIAN interventions against violations of the right to food, however, water appears to have been more
directly dealt with as a food producing resource whereas biodiversity was hardly mentioned. And even if
the erosion risks in terms of biodiversity are a clear consequence of the ecological destruction
documented in the selected hotlines, the latter do not allow to point out an immediate correlation
between violations of the present victims’ right to food and the loss of biodiversity. The next chapter will
deal with right to food questions around biodiversity in a more general "risk" approach and not by
analysing again all cases in which the ecodestruction affects biodiversity.
In the current chapter deals with just a few FIAN cases on violations of the right to food linked to
ecodestruction of freshwater systems. Many other FIAN interventions with a water component are
omitted in order to avoid repetition of hotlines which have been evaluated in the context of topsoil,
forest, and marine systems. 23
FIAN International 120
June 2002