 | Peasants Negotiating a Global Policy Space: La Vía Campesina in the Committee on World Food Security Subjects: Environment & Agriculture; Global Development; Economics Finance Business & Industry; Environment and Sustainability; Geography; Law; Politics & International Relations; Social Sciences; Global Development; Development Policy; Rural Development; Environment & the Global South; Politics & Development; Sustainable Development; Environmental Policy; Environmental Politics; Environmental Law - Environmental Studies; Environmental Management; Environmental Issues; Environment & Resources; Environment & Society; Political Ecology; Biodiversity & Conservation; Human Geography; Environmental Law - Law; International Law - Law; Environmental Politics; Government; International Political Economy; International Politics; International Relations; Political Behavior and Participation; Agriculture & Environmental Sciences; Industry & Industrial Studies; Sociology & Social Policy; Agriculture and Food; Political Geography; Rural Studies; Social Geography; Environmental Geography; Development Geography; Governance; Political Institutions; Political Lobbying & Interest Groups; Global Governance; International Organizations; International Law; Social Movements; Law & Society; Political Sociology; Primary Industries; Being the public voice of over 180 member organisations across nearly 90 countries, La Vía Campesina, the global peasant movement, has planted itself firmly on the international scene. This book explores the internationalisation of the movement, with a specific focus on the engagement of peasants in the processes of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Since the reform of the CFS in 2009, civil society actors engage in the policy processes of this UN Committee from a self-designed and autonomous global Civil Society Mechanism. The author sheds light on the strategies, tensions, debates, and reconfigurations arising from rural actors moving between every day struggles in the fields and those of the UN arena. Whereas most theories in the dominant literature on social movements expect them to either disappear or institutionalise in a predetermined pattern, the book presents empirical evidence that La Vía Campesina is building a much more sophisticated model. The direct participation of representatives of peasant organisations in the CFS is highlighted as a pioneering example of building a more complex, inclusive and democratic foundation for global policy-making. Foreword by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008-2014). Ingeborg Gaarde holds a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. She has ten years of experience working with social movements on five continents. She has divided her time between research and consulting for international NGOs and the UN, mainly on issues related to natural resources conflicts, tenure governance and involvement of civil society actors and participation in global policy-making processes. |
