Deep Seeds at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | April 2018
Protecting our maíz civilizations:
autonomy, reparations, and restorative justice
Text of Strategy Brief | Protecting Maize Biocultural Diversity | 17th Session UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
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| La Morenita-La Mujer Grande, Xilonen, Santa Xilonen La Madre del Maiz |
Moderator's Note: We are pleased to share this strategy brief prepared for the 17th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in April 2018. The brief was the collaborative work product of dozens of meetings and gatherings over the past 5 years involving indigenous corn farmers, seed savers, and landrace progenitors. The Acequia Institute, Asociación Andes, Alianza Milpa, and allied indigenous maize farmers were involved in the preparation and presentation of the brief. There are three major strategic recommendations: (1) a UN fund for biosafety protection and in situ/in vivo conservation of maize landraces and associated biocultural diversity (including agroecosystems); (2) a UN fund for agro-ecological restoration and ethnobotanical reparations; to be guided by (3) Millennium Cultural Survivance Projects.
The third of these proposed strategies focuses attention on the challenges facing indigenous communities in mentoring the next generation of youth and young adults as protectors of the landraces and their associated agroecosystems and connections to spiritual practices and the realization of a maize-centered cosmology.
17th Session of the United Nations
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
16-27 April
2018 | United Nations Headquarters, New York
Theme:
“Indigenous peoples’ collective rights to lands, territories and resources”
Brief on Strategies for Protecting
Biocultural Diversity in the Centers of
Origin and Diversification of Maize (Zea mays) while Advancing
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for
Indigenous Peoples
Submitted
by
Acequia
Institute, Asociación Andes, Alianza Milpa, and Indigenous Maize Farmers associated
with the drafting of the Declaration of Ek Balam (2016)
Introduction and
Context. Previous sessions of the UNPFII have accepted reports and other
input from diverse indigenous nations and NGOs on matters related to the protection
of our sacred grain, maize/maíz (Zea mays).[1] This
strategic action planning brief avoids repeating the work of the vital
contributions establishing the worthiness and central role of indigenous
peoples in the conservation of maize and its associated biocultural diversity.[2] We
direct you to the bibliography (Appendix 1) for some of the sources presented
to the UNPFII and other forums over the years, as well as sources we have
consulted, on the matter of the protection of indigenous rights as these are tied
to the conservation of maize in its context of biocultural diversity. Our
proposed strategic initiatives entail strategies to advance the attainment of
sustainable development goals (SDGs) for indigenous peoples. We wish to follow
the directive of the 17th Session of the UNPFII and focus on “identify[ing]
specific strategic measures that can be taken to: promote the implementation of
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the
national level; advance the rights of indigenous peoples at the regional and
international levels,” and to do so by emphasizing how the biocultural
diversity and intangible cultural heritage embodied by maize cultures across
the globe is a major avenue to begin implementing UNDRIP, conservation goals
outlined by the CBD, and SDGs relevant to the enduring well-being of indigenous
peoples. We are concerned with advancing SDG strategies to protect biocultural
diversity in the centers of origin and diversification of this important coeval
entity that is so much more than a crop to indigenous peoples. We note the
7-to-10 thousand-year biocultural history of maize with deep roots and branches
that weave indigenous intellectual property rights with moral obligations to
care for this heritage in a seamless whole across many place-based communities
(Appendix 3: Matsuoka Map).
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| Courtesy of Colectivo Hua Ra Che |
I.
Central
Premises Underlying the Proposed Strategy. The strategic initiatives
outlined here are results of consultations among indigenous farmers,
plant breeders, and seed keepers who worked on the Ek Balam Declaration (Appendix
2) presented to the 13th COP of the CBD in 2016.
1.
In accordance with the 2016 Declaration of Ek
Balam, we declare that maize is a sacred plant and is at the center of the
cosmovisions, farming systems, and heritage cuisines of indigenous peoples in the
centers of origin and diversification of the grain.
2.
These cosmovisions embrace the principle that
maize is the basis of our right livelihoods, a coeval partner in our heritage
agroecosystems, an essential element of our heritage cuisines, and therefore a
necessary factor underlying our right to food sovereignty. This principle affirms that maize cannot be misconceptualized or mistreated
as a mere commodity and is instead at the center of protected cultural rights.[3]
II.
Principal
Threats to Maize Biocultural Diversity
1.
Interlinked
erosion of cultural and biological diversity including the
decline of indigenous seed saving and exchange, landrace plant breeding, and agroecosystem
management practices, and knowledge of soil biodynamics.[4]
5.
Agro-industrial
chemical regimes associated with the use of transgenic (LMOs) crops. Damage to
soils microbiome with evidence of reduced crop nutritional density.[8]
7.
The challenge of mentoring
the next generation of corn farmers and protectors.
III.
Strategies
for Protection of Maize Biocultural Diversity
To address these challenges, we call on the UNPFII to discuss,
endorse, and implement the following strategic initiatives designed to advance
the directive as envisioned in light of the seven principal threats outlined
above.
1.
Establish
a UN Fund for Biosafety Protection and In
Situ/In Vivo Conservation of Maize Landraces and Associated Biocultural
Diversity. The fund will provide assistance to indigenous communities
working to enforce existing bans and other restrictions on LMOs given the
current atmosphere in which biosafety restrictions, attained under the rule of national
laws, are routinely ignored with impunity by growers, corporations, and
national, state, and local governments. This would also provide financial and
scientific expert advice for the development of science-based approaches to the
monitoring of the integrity of maize genomes in each identified center of
origin and diversification under the control of participating indigenous
communities. The establishment of criteria for defining and establishing such
centers of origin and diversification[10]
will also be accomplished under this funding and future conferences of the
UNPFII. A legal defense fund for indigenous litigation against national, state,
regional, or local governmental authorities that violate biosafety laws, LMO
bans, and indigenous consultation conventions. This should include rigorous
enforcement of indigenous intellectual property rights tied to ancestral and
spiritual moral obligations to care for this heritage. A special rapporteur
office should be established to coordinate and advance these programmatic
efforts.
2.
Establish
a UN Fund for Agroecological Restoration and Ethnobotanical Reparations. This
fund will provide resources for indigenous communities to address myriad forms
of cultural and ecological damage to agroecological landscape mosaics caused by
the principal threats to biocultural diversity outlined above. To counteract
the effects of continuing land grabs by national and multinational stakeholders
and interveners, this should include funds for the re-acquisition of lost
indigenous territories to be restored as ancestral agroecological common
property resources administered and protected by indigenous peoples for
purposes of cultural revival, political self-determination, and biocultural
diversity.
3.
Millennium
Cultural Survivance Projects. There are myriad challenges facing indigenous
communities in mentoring the next generation of youth and young adults for
roles in continuing indigenous practices to protect agroecological assets
including specific farming systems, landrace varieties, and the unique
place-based ecological knowledge necessary for the continued flourishing of
maize cultures. This includes the traditional “milpa diets” recently embraced
as a major policy response to resolve growing obesity and related health
problems that evidence links to the decline of heritage cuisines and heritage
agroecosystems, as the two are intimately connected. Projects linking the next
generation to the work of sustaining indigenous agroecosystems, landraces, and
heritage cuisines requires a rebuilding and strengthening of indigenous
educational institutions. Collaboration and redirection of higher education in
coequal partnerships based on interculturality will also advance these
survivance projects.
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| Our Lady of Struggle aka Madre de Tierra y Libertad Jeff Larson, via Behance |
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APPENDIX 2 | Declaration
of Ek Balam (Dec. 4, 2018)
Gathered together in Ek Balam, Yucatan, Mexico, in the
center or origin of maize, 50 members from indigenous communities, First
Nations, and peasant farmers from across the world, representing organizations
and thousands of sons and daughters of this plant, declare the following:
1. That indigenous
and peasant communities are the legitimate possessors, conservators and
improvers of corn and all of its associated biodiversity, that we have created
and protected in our territories over centuries the biological and cultural
wealth of the world, which serves to remind us that we are a diversity of
colors, forms, smells, tastes, and different ways of knowing.
2. We visualize the
biocultural heritage of indigenous people and of humanity through four
different contexts — life, community, food sovereignty, and wholeness.
3. We did not
domesticate maize, maize domesticated us, it forms part of mother earth – the
water, the wind, the trees, the animals, and we form part of this collective
and we recognize that it was woman who created agriculture and this sacred
plant.
4. Maize is the
center of life with sacred value for original peoples, and together with
biological diversity and it can never be treated as a commodity.
5. As original
people, we have conserved, maintained, and improved, day to day, until the
present, all of the varieties of maize and the biodiversity that linked to the
use of nature.
The participants of this encounter declare the following to
all those who are meeting in Cancún during
the development of COP-13:
1. Respect for the
cosmovisions, uses and customs of indigenous people and peasant communities and
their territories.
2. Respect for and
recognition of the traditional collective practices of work and solidarity
between our communities, which have permitted us to exercise conviviality.
3. Any law
applicable to seeds and biological diversity should be discussed and agreed to
in a representative consensus manner through free, prior, and informed consent.
4. No law will
criminalize the free exchange and caring flow of seeds among indigenous peoples
and peasant farmers.
5. Prohibition of
the introduction, planting, and legal or illegal sale of transgenic maize seeds
in all the countries whose indigenous peoples, through present times, have
conserved and diversified this plant and its associated cultigens.
6. That the national
governments will prohibit national and transnational corporations from placing
at risk, destroying, appropriating or patenting the natural resources of our
territories, agroecosystems, biocultural landscapes, and biodiversity in all of
its expression.
7. Promote
initiatives in agroecological production exercising the right to healthy,
sound, and adequate food, in accord with the cultural identity of each
indigenous community, as a political strategy for food sovereignty in each
locality.
8. Promote and
reinforce the direct participation of women of indigenous and peasant
communities, in decision-making related to the regulation of biological
resources and associated traditional knowledge.
9. An end to
discrimination based our traditional ways of dress, forms of speech, and skin
color.
10. Widen, reinforce, and articulate the networks of
production and preservation of native seeds at the national level.
11. Create and
distribute educational materials, in the languages of indigenous peoples,
appropriate to the reality of our indigenous and peasant communities, to assist
in socializing laws, treaties, and conventions that are negotiated on the basis
of the backs of these communities.
12. That the institutions of higher education design
educational programs based on the needs and demands of indigenous communities,
arising from dialogue of knowledge and intercultural exchange.
13. Any result emanating from COP13 of the CBD must respect
the international accords on human rights, particularly the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Convention 169 of
the International Labor Organization, without superseding this framework or
agreements at the national and sub-national levels; only in this way, with
binding juridical orders that respect our rights can guarantee that the CBD
will not result in violations of these inherent rights. Recognize that
indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination, which includes
maintaining, controlling, protecting, and developing our cultural heritage,
traditional knowledge, sciences, technologies, and cultures, understood to
include human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, as well as
understandings of the properties of fauna and flora.
APPENDIX 3 | Matsuoka
Map of Indigenous Accessions Pertaining to Centers of Origin and
Diversification of Maize
Source: Matsuoka, et al. 2002.
Endnotes
[1] For
e.g. see: International Indian Treaty Council (2013) which includes the Declaration
of Santa Domingo Tomaltepec, which have been presented to the UNPFII.
[2] It
is established that traditional maize agroecosystems are polycultures with
hundreds of companion plants with ethnobotanical, allelopathic, and soil
biodynamic properties. See: Van Dusen 2000; Bot and Benites 2005; Escalante and
Trigo 2005; Nabhan 2015; 2017; Peña 2016; 2019 (in-press). Former UN Special
Rapporteur, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, reports on how “recycling of biomass,
maintaining soil fertility, balancing nutrient flows, ensuring crop, animal and
genetic diversity, adequate water provision, protection of forests and
prevention of soil erosion are some practices embedded in our traditional
production and natural resource management systems” (2017: no page). The
International Assessment of Agriculture, Science and Technology for Development
2009 identifies agroecology is an appropriate model for most of the world’s
indigenous small holders.
[3] It
is our view that the right to biocultural diversity as centered in maize is
protected under Articles 11, 12, and 13 of UNDRIP and under ILO 169. The UN has
precedents for this in the designation of the “Michoacán
Paradigm” as “intangible cultural heritage” and worthy of protection and
preservation; see UNESCO-ICH 2010.
[4]
The decline and disappearance of indigenous knowledge (IK) and traditional
ecological knowledge (TEK) has long been a concern of researchers; see Altieri,
et al. 1987. TEK has eroded in many parts of the world (Federici 2004, Maffi
2005, Toledo 2012). According to Gómez-Baggethun, Corbera, and Reyes-García
2013, the erosion of TEK systems is affected by the compounding influences of
formal schooling and loss of local languages (McCarter and Gavin 2011,
Reyes-García 2013); dominant religions (Tang and Tang 2010); changes in land
use (Kingsbury 2001, Gray et al. 2008); market integration (Godoy et al. 2005,
Reyes- García et al. 2005); loss of access to resources through conservation
programs (Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2010); mechanization of resource systems
(Brodt 2001), and, more generally, industrialization and globalization
processes (Turner and Turner 2008, Gómez-Baggethun 2009). For recent studies
suggesting this is at in no small measure a result of the environmental,
economic, and sociocultural impacts of agricultural biotechnology and other threats
associated with the pressures of forced modernity, see Toledo and
Barrera-Bassols 2008; Wise 2007; Gómez-Baggethun, Corbera, and Reyes-García
2013 found that despite decline there are strong indications of indigenous
resilience and recovery.
[5]
One of the earliest warnings about the impact of the decline of heritage
cuisine and traditional diets is Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996; also see: Woodley
et al 2009; FAO 2013 which endorses actionable recommendations similar to the
ones we are presenting here.
[6]
Our concern for the threats posed by gene flow and transgene introgression
events are well founded and borne out by at least two decades of scientific
studies conducted ever since the work of Chapela and Quist 2001 first
identified transgenes in Oaxaca landrace heirloom varieties. For more recent
analysis of the gene flow threat, which is damaging landrace maize genomes,
see: Bellon and Berthaud 2011; Bauer-Panskus, et al. 2015; Peñafiel 2015;
Vasquez 2017. Ostergard, Tubin and Altman 2001.
[7]
For analysis of the impact of IPRs on incidents of “biopiracy” by biotechnology
corporations, please consult Ostergard, Jr., Tubin and Altman 2001.
[8]
Independent third-party risk studies have more recently shed light on the
dangers and effects of agro-industrial chemical treatment protocols usually
associated with transgenic crops. One major concern is the action of glyphosate
herbicide as a chelation agent which can impoverish the soil microbiome by
reducing, impairing, or eliminating the vital mycorrhizal-bacterial colonies in
the root zone; some research suggests this affects the chelation process and
diminishes the nutrient density of crops. On glyphosate effects on
mycorrhizal-bacterial colonies see: Saes Zobiole, et al. 2010; Nicolas,
Oestreicher, and Vélot 2016. For analyses of the possible effects of herbicide
protocols on the nutrient composition and density of crops, see: Huber 2010;
Martínez et al. 2018.
[9] On
land grabs in the Global South, with attention to impacts on biocultural
diversity, see: Hanaček and Rodríguez-Labajos 2018; in the context of the USA,
usually overlooked as a place where land grabs continue to unfold, see Williams
and Holt-Giménez 2017.
[10]
For North America, our recommended approach to identifying centers of origin
and diversification of Zea mays follows the genome mapping models and assumptions
in Matsuoka, et al. 2002. Peña 2016 offers the following criteria based on
field studies with landrace maíz de
concho (white flint) in the Upper Rio Grande watershed of northern New
Mexico and southern Colorado, USA, at elevations ranging between 1828-2468
meters. He suggests looking for: (1) in-bred parent lines free of hybrid and
GMO introgressions; (2) populations with a tendency toward random reversions to
intermediate and wild ancestral forms (tunicate and teocintle); and (3) unique
adaptations related to altitude, climate, soil conditions, and cultural
practices including but not limited to adaptability to high altitude diurnal
extremes; tolerance to increased UV radiation; short-season maturity (74-80
days); drought tolerance; and resistance to pathogens.
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