Sambalpur, 7th December 2009 - The Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Fifth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP 15 and COP/MOP 5) begins today, just a day after the Orissa Legislative Assembly’s current session was wrapped up in a hush half way through. The otherwise strong and majority government of Orissa has been in tremendous pressure both from farmers and opposition parties for two reasons - one, for the serial suicides by farmers and; two, the huge mining scam running to hundreds of crores.
As it’s build up for the COP 15, Water Initiatives Orissa (WIO) (a network of civil society organizations and other concerned individuals including researchers, academia, media persons, working on water and climate change issues for about a decade now) met hundreds of farmers and rural population to collect their ‘agenda’ for the world leaders who would be negotiating the future of this world at COP 15.
These included the widows and orphans of farmers who have committed suicide this year due to failure of agriculture owing to delayed and deficient rainfall.
Ask our government to understand the real problem that is ‘climate change’ caused by its faulty policies and do something that will last.
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Ask our government to stop this disparity and give us assured irrigation from small irrigation systems including farm ponds that we can manage ourselves.
3. We have been protecting our forests but the government is destroying it through mining and other industrial projects. The urban people are also using lot of our forests for their luxury. We have survived on the forests and organic agriculture.
Ask our government to give us complete right over the forest resources and stop further destruction of the same in the name of industrial development that is causing further damage to the environment and contributing to climate change.
Please ask our government to shut all these agriculture universities and offices. Also ask all those officials and scientists to return all the remuneration and other facilities they have derived over the last several decades.
Ask our government to promote institutions which could teach us farming that would not only be profitable but also protect the ecology. Establish these institutions in remote areas from the money recovered from your agriculture officials and scientists. And if that money falls short, recover the hundreds of crores from the mine owners that have not only cheated the public exchequer but also polluted the environment beyond damage. And one more thing, make the farmers owners and trainers in these institutions.
Ask our government and your investors to dismantle all these projects and promote agriculture instead.
Provided your support we can feed the whole world from our crop fields. So, withdraw your support from polluting industries and invest in organic agriculture and remunerate us at par with the government and corporate employees. We will not commit suicide and you will not have to spend so much to discuss ‘food insecurity due to climate change’.
Post forwarded to Portal by:
Ranjan K Panda
Convenor, Water Initiatives Orissa
Sambalpur 768 005, Orissa, INDIA
Cell: +91-94370-50103