Zainal Arifin Fuad from the Indonesian Peasant Union, La Via Campesina, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, and the CSIPM, brought an essential message to the CFS High-Level Forum Tackling Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss and Land Degradation through the right to Food, held in May 2025: agrarian reform and redistributive land policies are key solutions to these global challenges.
He explained how today’s food, climate, biodiversity, economic, social and geopolitical crises are interconnected. At their backbone lie land and common grabbing, rising land concentration, the growth of land markets and land banks, large scale chemical agriculture, and trade and investment policies that prioritize global commodity production, and extractive industries.
“The food systems of small scale food producers, such as peasants, smallholder farmers, small scale fisheries, pastoralists, forest duellers, youth, rural women, Indigenous Peoples and mountain farmers, especially those implementing agroecology, are critical for feeding the world while acting as stewards of land, territories and ecosystems contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and biodiversity protection. However, these food systems depend on the access to and control ( ownership) over land, fisheries, forests, and other natural resources.”
Zainal emphasized that agrarian reform and redistributive land policies can increase food production, while ensuring it is diverse, high-quality and sustainable. Such reforms could revitalize rural economies, create jobs for the youth, and help lift communities out of poverty.
“Redistributive land policies are a key contribution to current food and ecological crises, as evidenced by a 2024 report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which explicitly calls on states to implement agrarian reform measures that promote more equitable land and resource distribution in line with human rights obligations, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, and rural communities, in the context of human rights-based climate policies.”
During the panel on Nexus Building: Integrated Landscape Approaches to Support Rio Conventions and the Right to Food, Zainal highlighted the links between the CFS, the second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD), the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, the United Nations Decade for Family Farming. And raised crucial questions:
- How can the upcoming ICARRD+20 be a space of convergence to tackle the interconnected food and environmental crises and how to ensure its results feed into the CFS, FAO and the Rio Conventions?
- How can the Climate COP 30 contribute to a successful ICARRD+20 and the Global Alliance against Poverty and Hunger?
For more information regarding the CFS High-Level Forum visit the dedicated website.
I am Zainal Arifin Fuad from Indonesian Peasant Union – member of La Via Campesina, the Working Group on Land and Territories of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, and the CSIPM.
I thank you for giving me an opportunity of intervention in this Panel. We are in a time of multiple crises and existential danger for peace and humanity: hunger crisis, climate and ecosystemic crisis, biodiversity crisis, economic & social crisis and geopolitical crisis. Here I refer take the Key points of the Report of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in all the world (SOFI) 2024 that the world is still far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 and Zero Hunger, with the global prevalence of undernourishment persisting at nearly the same level for three consecutive years after the COVID-19.
The 5 driving factors of this situation, identified by the SOFI report, are closely linked to interconnected trends of land & common grabbing, increasing land concentration, land market/bank, large scale chemical agriculture, liberalization of trade and investment policies that prioritize global commodity production, and extractivist industries. Those have dispossessed peasants, rural communities and Indigenous People, and also have massively contributed to climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction. In recent years, false solutions to climate change and ecological destruction, such as carbon markets, 30×30 conservation target, biodiversity offsets and even using genetic engineering as climate smart agriculture seed – instead of Agroecology as peasant agriculture which is cooling the planet – have become an important threat for the right to land and territories of rural people and Indigenous Peoples.
The food systems of small scale food producers, such as peasants, smallholder farmers, small scale fisheries, pastoralists, forest duellers, youth, rural women, Indigenous Peoples and mountain farmers, especially those implementing agroecology, are critical for feeding the world while acting as stewards of land, territories and ecosystems contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and biodiversity protection. However, these food systems depend on the access to and control ( ownership) over land, fisheries, forests, and other natural resources.
Based on this situation, it is good and positive sign that the CFS 52 and the FAO Council have endorsed Colombia’s proposal for a second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in February 2026.
With Agrarian Reform and redistributive land policies, it is possible to produce more but also to produce more diverse and better-quality products in a more sustainable manner. In this way, it is possible to dynamize rural economies and ensure abundant jobs for the youth of our countries and to lift them out of poverty. There is also interconnection between ICARRD, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, the United Nations Decade for Family Farming and this topic of this panel.
Redistributive land policies are a key contribution to current food and ecological crises, as evidenced by a 2024 report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which explicitly calls on states to implement agrarian reform measures that promote more equitable land and resource distribution in line with human rights obligations, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, and rural communities, in the context of human rights-based climate policies.
Hence, ICARRD +20 is also linked to VGGT (Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure), UNDROP, UNDRIP and CEDAW. It should also promote and support participatory multisectoral national public policy processes that respond to territorial realities, taking into account the diversity of historical and sociocultural contexts.
Question to Brazil: How can the ICARRD+20 be a space of convergence to tackle the interconnected food and environmental crises and how to ensure that the results of the Conference will be fed back to the CFS, FAO and the Rio Conventions? And: how will Brazil make sure that the Climate COP 30 can contribute to a successful ICARRD+20 and the Global alliance against Poverty and Hunger, which puts the issue of land distribution at the heart of human rights-based approaches?
- Youth voices for climate justice
- Read the statements delivered by the CSIPM during the CFS High-Level Forum: Rochelle Diver and Hamadi Mohammed
