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Women's Environmental Network

In this issue

Wednesday 30, November 2011

People and Planet student conference

WEN talks to People and Planet student conference on world poverty, human rights and the environment.

Claire Norman, WEN's newest communications volunteer presented the WEN perspective on gender and climate change on the panel at the Shared Planet 2011: Global Student Action Festival held at Oxford Town Hall on Saturday, November the 13th. The 2-day conference is the UK’s largest student conference on these issues and the panel that WEN spoke on resulted in a really engaging discussion with further invitations to speak at other UK universities. It was well attended by a very engaged group, and it was especially interesting to see the audience filling up with male students who outnumbered their female audience members.

The organiser assured everyone of the democratic nature of the event, creating an atmosphere in which everyone has a voice, so there was amusement at the only practical seat for the panellists to speak from:

A further irony took place on the train to Oxford, when the driver announced that the train would be delayed due to a cow on the line. Those pesky cows: contributors to climate change as well as almost preventing WEN from speaking on a climate change panel.

Land grabs and food security: WEN helps push for greater environmental justice

WEN is now a co-signatory to the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests. On 17 October, the UN Committee on World Food Security met in Rome to approve guidelines on control of land and other natural resources. Along with organisations including CAFOD, Oxfam, Food Ethics Council and Pesticide Action Network, WEN were keen to join this urgent petition by the Committee on World Food Security.

In short it’s a call to governments to make sure negotiations result in strengthening land governance in accordance with human rights, and give priority to the neediest and most marginalised groups. These issues are usually seen in a global context but are also sharply relevant in the UK. Many people want to return to the land and grow food, but most of it is now privatised and unaffordable. WEN knows of two London food growing projects which have suffered as a result of not owning their own land: one set of growers had their food plots destroyed; the others are now facing increased rent since they developed an existing community garden.

The concept of ‘food sovereignty’ (see last newsletter) embraces land grabs in the developing world, but also these examples close to home. We’d love to hear if you have any similar issues to share, or if you’re finding increasing food prices problematic. Email comms@wen.org.uk with ‘food sovereignty’ in the subject line.

Food Sovereignty in Action

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What is it that links an international gathering of peasant activists at the House of Commons, the tent city of the ‘Occupy the London Stock Exchange’ protest at St Paul’s Cathedral and WEN’s recent local community food co-op event in Tower Hamlets, east London? The strand that links them all is food sovereignty – the right of ordinary people to have control over their own food, land, seeds, water and other inputs – rather than corporations.

WEN has always seen our food programme work as part of a wider radical context, but it was gratifying to see another organisation, Otesha UK make the same connection after one of their members visited WEN’s Autumn Gathering of the Tower Hamlets Food Growing Network last month: ‘A food sovereignty movement for the UK would not only look like confrontation, land occupations or high-level policy debates. It would have to be rooted in every community, at the truly grassroots level, and be expressed through a whole constellation of community-level initiatives. It has been dawning on me that the Tower Hamlets event at St Hilda’s East Community Centre was a brilliant example of this.’

Thanks Otesha UK! They are one of those groups who make you want to tell others about them in a sleeve-tugging “read this” kind of way. Completely altruistically, read more about them here.

WEN ran a number of well-attended workshops and talks that day on exotic vegetable growing, composting, solar power cooking and who controls the food supply. We put up a map of food growing spaces in the area and arranged a tour of some of them. We also launched a seed library, so that local people will be  able to take and contribute fruit and vegetable seeds, rather than having to buy them. We ran the event together with St Hilda’s a fantastic local community centre, which launched their food coop at the same time.

Fuel price hikes: are they affecting you?

We are welcoming feedback on this issue from members.

WEN has been concerned at the recent huge fuel price hikes and the lack of government action on energy efficiency. Increasing numbers of people now live in fuel poverty, and it’s both an environmental and social justice issue. The majority of those affected by fuel poverty (spending 10 per cent of household income on fuel) are older single households or lone parent households – which tend to be female-headed.

Many of you have got in touch to give us your thoughts, including Nicola, who says: ‘Fuel poverty is affecting me. I’m a single mum of a 7 month-old daughter. My monthly payments have increased from £30 to £54 and I’m sure they will be increased further as I need the heating on more often than I used to. I am going to apply to a local charity for a grant to help with fuel payments. The other big issue for me is food costs, especially since I started weaning my baby. When my maternity pay ends soon, I have no idea how I am going to survive financially, no matter how careful I am with my budget.’

WEN wants to know: Are increasing fuel bills beginning to affect you and other women you know? What measures do you think would help? Are any WEN members running or going to draught-proofing and insulation workshops? Could you share your expertise? Please contact WEN office.

WEN’s Gender and Climate Change Report (pdf) published last year already touched on this issue, making the link between fuel poverty, increasing fuel prices and climate change. More and better fuel-efficiency measures will help avoid catastrophic climate change as well as protect the health of a growing proportion of the British public. Let us know what you think by commenting online (news page, twitter, Facebook) or by emailing comms@wen.org.uk

England's annual winter death toll averages around 25,000 people (DH 2010) and costs the NHS over £850 million as a result of treating disease due to cold private housing (DH 2010). Cold weather is not restricted to just snow but also low temperatures and ice. Finland, which is much colder, has an excess winter death rate close to half that of the UK (DH 2010).

What you can do:

  • Tell us what you think via Twitter, News page, Facebook
  • Run/attend draught-proofing workshops and spread the word
  • Use excess winter death figures and the recent government commitment to set a minimum energy efficiency standard for private homes (starting from 2018) to badger your local authority to better insulate council properties, and also ask them what are they doing to ensure that private properties are better insulated.
  • Join FoE’s call for a public inquiry into the big energy companies’ price hikes.
  • Think about ways we can obtain energy outside the energy companies’ monopoly. In the past even those with limited means could collect firewood throughout the year and to a certain extent be responsible for their own fuel sourcing. Most of us are now utterly at the mercy of the privatised Big 6. What can we do? Forming energy coops to buy cheaper energy is just one way communities are getting round the problem. What suggestions do WEN members have?

WEN at food sovereignty and gender workshop

The UK Food Group's autumn conference  focused on how small-scale production can provide food in ways that eradicate hunger, improve equity and restore the environment. WEN’s Peer Support Officer Kirsten Downer facilitated a discussion during the conference looking at how women, as producers, processors and consumers, are at the centre of the food sovereignty agenda. Anecdotally WEN’s work on this issue shows depressing parallels between women in the developing world and small-scale food developers in this country: exclusion from the decision making process, no access to (quality) land, and lack of security of tenure.

The UK Food Group has promised to hold a strategy day to look specifically at food sovereignty in more detail, and as part of this will run a seminar specifically on gender. Watch this space.