Linking Initiatives to Resist Corporate Control over Asia-Pacific Food Systems
The first Asia-Pacific regional forum of the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative (AAI) brought together 30 organizations representing farmers, fisherfolk, women, youth, environmental and rural development groups, researchers and multi-sector advocacy networks. These groups recognize that the Asia-Pacific region is undergoing rapid and intense processes of trade and finance liberalization, regional and sub-regional economic integration and bilateral trade agreements that are leading to the consolidation of corporate power. These groups, and others like them, are particularly concerned with the growing monopolistic control of corporations and their practices in Asia-Pacific food, agriculture and rural development systems. These transnational corporate systems cause maldistribution of resources, persistent poverty and hunger, destruction of Asia's rich natural resources base, and assaults on small farmers and fishers' livelihoods. The participants at the Asia-Pacific AAI forum call for greater food sovereignty.
The Asia-Pacific Agribusiness Accountability Initiative is an open and ongoing forum that serves as a communications, information and resources space for linking initiatives and struggles in confronting agri-food corporations and their global monopolistic systems. The Asia-Pacific AAI serves to complement existing initiatives and to enhance relevant analyses, research, campaigns and actions. NGOs and individuals are welcomed into this collaborative space; partnerships and contact groups arising from this space are self-regulated and answer to their own needs.
Beginnings of AAI Asia-Pacific
In 2004, the Asia-Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty invited AAI to attend one of their regional meetings. Great interest was expressed in holding an AAI Asia forum and invite stakeholders from around the region. (These plans were put on hold after the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of late December 2004.) In May 2005, several APNFS members and other Asian participants attended an AAI gathering held at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hertfordshire, England. At the end of that gathering, the Asian NGO representatives agreed to rekindle plans for an AAI Asia-Pacific regional gathering. These intentions were confirmed in December 2005 at the WTO ministerial meetings in Hong Kong, where several AAI partners in Asia were participating in a number of counter-WTO events or as NGO observers in the WTO Ministerial. Proposed priority issues for the forum were identified and the AAI secretariat began in earnest to find travel funds for up to 40 participants. Oxfam Hong Kong was approached and generously granted $15,000 for the forum. The AAI secretariat was also able to draw from a grant from the Sisters of Charity who recognized the need for greater exchanges between North and South NGOs.
