We call on the CSD‐16 to embrace the Asian & the Pacific Regional Implementation Meeting Chairperson?s
summary:
Where policies, institutions, other aspects of governance and infrastructure are not sufficiently
supportive, livelihood opportunities are limited and poverty and food insecurity increase. Small
producers, women, organised trade union workers and other vulnerable groups are
disproportionately affected. Changing economic and ecological environments pose risks to
these groups and require better analyses and identification.
The following issues should be mainstreamed for CSD‐16 outcomes:
Democratic governance and respect of fundamental rights, including labour rights are a prerequisite
for sustainable development. Governments must take responsibility for policies that ensure a fair social
and economic balance in society. The equitable provision of public services, their oversight and regulation
play a vital role. Governments must engage in national and local dialogue with all Agenda 21 partners.
?Decent Work? promotion is indispensable for combating poverty, reducing vulnerability to economic,
social and environmental changes and for empowering communities. The ILO?s concept of ?Decent Work?
includes the respect of rights at work, secure and safe employment, social protection, and social
dialogue.
Opportunities for ?green and decent job? creation within the CSD themes must be explored. Agriculture
must move to sustainable production patterns to secure decent jobs. It should explore new avenues
associated with natural resource management, e.g. terracing or contouring of land, building irrigation
structures (which prevent further degradation), increasing water use productivity, or combating soil
erosion through tree planting.
A planned transition is required to protect workers in environmentally‐vulnerable sectors, such as
agriculture and fisheries. ?Just transition? measures must protect workers from loss of employment or
livelihood due to environmental stresses or due to sustainability measures in response to these.
Adaptation of agriculture to altered weather patterns, economic diversification, non‐farm development,
education and skills development are essential.
Sustainable production and consumption patterns are key for addressing the CSD‐16 themes.
Agricultural work remains one of the three most dangerous occupations in the world, with more than
170,000 workers killed every year. For example, pesticides kill 40,000 workers annually. The sound
management of chemicals needs to be enforced. Governments must ratify ILO Conventions 155 on
Health and Safety, 170 on Chemicals and 184 on Health and Safety in Agriculture, as well as the
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Governments must adopt the Strategic
Approach to Chemicals Management (SAICM) and join the UN SCP and NSDS processes.
Worker and trade union involvement are essential ingredients for change where collaboration with
employers and governments could facilitate effective workplace action for environmental protection and
community well‐being.
Rising food & energy prices, resource depletion & climate change, and the lack of
access to services and infrastructure; taken together these have a devastating
impact on poor communities, especially in Africa. CSD‐16 must analyse how
agriculture and rural development can be made to tackle these problems and
ensure decent and sustainable working and living conditions for all.
A Trade Union Review on
Agriculture, Rural Development,
Desertification, Drought, Land & Africa
16th Commission on Sustainable Development CSD‐16
New York, 5‐16 May 2008
English:
http://www.global‐unions.org/pdf/ohsewpO_8Ac.EN.pdf
Français:
http://www.global‐unions.org/pdf/ohsewpO_8Ac.FR.pdf
Español:
http://www.global‐unions.org/pdf/ohsewpO_8Ac.SP.pdf
AGRICULTURE
§ Land reform, food security and sovereignty, rights for
workers and farmers, environmental sustainability and
justice are essential elements of a sustainable agriculture.
§ Skyrocketing food prices coupled with ill‐distributed profits
undermine progress in fighting poverty. The recent rise of
food prices threatens low income earners and will increase
inequality between countries if vigorous and immediate
action is not taken to protect the purchasing power of rural
and urban workers, especially in developing countries.
§ Agreement should be reached on the negative impacts of
deregulation and liberalisation, which encouraged countries
to dismantle government‐run grain buffer stocks. They could
have played a vital role in alleviating current food shortages.
The shift to export crops contributes to the scarcity of basic
domestic foodstuffs and severely impacts on developing
countries? non‐farming and transformation industries, as well
as their food self‐sufficiency.
§ Agriculture is a sector where having a job does not ensure an
adequate quality of working or living conditions. Waged
agricultural workers (and especially female workers) face
discrimination, child labour, low wages, high occupational
injury and fatality rates; millions live on the edge of life and
death every day.
§ Pesticides put workers, consumers and the environment at
risk. Trade unions call for combating the expanding uses of
toxic agrochemicals and intensive agricultural production
based on unsustainable techniques, to promote agroecology
and family agriculture. Occupational health and safety must
be enforced, through strong regulations and training and
education for workers and ratification of ILO Conventions.
§ Agriculture must become a driver for sustainable
development and this CSD needs to mainstream decent work
promotion and underscore the need for and respect of ILO
core labour standards.
§ Climate change will negatively affect employment in
climate‐sensitive sectors due to extreme weather events,
such as in agriculture and fisheries. More than 1.3 billion
people depend on fisheries, forests and agriculture for
employment, constituting almost half of the total world
employment.
Drought, water stress and other extreme weather events will
damage crops, reduce yields and in some parts, render
agriculture impossible. Thereby, climate change will affect
employment in this sector, especially seasonal jobs
associated with harvesting and crop‐processing. Climate
change will give rise to worker migrations, aggravating
already crowded urban regions and putting severe strain on
infrastructure‐poor slums. Adaptation is vital for securing
the world?s food supply.
§ While agroenergy can potentially generate income and new
markets for farmers, there is concern particularly about the
impacts of large‐scale energy crop plantations for agrofuel
production on food security, sustainability of production and
rural development. Competition and trade‐offs for arable
land, water and food production will yield upward pressure
on food prices and other socio‐economic and environmental
costs. Ecological and social criteria must be assessed.
§ Rural women are responsible for half the world?s production
and between 60‐80 per cent of the food output in most
developing countries. Their role needs to be recognised and
complimented with financial resources, education, and
equitable rights. HIV/AIDS prevalence has reduced the
number of adults able to support their families and the
broader rural economy. HIV/AIDS is also diminishing the
capacity of the productive labour force in many areas of
public services that are responsible for emergency response
measures, public health and environmental services. The
impact, added to rural‐urban migration of men in search of
paid employment, has fallen onto women in agriculture. CSD
should address gender issues, as women suffer from unequal
access to land, tools and technology, and to rural credit.
§ The precautionary principle must be applied when dealing
with genetically modified organisms (GMO) or with new
chemicals to be introduced in the food‐chain. Trade unions
stress the need for encouraging organic farming.
§ Agriculture is the largest user of global water supplies. There
is a need for enforcing an integrated and sustainable water
management, that adequately distributes water resources
between different demands. An environmental assessment
should be made of current projects for the desalinisation of
water.
RURAL DEVELOPMENT
§ Agriculture remains the main pillar of poverty reduction in
rural areas by providing essential nutrients as well as
employment and income‐generating opportunities to the
rural labour force.
§ Decent employment (which includes respect for rights at
work, secure employment, social protection, and social
dialogue) needs to be recognised as a means for achieving
poverty reduction and improving livelihoods. Precarious
working conditions are at the beginning of a vicious circle of
poverty and exclusion. CSD should recognise the ILO?s
Decent Work agenda?s potential and further promote its
spread, with an emphasis during this cycle on rural areas.
§ Access to services, including water, sanitation, health care
and clean energy is essential for empowering poor
communities. To improve public service delivery, access for
all citizens and sustainable resource management,
governments must ensure quality public services. Health care
services need to be better supported with resources for
tackling the HIV/AIDS challenge, so as to halt the slide of
segments of the world?s population into extreme poverty
because they have no access to or are unable to afford
adequate treatment or care.
§ Improved workers? rights, including the right to organise and
bargaining collectively are key for a sustainable rural
development. Governments must provide security and
protect trade unionists and community leaders from violence
particularly in rural areas. CSD should promote instruments
such as the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises
and the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles for
Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy as a means for
ensuring a socially‐fair and environmentally responsible rural
development.
RURAL DEVELOPMENT (cont.)
§ Education programmes must better address agriculture
and food security. Skill‐based education, such as that
provided by trade unions, offers immediate results on
resource efficiency and productivity, food safety and
occupational health, among others. Workplace‐based
education programmes should be sought and supported.
§ Absence of or inadequate rural transport undermines farm
and rural processing industries, aggravating the already
high unemployment rates in rural areas.
§ When agricultural development is complemented by nonfarm
growth of the rural sector, the impact on reducing
rural poverty is more pronounced. In most countries nonfarm
activities account for 30‐50 per cent of income in
rural areas.
§ In many rural areas, the income generated from common
resources (i.e. forests, fisheries, reefs, waterways,
pastures and mineral resources) is a major constituent of
household incomes of the rural poor. A combination of
factors, including privatisation, agricultural
intensification, population growth and ecosystem
degradation, have caused common property areas to
dwindle in size, quality and availability to the poor in much
of the world. CSD recommendations must seek to reverse
this trend.
§ Improved prices, and reduced price volatility can become
an opportunity to stabilise incomes for farm workers and
improve conservation of natural resources.
§ A holistic approach to desertification is called for.
Effective decisions on soil fertility are not merely driven by
soil and climate factors but also by soil degradation, as
well as biological, chemical, physical, social, economic,
health, nutritional and political factors.
§ Our capacity to adapt to extreme weather events such as
drought or to long‐lasting modifications in ecosystems
such as desertification is primarily related to income and
capabilities. Poor people lack the resources, information
or access to services which allow for anticipation of
environmental stresses.
§ Developing countries are often less able to cope with
adverse environmental events: poverty exacerbates, and
is exacerbated by the impacts of environmental change.
People living in these countries are highly dependent on
climate‐sensitive resources, have low adaptive capacity
and, in the case of the poorest inhabitants, already
struggle to cope with current extreme weather events and
climate variability. Environmental events generate huge
amounts of stress for poor households: droughts, resource
depletion and floods, among others, are either at the
source of or reinforce the already critical social and
economic situation (i.e. resource depletion aggravates
unemployment, which reinforces migration subsequently
contributing to the loss of human resources and
endangering rural economies).
§ Current international cooperation is insufficient.
International solidarity must be strengthened and include
aid for emergencies and disasters as well as funds for rapid
adaptation programmes. Increased investment is
necessary for securing the livelihoods of the poorest,
through the development of social protection, poverty
reduction strategies, and decent jobs programmes.
§ Financial flows for adaptation in agriculture and the full
food supply chain are clear: Water, health and
infrastructure have been identified as the most vulnerable
sectors and those where investments urgently need to be
made. Such investments need to take account of other
realities as well, e.g. the growing incidence of HIV/AIDS
and other diseases which are reducing the capacity to
properly deliver such services. In this context, long term
financial flows should be directed towards developing
countries, in order to better adapt to environmental
stresses.
§ Governments must honour the commitments made at
Monterrey and Gleneagles for a major increase in
development aid to assist poor countries and for greater
accountability of governments to properly deliver on their
commitments from one year to the next.
§ Sustainable rural development offers the opportunity to
commit with new paths for economic development, a
development that puts people at the centre and is
respectful of workers? rights and the environment. By
improving societies? and economies? capacity to react and
adapt to extreme weather events and climate variability,
sustainable rural development could be made to yield
positive effects on employment, or at least reduce the
severity of the negative ones. It could also provide
positive opportunities for sectors at risk and might even
help to improve worker education and income.
§ Synergies between different UN Conventions (UNFCCC,
UNCD and UNCBD) and common work with ongoing
processes in other institutions (ILO, FAO, UNEP, OECD)
need to be strengthened, and trade union participation in
these bodies ensured and expanded.
§ There are institutional, financial, human and technological
challenges that need to be addressed for achieving a more
sustainable land management. Workers and their
organisations are valid partners in the transition towards
secure and sustainable tenure.
(See AFRICA overleaf)
DESERTIFICATION, DROUGHT AND LAND
AFRICA*
In Africa, poverty and environmental damage
appear on different sides of a common coin.
Drought, deforestation, desertification, water,
soil and air pollution all have negative impacts
on the lives of workers, their families and
communities, with serious consequences for
employment, food security and occupational or
public health. The linkages between labour and
environment must be strengthened, ensuring
social and environmental cohesion. Their
relevance to production, workplaces and
community realities have given rise to new roles
as trade unions of the 21st Century and as
practical actors of change.
It is therefore essential to:
§ Strengthen understanding of the links between
the environment, labour and poverty. Decent
Work should be taken to embrace environmental
sustainability, as essential to sustainable
livelihood.
§ Make the fundamental rights of workers and their
unions a central feature of sustainable
development strategies, e.g. for freedom of
association, collective bargaining and the right to
refuse dangerous and hazardous work.
§ Ensure gender equity and women workers? issues
as indicators of environmental and social
sustainability (e.g. of regions) and integrate such
indicators into sustainable development
strategies for designing and implementing
change.
§ Guarantee the participation of trade unions and
other civil society groups (NGOs, local
communities, etc.) in decision‐making for
environment and sustainable development, and
to promote tripartite dialogue, collective
bargaining and other democratic processes.
§ Promote education at all levels that incorporates
sustainable development for workers and their
communities and provides adequate tools for
workers to become meaningful actors of change.
§ Call for States to assume their roles in properly
regulating companies and world markets,
especially as it relates to the provision for goods
and services, sanitation, health, water, energy,
housing, education, public transportation and
social security, i.e. indispensable elements for
overcoming poverty.
§ Call for States to increase their investments for
environmental policies and their implementation,
e.g. research & development that eliminates risks
and environmental pollution.
§ Strengthen union training for leaders and
workers, as a political strategy for building
common labour‐sustainable development
actions.
§ Call for "just transition" programmes to ensure
that workers negatively affected by restructuring
obtain Decent Work provisions in the process
towards sustainable production and
consumption.
§ Call on multinational and national enterprises to
allocate resources for establishing and improving
the accountability and transparency of their
social and environmental behaviour, taking into
account equity concerns.
§ Reject the "double standards" of some
multinational enterprises that "export"
environmental, social and production methods
to Africa which are not allowed in the countries of
origin.
§ Implement the 2002 Johannesburg plan of
implementation with respect to chemicals,
where the onus for chemical safety for workers,
consumers and communities rests with industry;
support the Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants for the phasing out of
hazardous substances; and adopt the
precautionary principle and the Strategic
Approach to Chemicals Management (SAICM)
and its follow‐up.
§ Call on governments to ratify ILO Conventions
155 on Health and Safety, 161 on Occupational
Health and Safety Services, 170 on Chemicals,
176 Safety and Health in Mines, 182 Worst Forms
of Child Labour and 184 on Health and Safety in
Agriculture.
§ Combat the expanding uses of agrotoxics and
intensive agricultural production based on
unsustainable techniques; promote agroecology
and family agriculture; and call for land reform,
food security and sovereignty and justice in
agriculture.
§ Promote social dialogue on national climate
change policies when addressing vulnerability
issues and in adaptation and mitigation plans.
§ Make water a priority for union organising efforts
in the regions, and support the PSI and other
social organisations in promoting universal,
equitable, egalitarian and environmentally sound
access to basic resources such as water and
energy as essential components of human rights.
§ Promote the Global Framework Agreements
signed by the Global Unions Federations with
multinational enterprises to safeguard core
labour standards, as well as environmental and
sustainable development provisions.
§ Call for a complete global ban on asbestos use,
for its proper handling and disposal in accordance
with the decisions of the Parties to the Basel
Convention and for its inclusion in the Rotterdam
Convention.
§ Promote integrated and workplace‐based
approaches to fight HIV/AIDS and other
infectious diseases.
* The content of this section is derived from a Resolution agreed by the first Trade Union African Conference on Labour and
the Environment (Johannesburg, 28‐29 July 2006) which brought together sixty‐two union members representing twentyfour
national centres from nineteen countries.
TRADE UNIONS
AT THE CSD‐16
International Trade Union Organizations
ITUC (International Trade Union
Confederation)
TUAC (Trade Union Advisory Committee to
the OECD)
IUF (International Union of Food workers)
PSI (Public Services International)
Regional Trade Union Organizations
TUCA - Americas
ITUC - Africa
ETUC - Europe
EFFAT - Europe
National Trade Union Centers
BMSF - Bangladesh
CSC - Belgium
CUT - Brazil
CUPE - Canada
UFCW ? Canada
SYNADER - Chad
3F - Denmark
CGT - France
CFDT - France
DGB - Germany
IG BAU - Germany
KTUC - Kiribati
MTUC - Malaysia
CROC - Mexico
NLC - Nigeria
LO - Norway
COSATU - South Africa
CCOO - Spain
UNITE-HERE - United States
