The Struggles for Land Podcast
The Struggles for Land Podcast gives a voice to those fighting for access to land and defending the commons.
Focusing on one major theme per episode, the podcast interviews and brings together farmers' organizations, social movements, environmental protection and the defense of the commons, as well as researchers and consumer associations. These exchanges between actors from the four corners of the globe enable us to better understand the local and international stakes, the successes and the difficulties of these mobilizations, which all have in common that they are working towards a society based on peasant and feminist agriculture in harmony with ecosystems.
You can listen to all the episodes on this page and on the various platforms:
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Season 1
- Episode 1 - Land grabbing
This first episode of the Struggles for Land Podcast is devoted to the phenomenon of land grabbing, the taking of land by companies or states to the detriment of communities and society as a whole.
This first episode gathers three testimonies to better understand this phenomenon and its dramatic consequences. It begins with an interview with Mamy Rakotondrainibe from the TANY collective, a group of people fighting against land grabbing in Madagascar. In particular, she helped us understand the historical origins of the land grabs suffered by the Malagasy population.
In the second part, we were fortunate enough to hear the testimony of Ange-David Baimey, head of the Africa program at GRAIN, an NGO that records and analyzes cases of land grabbing and provides concrete support to victim populations. He gave us an idea of the scale of land grabbing, particularly in Africa.
Finally, we welcomed Mathieu Perdriault, coordinator of AGTER, a French association that leads a global network of reflection and proposals on improving the governance of land and natural resources, which initiated FMAT 2016 and is now facilitating, with CERAI, the FLT process. His talk gave us an insight into the workings of more insidious forms of land grabbing, such as financialization and land concentration.
We hope you enjoy listening to this podcast and learn more about this major issue.
- Episode 2 - Commons and communities
We are living in a global context where the increasing concentration of land and natural resources through grabbing and appropriation is an increasingly tangible reality. Environmental and social issues are becoming ever more pressing, and it is essential to rethink our relationship with the commons that concern us all: land, natural resources and ecosystems. Local communities seem best placed to put solidarity back at the heart of these concerns, and to take better account of the interdependencies between human beings and with nature. To tackle this subject, we have chosen to bypass the much-debated question of the precise definition of the commons, by focusing on concrete uses and practices, in order to understand how communities can organize themselves to manage these commons collectively and sustainably. To this end, we give the floor to three leading players in an episode combining inspiring initiatives, militant experience and philosophy.
You'll hear from Fanny Métrat, a member of the French farmers' union Confédération Paysanne, Aïchata Koné, from UACDDDD, a group of Malian associations fighting for development and the rights of the poor, and Sophie Gosselin, a philosophy researcher working on the philosophical consequences of the ecological crisis and a specialist in the commons.
We hope you enjoy your listening experience, and we'd like to extend our warmest thanks to the many volunteers who provided the audio translations and music!
- Episode 3
Access to water is a major issue: 85% of wetlands have disappeared, and climate change and overexploitation of water resources threaten nearly 2 billion urban dwellers by 2050.
Faced with this crisis, rural populations are the first to be affected. The appropriation of water by agro-industrial and governmental actors compromises their survival. Yet traditional and agro-ecological practices offer sustainable solutions, reducing pollution and enabling soil and groundwater regeneration.
In this episode, we explore these issues with Anne-Morwenn Pastier, hydrologist and member of the Bassines Non Merci collective, Massa Koné, Secretary General of the Convergence Globale des Luttes pour la Terre et l'Eau en Afrique de l'Ouest and Jean-Louis Couture, agricultural engineer specializing in natural resource management. They will highlight the importance of structuring social and community struggles, and ways of rethinking collective water management.
- Episode 4
Released on July 25.
To find out what's happening at the FLT, go to the "Ongoingstruggles" page.
To find out more about FLT, see our FLT overview.