Argentina's rural women against global warming(1)

Rural and indigenous women in northern Argentina, hit hard by the expanding agricultural frontier, deforestation and the spraying of toxic pesticides, spoke out about their problems and set forth proposals for discussion at the next global summit on climate change.

They did so at the Women's Hearing on Gender and Climate Justice 2011-Argentina, held Tuesday Oct. 11 in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco province, 950 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. The gathering was attended by representatives of organizations from 10 of the country's 23 provinces.

These women are on the front line of indiscriminate logging, erosion, loss of biodiversity, drought, floods and pesticide pollution. They are all too familiar with the impact of the productive model that is exacerbating global warming, and they are demanding a stop to it.

"When the trees are cut down, we lose the rain, we lose everything, we are left without water, without firewood and without crops," said Basilea Barrientos from Colonia Aborigen, in Chaco. "Our community has always believed that when resources are used, they must be replaced."

"When the forests are felled, the wind blows the soil away, cold and heat become extreme, campesinos (small farmers) emigrate and agribusiness companies fumigate us," Jorgelina Córdoba, of the Indigenous Campesino Assembly of Formosa province, said.

Córdoba knows well what she talks about. A widow with 11 children, she lives in the place where she was born, Bañado La Estrella, a wetland created by annual flooding of the Pilcomayo river, where she leads the resistance against the encroaching bulldozers.

"We know how to raise cattle on arid land, but now the campesinos are leaving, and the trees on their lands are being felled to make way for soy," she complained.

Soy is now Argentina's top export crop; the transgenic variety resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide, is grown on a large scale for export to Asia. However, spraying with glyphosate destroys biodiversity and harms human health.

Cándida Fernández of the Formosa Campesino Movement said that in her village, Loma Senés, children are being born with malformations caused by the toxic herbicide. Local people are also being affected by the spread of cattle feedlots.

Unlike traditional ranching in Argentina, in which cattle range freely and feed on natural pasture, expansion of soy crops has caused cattle to be raised in feedlots where the animals are confined in pens and fed on grains. "The smell is unbearable, and they are only meters away from houses and the school," Fernández said.

Next to the fields where small farmers grow crops using sustainable techniques, waste channels from feedlots carry endless flows of animal dung, urine, and even carcasses.

The hearing was convened by Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), a coalition of NGOs, and the Feminist Task Force, affiliated to GCAP, which works on underlining poverty as a women's issue and calls for "gender equality to end poverty." Similar hearings and tribunals will be held in October and November in another 14 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, as part of the "Strengthening Voices: Search for Solutions" 2011 Women’s Tribunals.