Organizations from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe that work with—or are formed by — small farmers, Indigenous, and fishing communities gathered in Brazil to exchange experiences and, with traditional knowledge at the center, promote agroecology in their territories.
By Mariángeles Guerrero / Agencia Tierra Viva
From São Paulo
What do the revival of ancestral foods in the western United States and the struggle for the rights of women fishers in Indonesia have in common? The exchange of local knowledge and academic research represents, across countries, an opportunity to empower communities, revalue their knowledge, and generate advocacy actions to improve living conditions. This is the goal of IPA Global, an initiative of the Agroecology Fund that seeks to drive change by supporting multisectoral collaborations that bring together small farmers’ organizations, Indigenous peoples, youth, women, academics, and climate justice networks.
Organizations from 16 countries met at the end of 2025 at the 1st IPA Global International Convening, organized by the Agroecology Fund. The event took place in Guararema, in the state of São Paulo (Brazil), as a parallel activity to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), held in Belém, in northern Brazil. The goal of the gathering was to exchange experiences and analyze how Participatory Action Research (PAR) strengthens the defense of agroecology and climate justice.
This meeting took place in the broader context of the UN Climate Conference being held for the first time in the Amazon. At the same time, grassroots movements fighting for climate justice organized the People’s Summit (Cúpula dos Povos), a parallel event that also brought together organizations from around the world.
While governments and corporations debated how to address the climate crisis, organizations from different continents shared their participatory research and action experiences on the ground in Guararema. Each testimony converged on a shared conclusion: Indigenous, small farmers, and fishing communities across continents hold real solutions and must be heard by political decision-makers.
Elizabeth Maskonde from Kenya; Elvira Rumkabu from Papua (Indonesia); Trena Lynn Blzardi from the United States; Susan Herawati from Indonesia; and Boitumelo Bophelo Pauline Mngomezulu from South Africa are women working in their territories to promote agroecology. They do so by recovering ancestral recipes or by highlighting the importance of fishing within food systems. During the Guararema gathering, they shared their experiences with Tierra Viva.
For the Right to Land in Kenya
“The ideal is to empower communities affected by land loss in Kenya,” says Maskonde, a Kenyan pastoralist and member of IMPACT Kenya, an organization that has worked since 2002 to defend Indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples in Kenya are mainly pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, as well as some fishing peoples and small farming communities. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) estimates that pastoralists represent 25 percent of the country’s population.
One of the main challenges Indigenous peoples face is the lack of land tenure security. Although a 2016 law allows communities to obtain formal land titles, its implementation entails risks of land and resource loss. Bureaucracy, lack of recognition of traditional knowledge, and extractivism threaten community livelihoods.
Prolonged droughts and soil degradation reduce grazing areas. “Land originally belonged to pastoralists, but industries such as wind energy and other megaprojects displace people and change land use,” Maskonde explains.
Together with the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program, IMPACT Kenya carries out Participatory Action Research focused on land rights, agroecology, and the recovery of Indigenous knowledge.
Maskonde emphasizes that ancestral practices help mitigate climate change. Families practice traditional grazing systems, rotating herds between plots to regenerate land and restore vegetation.
She also highlights the role of women. “When there are droughts, many people migrate, but women stay behind with their children. They then begin cultivating small gardens and practicing agroecology. They grow a variety of vegetables to feed their families and to sell,” she explains. These practices take place in what they call “kitchen gardens,” where they plant cabbage, spinach, beans, and cowpea—a legume native to the area that adapts well to dry soils and helps fix nitrogen in the soil. The women farmers do not use agrochemicals; instead, they use manure or calendula to fertilize the plants or to prevent pests.
Agroecology is closely linked to cultural practices, such as the tradition of sharing what is harvested. “It’s an art; you don’t have to eat only from your own harvest,” Maskonde says. Settlements are not located near the gardens to prevent contamination; there is one grazing system for the rainy season and another for periods of drought, along with specific protocols, such as asking the community leader for permission before moving livestock. This knowledge is passed down from generation to generation.
“Without land rights, agroecology and pastoralism are impossible,” she stresses. “Agroecology connects land, people, and livestock—and with it, women can also achieve economic empowerment.”
Fishing Communities in Indonesia and the Threat of Mega-Mining
Elvira Rumkabu, from Papua, Indonesia, is director of the Executive Board of the Papua Democratic Institute (PDI), part of IPA Global. She explains that development in Papua differs from the rest of Indonesia due to racial discrimination.
She notes massive land grabs driven by government-backed infrastructure development, coastal degradation, and corporate activities. Indonesia plans to build a new capital city in forested territory (Nusantara), while Papua may allocate two million hectares to sugarcane cultivation, according to Mongabay.
Nickel mining poses another major threat. By 2024, the government had granted 16 nickel mining licenses across the Raja Ampat archipelago. While many were revoked or expired, two were reinstated in 2025, according to Greenpeace. Nickel is used in electric vehicle batteries, though supply chains lack transparency.
Four of the active licenses are located on “small islands” designated by the Indonesian government, where no extraction should be allowed. In June 2025, the government announced that it would revoke four licenses covering three of these small islands. However, the permit for the largest mine, operated by the state-owned company PT Gag Nikel, was not revoked. Nickel is used to manufacture components for electric vehicle batteries, although there is a lack of transparency in the supply chain regarding the final destination of Indonesian nickel.
“There is a threat to biodiversity within the community. And this biodiversity is essential for their livelihoods—not only because they depend on it for food, but also because it is part of their way of life. These concessions mean the destruction of Indigenous peoples in the area,” Rumbaku warns.
She also alerts to the water contamination caused by this activity. The community is primarily composed of fishers, so their livelihoods are expected to be directly affected.
Recently, an Indigenous woman who was about to give birth died. She arrived at a hospital by boat but was turned away. The same situation occurred at three other hospitals; she ultimately died.
“The people of Papua want to shift the focus of the discussion. We don’t want to talk about a grand infrastructure plan, but rather about having a road to access the hospital or the construction of a hospital in our area,” she explains.
At the Papua Democratic Institute, their work seeks to influence public policy by placing Indigenous knowledge at the center. Although many studies on Papua have been conducted by external individuals, institutions, and universities, most of them misrepresent Indigenous peoples. “They treat us as a powerless community, as if we lacked knowledge,” she says.
Their work is based in the city of Wamena, which has one of the lowest food security indicators in Indonesia, despite being located in an area well-suited for agriculture. The Hubula people live there.
“Yet their knowledge is ignored. For Indigenous peoples, agroecology is not only about agricultural practices, but about the interconnection between human beings, biodiversity, the land, the farm, and ceremonial rituals. They want the goal of this research to be a return to the Honai, to their own identity,” she explains.
The way the Indigenous people of Wamena farm is deeply tied to family and community relationships. There is a very clear division of roles between men and women. The fertility leader is a man. If a woman wants to cultivate, she must speak with her husband so that he can ask the community leader for permission. Once permission is granted, the man prepares the land and builds the fence. When everything is ready, the woman begins planting. Harvesting is done collectively by the entire community. These and other forms of knowledge are passed down from fathers to sons and from mothers to daughters.
This example shows how food production is interconnected with worldview, knowledge systems, and language. “Once local languages disappear, knowledge about certain native crops also diminishes, because they no longer have names. That is what is happening,” she recounts.
South Africa: Agroecology in Post-Apartheid Fishing Systems
Boitumelo Bophelo Pauline Mngomezulu is part of the organization Masifundise Development Trust, which works with small-scale marine and freshwater fishers across four provinces in South Africa. The country is still grappling with the challenges of the post-Apartheid period, following its end in 1994. Previously, only white people determined what Black people were allowed to fish. However, the current government continues to maintain discriminatory policies, such as limited access to shorelines.
In 2012, the South African government established a fisheries policy. “Although it looks good in theory, in practice it does not reflect fishers’ perspectives,” Mngomezulu notes. Prior to the policy, it was sufficient for fishers to self-identify as such, with that identity passed down from one generation to the next. However, the government created a panel to select members from fishing communities or fishing cooperatives, thereby excluding many fishers.
One of the selection criteria is that 50 percent of a person’s income must come from fishing, and that the person must be at least 18 years old. As a result, young people and women were excluded, since many women fishers engage in other activities—such as selling vegetables or handicrafts—and cannot prove that half of their income comes solely from fishing.
At the same time, the government uses the ocean for extractive activities, including mining, oil extraction, and industrial fishing. It also establishes marine protected areas to preserve species within ocean spaces. This generates new conflicts, as fishers’ activities are restricted and criminalized.
“Fishers make an enormous contribution to food systems, as they go out to sea not only to feed their own households, but also to share with the community, because not everyone can go to sea. They also sell at local markets,” says Mngomezulu.
Through Masifundise, they advocate for agroecology to be recognized within fisheries. “We want to document and understand—and for the government to understand as well—how relevant agroecology is. When we talk about agroecology in the fishing sector, we refer to principles such as resource management. We want communities to share decision-making with the government over their territories, and for their traditional knowledge to be taken into account,” she insists.
Diversifying livelihood activities is also part of the organization’s work. “We don’t want to move people away from fishing, but we want them to have alternatives,” she explains. Some fishing communities already have small gardens and farms where they grow vegetables and fruit and sell them at local markets.
Ancestral Foods Versus Ultra-Processed Foods in the United States
Trena Lynn Blzardi is a member of the Navajo Nation (United States). She identifies as part of the “Water People” clan and explains that, within her nation, each clan corresponds to an element, based on its history and struggles. This heritage is passed down matrilineally. She lives in Arizona (the southwestern United States). She is part of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA), a nonprofit organization that works with Indigenous peoples across the western United States.
The organization runs a food and health program that revives traditional recipes and chefs. It also supports farmers by providing tools and maintains a network of Indigenous seed keepers (beans and corn) to protect them from contamination by genetically modified crops. Currently, they are working on a seasonal planting guide.
Blzardi explains that the goal is to recover language, knowledge, and traditional practices, thinking seven generations into the future and seven generations into the past. Intergenerationality, she notes, is a key concept for Indigenous peoples. “We involve elders and youth, because they are the future farmers and future policymakers. It’s important that they participate, because this is their future,” she explains.
She also points out that the loss of food biodiversity is closely linked to colonization. “There were different eras in our history. In the early ones, many of our young people were taken to boarding schools where they were forcibly assimilated into religion and the English language. When that happened, there was a major shift in our food systems,” she describes.
Native foods such as beans, corn, squash, wild rice, and buffalo were replaced by government-issued foods: cheese, flour, meat, and canned goods. “We experienced many traumatic situations related to our staple foods. Then came highly saturated oils and ultra-processed foods. That’s why today we face health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and cancer,” she denounces.
By recovering ancestral techniques and foods, they aim to build a healthier diet and restore Navajo identity by strengthening tribal leadership. There are 500 tribal nations in the United States, 23 of them in Arizona.
“Tribes are sovereign nations. We govern ourselves. That’s why a tribal leader needs to understand the importance of food sovereignty. That’s the first step,” she concludes.
For the Recognition of Indonesian Women Fishers
Susan Herawati lives in Indonesia and is the Secretary General of The People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA). She works closely with traditional fishers. In Indonesia, there are approximately 2.3 million traditional fishers. “We face many challenges, such as the degradation of coastal areas due to extractive projects like mega-tourism, the construction of large ports, and mining,” she explains.
She recalls first hearing about the climate crisis in 2010, when tidal flooding occurred and fishers began going missing—and dying—at sea. Today, tidal flooding is common and has led to migration. Many people who once worked the land are now fishers.
Herawati emphasizes that in Southeast Asia, women fishers often do not recognize their identity as fishers. “When we talk about fishers, everyone’s mindset—including the government’s—always focuses on men. But that is not what actually happens, because in the Indonesian context, women are the main protagonists,” she explains.
She notes that women fishers work nearly 17 hours a day and contribute 48 percent of household income. “Those who protect the ocean are mostly women,” she emphasizes, noting activities such as mangrove restoration. She also explains that women purchase fuel so that men can go out to sea, and that during seasons when men cannot fish, women are the ones who generate income.
However, the lack of recognition of these roles means women fishers are excluded from regulations. “Our government lacks real data—for example, on how many women fishers contribute to the fisheries value chain. If their identity is not recognized, neither is their territory. Decision-making processes do not involve women. Sometimes they are invited, but only to fill participation quotas, without real decision-making power,” she adds.
Through KIARA, they seek to ensure that participatory action research—carried out through IPA Global with fishers—also introduces an agroecological perspective. Herawati argues that while the government does not fully understand agroecology, some community members already practice it, for example through mangrove conservation. For her, introducing this perspective into fisheries production helps demonstrate the importance of ocean-based foods within food systems.
“But we will see how women are involved in marine spatial planning processes. In those processes, of course, women should be contributing to decision-making,” she stresses.
Real Solutions Versus Corporate Promises at the COPs
Susan Herawati participated in COP30 in Belém. Reflecting on the experience, she summarizes: “Delegates talk about the fate and lives of billions of people without understanding their real situations. They talk about solutions that do not come from communities, instead of strengthening the practices communities are already carrying out. They do not try to see how agroecology could be a solution.”
For her, the real work after these multilateral spaces lies in strengthening local movements. Unlike other COPs, in Belém she witnessed strong social mobilization driven by the People’s Summit (Cúpula dos Povos). She highlights that there were no divisions between fishers and those who work the land: “We should strengthen that solidarity in our country—a solidarity that should not be divided between people who work on land and those who work at sea.”
Mngomezulu also attended COP30 and the People’s Summit “to amplify the voices of the poor and marginalized and to fight for justice, because I know that people in my country want justice in ocean spaces. They want real participation, equality, and real solutions.”
She believes the COP was not a space for those trying to speak from lived, on-the-ground experience. “But at the People’s Summit, we were able to amplify the voices of male fishers and women fishers, and I believe our voices were heard,” she reflects.
Rumbaku adds, “I don’t want to place our hope in the COP, but it is a good place to share what is happening in Papua. Since it is difficult to change national policy, these spaces—and other international advocacy spaces—are important for making these issues visible and putting pressure on the government.”
In Papua, she adds, communities do not speak in terms of climate change. “They may not know the terminology, but they know something is changing—when corporations arrive, when the sun becomes hotter and affects their practices. For example, fishing calendars have changed,” she explains, pointing to corporate responsibility for increased carbon emissions.
Maskonde also questions United Nations climate governance, particularly regarding community participation and access to financing for climate adaptation and mitigation. “I hope that one day communities will occupy a central place as negotiators, on equal footing with investors. Because much of the solution—if not all of it—lies in the hands of Indigenous peoples. We have protected the land since time immemorial,” she concludes.
This article was initially published in Agencia Tierra Viva (Argentina). Read the article in Spanish here.