Forward Our Future: Rural Peoples’ Pact for Food, Land, and Climate Justice 

Declaration adopted at the Forward Our Future: Summit for the Rural Peoples Development Agenda for Food, Land, and Climate Justice held on September 23, 2024

Global monopoly capitalism or imperialism and the neoliberal system are unsustainable, exploitative, and oppressive. It hinders genuine sustainable development and threatens the planet. The Summit of the Future is a desperate attempt by imperialist powers dominating the UN and other multilateral bodies, international financial institutions, and monopoly corporations to obscure this contradiction and sustain an unjust and destructive global order.

We will not allow these forces of imperialism to shape a future where, like today, there is unspeakable despair for the world’s rural peoples and all working peoples. We will not allow them to shape a future where there is worse hunger, landlessness, and climate and environmental crises that destroy the lives and livelihoods of small and poor farmers, farm workers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and other oppressed and exploited sectors in rural communities. 

We will forward our bright future where there is hope for those who till the land and trawl the seas to feed the world, preserve biodiversity, and aspire for a truly just and livable planet for all!

We are building this future today. 

Rural peoples’ movements are at the forefront of the fight against corporate land and resource grabbing that displace farming, fishing, and indigenous communities and ruin the environment. Our movements are leading the fight against corporate driven false climate solutions that allow big corporate powers to expand their monopoly and dodge accountability for their plunderous destruction of the planet. We are part of broader social movements that resist international financial institutions and neoliberal trade and investment regimes that facilitate these harmful policies, programs, and projects.

We are building our future today through our resolute struggle in various forms to implement genuine agrarian reform and rural development. The assertion of our collective rights as rural peoples is the foundation that holds growing multi-sectoral movements for food sovereignty and agroecology as vital components of agri-food systems that are indeed just, equitable, healthy, culturally appropriate and sustainable for people and the planet. 

At this Rural Peoples’ Summit, we vow to strengthen our solidarity, grow our movements, and intensify our fight for food, land, and climate justice. The Rural Peoples’ Development Agenda that our organizations and communities put together through the Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice is not simply a list of our demands and aspirations. It is a testament to our ongoing struggles, fraught with numerous sacrifices but teeming with boundless courage, for our rights to food and produce food, land and resources, and a healthy environment that will benefit us and future generations. 

Thus, with more vigor than ever, we firmly commit to realizing the Rural Peoples’ Development Agenda through greater collective actions and cooperation. We commit to bringing our movements’ force and dynamism to the global peoples’ struggle against imperialism. This is the only way that the rural peoples can forward our future that is free from hunger, dispossession, and destruction.