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We, the undersigned Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisherfolks,
immigrants, women, youth, cooks and civil society of the world
gathered in Bali to protest the WTO, know that rice is a sacred
staple crop which feeds billions of peoples worldwide. We, who
courageously resist efforts to impose the use of genetically
modified so-called “Golden Rice” of Monsanto, now unite to defend
rice from being used as a part of capitalism of nature and carbon
markets – “REDD Rice”.

Since 2007, the United Nations, World Bank and fossil fuel
polluters like Shell and Chevron and mining company Rio Tinto, have
been pushing a carbon trading regime called REDD1 (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). REDD uses
agricultural land, soils, forests and tree plantations as sponges
for greenhouse gas emissions. Now these climate polluters want to
use rice as an offset for their pollution instead of reducing
emissions at source. Market-based solutions for addressing the
climate crisis are a false solution.

We do not want our rice paddies or rice beds to be excuses for more
pollution which causes global warming and typhoons. For peasant
farmers, REDD+ constitutes a worldwide counter-agrarian reform and
perverts the task of growing food into “farming carbon.” The UN and
northern industrialized countries have introduced other false
solutions to climate change such as “Climate-Smart Agriculture”. In
Africa, where climate-smart carbon credit projects are being
promoted, peasant farmers are starting to resist the use of their
lands and soil for carbon sequestration, which is a carbon market
scheme of capitalism. These new soil carbon markets are opening the
door for more GMO crops and land grabs.

“Climate-ready” seeds and other supposed GMO climate fixes like
“REDD Rice” are just more attempts of the biotech industry and
agribusiness to deform, patent and control our seeds, grab our
fields, privatize our soils and turn us into landless, indentured
servants of capitalism.

Slated for next spring 2014, California may include rice
cultivation as carbon offsets in its climate change law known as
California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32). The proposed rice
cultivation offset protocol will pretend to reduce emissions
through a cropland agricultural protocol using for the first time,
a BIO- GEO-CHEMICAL model, which supposedly “emulates” soil
processes. One of the methods for supposedly cutting emissions is
to replace wet seedlings with dry seedlings. This will include
growing GMO rice and the use of genetically modified “soil
nutrients”.

China and California would be working with biotechnology companies
that would privatize, patent and sell genes that supposedly allow
rice plants to use less fertilizer. As part of economic
globalization, this gene-knowledge and rice offsets would be sold
to the highest bidder to meet their emissions reduction targets on
the emerging global market for carbon credits.

If applied on a massive scale, genetically modified REDD Rice could
contaminate rice farmers’ lands and seeds with enormous adverse
environmental, social and cultural consequences.

· No to Privatization and Commodification of Rice!

· No WTO of our RICE!

· No WTO of Nature, Food and Life!

· NO REDD Rice!

Honoring our martyrs who have fallen for defending our land and
territories, we commit to defend rice as Life and part of our
movement for food sovereignty. We oppose using rice as part of the
carbon market. We oppose the corporate genetic manipulation of our
rice. We oppose the Green “Greed” Economy being pushed by the WTO
that privatizes Nature as “environmental goods and services”.
Defend our Mother Earth and say NO! to the trading of Life and the
air that we breathe and the food that we eat.