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Belém, Brazil – With the most grounded climate discussions happening outside COP30’s heavily securitized halls, MASIPAG along with Asian and Latin American grassroots groups gathered at the People’s Summit also known as People’s COP, a civil society-led counterevent, to underscore farmer-led agroecology as a central pillar of climate justice.
The event drew more than sixty participants, including farmers, scientists, students, and civil society organizations from across the world. Among them was MASIPAG women farmer-leader Anita “Nay Nena” Morales, who emphasized that farmer-led agroecology in the Philippines is inseparable from broader struggles for gender equity and social justice.
“In our experience, agroecology is deeply interwoven with other rights such as gender and social justice,” she said, recalling her organization’s long partnership with MASIPAG. She noted how advocacy around agroecology in Davao City intersected with campaigns for the Women Development Code and the Children’s Development Code during a period of rapid economic and agricultural change.
“When husbands left for wage labor, women took to the fields, there we came to see farmer-led agroecology as a pathway in reclaiming autonomy over our lives, our food, and our bodies.” Nay Nena shared. Indeed, women farmers from METSA, MASIPAG’s long term member NGO in Mindanao, and Lumad communities, including the Malitan, continue to anchor seed-saving and the revival of generational practices in rural Davao.
Nay Nena’s reflections resonated with farmers from Brazil and across Latin America, who emphasized that seed conservation is not only a cultural practice but a deeply political act. In response to what they described as the expanding grip of corporate control over agriculture, speakers and participants, engaging in a distinctly Socratic exchange , underscored that agroecology remains central to Indigenous justice systems and serves as a vital defense against the encroachment of industrial agriculture.
“The difference with agroecology is that its science is always evolving based on the needs of the community,” a Brazilian woman farmer-leader said. She contrasted this with “corporate-led science,” which she argued prioritizes profit and privatization over collective knowledge and long-term ecological health. “Agroecology breaks and demystifies this vulnerability of formal science to corporate agendas,” she added.
Throughout the dialogue, participants drew links between environmental destruction and social instability. Many pointed out that land dispossession and ecological degradation intensify domestic and gender-based violence, especially in rural and Indigenous communities. Violence against women, the dialogue said, is tied to violence against land and biodiversity making climate justice inseparable from the struggle for women’s rights.
Nay Nena closed the event with a call to action. “Genuine climate justice cannot exist without justice for women and all marginalized identities,” she said. “The suffering of women, from the Malitan, to rural communities in Davao, to peoples across the Global South, is inseparable from the suffering of the environment. Our struggle for climate justice is, at its core, a struggle for life, land, and dignity.”
The People’s COP will continue over the coming days with further cross-regional dialogues planned between farmers, Indigenous peoples, and youth climate advocates with MASIPAG remaining steadfast in advancing farmer-led agroecology and people’s rights within these global climate discussions. ###
By Masipag National Office