Grassroots Campaigns in defense of Land, Forests & Food Sovereignty: A New York Climate Week Forum Presented by Friends of the Earth & Friends

A New York Climate Week full-day forum of workshops, teach-ins, panels, and more about the economic, social, and environmental impacts of financial corporations and agribusiness on forests, food systems, land rights, and the climate – and what we can do about it.

Co-hosted by:

• A Growing Culture 

• ActionAid USA

• As You Sow

• Foodrise 

• Forests & Finance Coalition

• Friends of the Earth U.S.

• Grassroots International

• LIFE (Liberating Investment in the Food & Farm Ecosystem)

• Network for Social Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos)

• Regenerosity - Liberation Agriculture Films

• Repórter Brasil 

• Stop Financing Factory Farming Campaign 

• TIAA-Divest

We hope you will join for the full day of events in the forum! By registering for the full forum, you have access to all of the events.

Program Schedule:

Details on forum events will be updated below as they are confirmed. Please register to receive updates!

10:00-10:30 | Opening Mistica & Welcoming

Opening Mistica 

We will open the forum with a Via Campesina style “Mistica’ or “Celebration of the Seeds”.

Welcoming: Framing the Forum 

We will begin the day with a framing discussion about the role of land, food, and forests in our world; the destructive impacts of finance and agribusiness; and a vision of action to plant seeds for campaigning.

10:45-11:30 | Endowing a Just Food System: Shifting Philanthropic Investments from Extractive to Regenerative Models

Frontline food and agricultural justice organizations are well resourced to materialize real change in our fight to transform our food system towards ecological restoration, community self determination, and climate resilience. Join Liberating Investment in Food & Farm Ecosystems (LIFE) and National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) for conversations on how funders must invest in a just transition in our food and farm ecosystem in their grantmaking and in their endowments. Learn from frontline food systems actors, experts, and advocates on how to shift traditional philanthropic practices for just and equitable philanthropy. Moderated by Melanie Allen with LIFE.

11:45-12:30 | Lunchtime Panel: Land Financialization & Fossil Fuels – TIAA is Driving the Climate Crisis 

TIAA, one of the world’s largest retirement funds, is among the largest shareholders in fossil fuels and industrial agribusiness – and among the world’s top ten institutional owners of farmland, with its largest properties stirring tensions in Brazil’s sensitive Cerrado ecosystem. Learn what organizers in Brazil and the US have done to expose the impacts of land grabbing, deforestation and the climate emergency; TIAA participants will learn how to ensure that their savings can be redirected to clean alternatives.Organized by TIAA-Divest, ActionAid, Rede Social, and FoE US.

Panelists:

• Maria Luisa Mendonça, Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil (Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos)

• Jeff Conant, Friends of the Earth US

• Abigayle Reese, TIAA-Divest

Moderated by: Doug Hertzler, ActionAid USA

1:00-2:30 | Street Action! Dump TIAA Campaign Launch 

TIAA-Divest gave TIAA until 2025 to divest from fossil fuels, agribusiness, and land grabs. They have failed to make meaningful change. Stand with TIAA-Divest as we launch the Dump TIAA Campaign outside TIAA HQ, 730 3rd Ave, NYC. If TIAA won’t act, we’ll move our money to those who already have. Join us and TIAA clients who will take the pledge to move their money. Organized by TIAA-Divest.

1:00-1:45 | Deforestation Free Investing: Aligning Your Retirement Funds with Climate Action (Hybrid)

Join As You Sow for an interactive workshop exploring how your retirement investments can fuel or fight deforestation. Learn about our Invest Your Values platform and Deforestation Free Funds tool, uncover hidden risks in 401(k) and IRA plans, and take action to demand deforestation-free, climate-safe investment options.

3:00-4:00 | The Story We Sow: Communicating a Collective Vision for Food Justice
A narrative workshop led by the Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) coalition and Indigenous allies for an interactive panel, group activity, and ceremonial opening and closing.

Food connects us, but our food system is a contradiction. It is simultaneously responsible for the climate, social and cultural crisis, enabling land grabs and being used by governments and corporations as a weapon. Coming from indigenous, afro-descendant, peasant communities, we feel this direct damage to the life we all depend on. 

But yet food, alternatives and ancestral forms of growing and preserving it, hold a transformative potential to it to become our greatest tool for healing communities and ecosystems. To navigate this contradiction, we must overcome not only the monoculture and exploitation of industrial farms, but the exploitative monoculture of the mind it creates.

Narratives shape us, but the hegemonic narrative coming from our food systems is impeding us to transform it. The solutions already exist, in our communities ancestral knowledge and traditional systems that center life. We must now cultivate a collective story. In a way that also inspires action, collaboration across movements for justice, for indigenous peoples, peasants, workers, animals, and all forms of life.

This event seeks to explore and amplify the stories that can unite a diverse movements working at the intersections between climate change, the defense of the territory, indigenous peoples rights, food systems and animal rights, to weave a powerful, collective story for change. 

4:15-5:15 | Panel: Grassroots Finance Fights for Land, Forests and Food 

How does the global financial system impact forests, land and biodiversity? Panelists will speak about grassroots global efforts to expose and seek accountability from agribusiness corporations, financial regulators, banks and investors. This panel will share data on financial flows into agribusiness and connect it to current political contexts.

Speakers:

• Gaurav Madan, Friends of the Earth US / Forests & Finance Coalition

• Marcel Gomes, Repórter Brasil

• Natasha Hurley, Foodrise UK

• Zimyl Adler, Friends of the Earth US

• Jessye Waxman, Sierra Club

Moderated by: Jeff Conant, Friends of the Earth US

5:30-6:15 | Short films showcase - Liberation Agriculture 

Liberation Agriculture, a film series created in partnership with A Growing Culture and Regenerosity, spotlights land stewards across the US, who are reclaiming food systems and cultural identity. By centering grassroots narratives, we aim to inspire deeper learning and solidarity across movements. We don’t extract stories, we amplify them, with integrity in alignment with our partners. https://liberationagriculture.com/ Hosted by Regenerosity and A Growing Culture.

6:15-6:30 (15 min) | Closing