This edition of Rooted Magazine is published in conjunction with the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, a landmark convergence of grassroots movements and organisations from around the world, happening in September 2025 in Sri Lanka.
As the Forum takes place, civil society organisations are also preparing a People’s Summit leading up to COP30 in Brazil, while the High-Level Panel of Experts in Food Security and Nutrition is launching a key report on building resilient food systems. This issue of Rooted, launched on the eve of the Nyéléni Forum, complements these three processes. We share insights from people weaving resilience and resistance every day through grounded experiences in agroecology and food sovereignty.
Our planting, harvesting, cooking, and eating are political. Especially in a world where most people don’t know where the food they eat comes from, who produces it, or how it is distributed, and despite the industrial agriculture promises, hunger and undernutrition are increasing. In these times of civilisational crises – when the commons (water, land, biodiversity, food, basic human rights, etc.) are being seized and exploited by authoritarian states and corporations, and systems of racism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity are weaponised to dispossess and divide – our grassroots initiatives that build community resistance and resilience often get dismissed.
Even potential allies may see our work as too small, too slow, or too localised in the face of such vast, interlocking crises. Meanwhile, significant funding – including harmful subsidies with taxpayer and other public sources – and attention are directed toward false solutions like green- and pinkwashing that do not support our planet, either socially or ecologically, but instead fill the pockets of corporate actors driving destruction.
While this work is rooted locally, it is deeply interconnected globally
That is why Rooted Magazine presents insights from grassroots agroecology initiatives, through which people fulfill their basic food needs in a socially and ecologically just way, and also ignite broader societal change. While it is now common to say that reimagining and rebuilding systems like food and energy has great potential for systemic change, it is far less acknowledged that this transformation must be driven by the diversity of local actions, alternatives and processes rooted in people’s bodies and territories.
Our movements’ experience and the stories in this magazine tell us that this can happen only when people reclaim control over their land, seeds and water and when they build local knowledge, relations and skills to create pathways for healthy, thriving communities – in contrast to the precarious living situations imposed by profit-seeking, market-driven models. And while this work is rooted locally, it is deeply interconnected globally. There is no ethics in so-called ‘food security’ when struggles for food sovereignty are not taken up everywhere. Such is the significance, potential, and hope of our initiatives!
The Nyéléni movement for food sovereignty
For us to further realise this potential, we are not only building just alternatives on the ground, but also organising to defend our territories and rights, and to raise political demands at all levels.
Almost 30 years ago, La Via Campesina introduced the concept of food sovereignty during the World Food Summit of the United Nations in 1996. The food sovereignty movement then further organised globally into the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), which has played a significant role not only in democratising institutional processes and defending peasant rights globally, but also organising action on the ground. In 2007 the 1st Nyéléni Global Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali brought together nearly 500 delegates from all continents and constituencies to strengthen and deepen the concept of food sovereignty.
During that process, Nana Aïcha Cissé from Mali, and one of the founders of the World March of Women, shared this consensual definition of food sovereignty, elaborated on by peasant movements: “Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It means consuming only what we produce and producing what we consume.”
Who was Nyéléni ?Following the first forum, the Nyéléni Centre and movement were established. The 2nd Nyéléni Global Forum took place in 2015 in Mali to deepen movement consensus around agroecology as a pathway to food sovereignty. This year’s 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum in Sri Lanka will build on this shared understanding of food sovereignty and agroecology to serve as a space for political convergence of struggles towards systemic transformation —recognising that no struggle stands alone, to ensure that all the values of our diverse movements shape the change, and to strengthen our collective voice.
Shaping a joint political voice
Through this process of convergence among diverse constituencies, including fisherpeople, feminism movements, solidarity economy groups and ‘health for all’ advocates, important considerations are being brought to the table. For instance, peasant feminist movements at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum highlight the importance of re-centering life around care and emphasise that we are eco- and interdependent. Women are made responsible for daily practices that sustain life, such as growing, preparing and sharing food, and taking care of families and communities, which forces us to rethink how we organise domestic and care work. This essential work, which can take place in community kitchens, gardens and laundries, is often invisibilised by capitalism and not recognised as work at all, yet people exploit and profit from it around the world. Similarly, women farmers, pastoralists, fishers and gatherers do most of the work but lack access to wages or rights and consequently to health, education, decent work and opportunities to decide for a life worth living.
The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum will serve as a space for political convergence — recognising that no struggle stands alone
Shaping a joint political voice is a defining feature of the Nyéléni process, setting it apart from other global forums calling for a convergence of movements, in particular the World Social Forum (WSF). Although the WSF has supported the convergence of movements, the Forum itself did not establish a unified political position. In contrast, the Nyéléni Global Forum process goes beyond simply providing an open space; it shapes a collective political voice and shared direction. Over the past two years, this has occurred through a series of regional meetings with representations organised geographically, intersectionally and according to constituency criteria, which will culminate in the release of a unified political agenda during the 3rd Global Forum in September.
The Nyéléni process brings together a balanced range of constituencies. Beyond its traditional social base of small-scale producers, there will be groups from climate justice, feminism, social and solidarity economy, human rights, peace, health and other rights movements, as well as committed and critical artists, and scholars. Some of these actors share their experiences and insights in this issue of Rooted, demonstrating their efforts to weave resistance and resilience.
Resilience and resistance
The two indeed go hand in hand. As the dominant powers in the world seem to be losing their moral compass and we witness distressing acts of genocide and starvation, this issue leads with a contribution from Palestine. Youth-led agricultural cooperatives are rooting Palestinian identity, mobilising popular action, and building a solidarity economy, ultimately aiming to nurture social fabric and dismantle oppressive economic hierarchies. Colin Anderson, a co-author of the HLPE report, affirms that “resilience must be rooted in a commitment to transforming oppressive structures and systems so that resilient, self-determined communities, rooted in justice, solidarity, and the right to a dignified life, can grow and thrive”.
In an interview, Anuka DeSilva (La Via Campesina) and Hemantha Withanage (Friends of the Earth International) set the stage in Sri Lanka where the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum takes place, sharing how they are working to revive the great diversity of traditional seeds of the island while resisting destructive mega development projects. Similarly, small-scale fishworkers in India are reclaiming their rights to water as they build their movement through a creative boating campaign. Albert M Chan-Dzul argues that the recognition of the role of indigenous peoples in preserving biodiversity and building resilience can be a double-edged sword: although it’s an important step towards securing their rights, it may lead to the co-opting or erasure of community-based knowledge systems.
Relationships of care and collective learning emerge as central threads in the weaving work between resilience and resistance
Building relationships of care and collective learning emerge as central threads in the weaving work. The development of a regional Participatory Guarantee System in Mexico fosters trust and resilience and teaches “that agroecology isn’t just something to be certified: it’s something to be lived, built collectively, and defended as a shared and contested territory”. In Pakistan, farmers are resisting ‘green grabbing’ and land dispossession for corporate agriculture, while building a dynamic grassroots movement in which women learning circles hold an important place. A major lesson from the community supported agriculture network in Germany is that organisational resilience grows from an ongoing, essential, and open-ended practice of collective learning. The experience of the Piçarreira community garden in northern Brazil teaches how acting collectively can indeed make the difference between losing and preserving a space to cultivate. The transborder coffee networks between Mexico, Nicaragua and the United States are building a solidarity economy through knowledge exchange and creating bonds of trust. Authors in Latin America and the Caribbean reflect on how care, spirituality, and justice are key to agroecology for transformative resilience.
We received various submissions that explore how Indigenous peoples around the world are leading the way in building resilience, often reframed as cultural survival under oppression. Maasai pastoralist communities in Kenya are building a mosaic of governance, ecology, and empowerment across 30 villages, as “homegrown resistance to systemic injustice and an invitation to rethink how resilience is built”. The Dene in Canada are growing food in a way that reframes agriculture from a colonial activity to a practice rooted in cultural revitalisation, collectivism, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. This resonates with the reflections of Method Gudzindwa from Zimbabwe, where communities are reviving robust indigenous crops and, at the same time, tapping into their cultural memory. The Tuareg in Mali today proudly uphold their history as a people who have survived for centuries by relying on local wisdom as they cultivate crops in the desert. In the Sierra Nevada of Colombia (page 22), the Indigenous mamu are seeking dialogue after centuries of isolation from colonialism to restore balance in the territories and ensure the continuity of all of life.
With this we extend an invitation to the Rooted community to continue visualising, supporting, and participating in grassroots initiatives. Because it is through everyday acts of care, cultivation, and community that resistance and resilience for systemic change truly nurture and grow.
Authors: This editorial is written jointly by members of the Communications Group of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum and the Rooted editorial board.
For the Nyéléni Global Forum:
Clarice Rangel Schreiner, World March of Women, Rohan John Antony, A Growing Culture, Ruby van der Wekken, RIPESS Europe/Oma Maa food cooperative (Finland)
For Rooted Magazine:
Georgina Catacora-Vargas, SOCLA – Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology, Million Belay – AFSA, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, Martha Caswell, Institute for Agroecology – University of Vermont, Janneke Bruil, Cultivate!
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This article is part of Issue 3-2025: Weaving Resilience and Resistance
