RECOMENDACIONES

Subsidiarity and solidarity are two key ethically grounded features designed to guide public administrators as well as actors of civil society in living up to existing con- ventions, standards, and treaties that have met with obstacles in compliance during day-to-day administrative life.

The FAO’s “Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,” for example was designed to stop overfishing of world oceans. The guidelines have been ratified by 53 countries representing 96% of global fisheries. Biologists from several universi- ties and WWF, the nature conservation organization, have proven that none of those countries fulfill all of the regulations contained in the code, while only nine have exceeded 50%. Thus, the practices of overfishing, killing of by-catches as well as environmental destruction have continued practically unimpeded (FOCUS 2009).

This is not a solitary observation. The obstacles in the path of reaching MDG have been discussed above. Likewise upholding the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is far from being a reality due to a lack of legitimate national mea- sures of enforcement. The problems of ownership and laws governing respective rights of neighbors in the case of seed and breeding stock as well as overdue revi- sions of laws governing property rights (e.g. an ongoing process in the PR China)

and the worldwide dearth of implementation and enforcement of nature and envi- ronmental protection standards constitute an additional political arena contributing to a half-hearted fight against poverty and hunger in this age of climate change.

It becomes apparent that moral indignation and outrage in the face of hunger and poverty is similar all over the world. This is partly based on religious, partly on ideological traditions of care, (spontaneous) assistance, solidarity to name only three guiding values which make up a significant part of public consciousness. Unfortunately factual adherence to norms, standards, and conventions which would create conditions for life and commerce without hunger and poverty, has not been achieved. The year 2008 saw food riots, starving populations went on the ram- page and organized hunger marches in many regions of the world (The Independent 2007).

Hence, mechanisms of enforcement have to be established to warrant freedom of choice of sustainable food practices. It is one of the tasks of agricultural and food ethics to identify reasonable ways of ensuring fair access and just distribution of food and drinking water in compliance and practical adherence with rules set up with the help of established and competent instruments (cf. Follet 2009).

Which measures would be necessary to moderate all the heterogeneous interest- driven intentions and (cultural) valuations by differing stakeholders toward a solution and toward the establishment of a culture of cooperation culminating in factual compliance with ethically based commitments?

In Europe the practice of integrating stakeholders into the process of establishing standards and setting of ethical foundations for sustainable solutions in conformity with agricultural and food requirements has mainly been tried on the national level, but also successfully in the EU. One example would be the EU project “Ethical Bio- Technology Assessment for Agriculture and Food Production. A Guide for Users” (Beekman et al. 2002). This project identifies various tools for designing frame- works of normative discussions and exemplifies the successful application of these principles, among others in societal dialogues.

It can be said that the more stakeholders have been integrated into processes of institution building designed to assure food security and fight poverty, the more closely these become internalized. Research in game theory on cooperation gains confirms these findings. These gains result from the formation of stakeholder coali- tions which ended in mutual decision making in favor of sustainability (Krysiak 2004).

European Union Europe is ruled by the rule of law and the rule of the welfare state based upon cooperation and conflict mediation and stakeholder integration. This system allows people to demand living conditions guaranteeing a dignified lifestyle free from hunger and poverty as much as this is possible, even if the “Right to Food” has not been set down in European national constitutions. Conditions are quite different outside of the EU. As mentioned above, cases of insufficient and life-threatening food supply or drinking water are on the rise. All over the world, and also in Europe, regional and climatically adapted food production and pro- cessing systems cannot always be taken for granted. Two examples would be the so-called “Green Genetic Engineering” and novel biotechnological test systems that

recombine genetic material from different animal species, which small farmers and consumers perceive as threatening to their existence.

A longstanding battle against green genetic engineering or fight for unpolluted seed material has been conducted by individuals like Percy and Louise Schmeiser or Vandana Shiva, and organizations like “Save our Seeds.” They exemplify the need for civil disobedience in situations that are perceived as life-threatening. They also represent an example of one type of last-ditch-effort left to civil society activists if basic rights, basic values or existing standards and agreements are violated or broken on national or international levels.

The increasing domination by the agro-industrial and techno-political systems, and the structural power of displacement upon small and mid-size regional food security and food sovereignty efforts exerted by them imbues civil disobedience with new meaning. Adversaries of genetic engineering typically express their resistance or civil disobedience through field sabotage. Civil disobedience is an expression of civil society watchfulness, testing if justice is actually served (by varying types of cultivation and manufacturers of seed and breeding stock) through positive law. Whenever civil society activists recognize and are able to prove that the rule of law is not sufficiently in keeping with ethical legitimacy, civil disobedience is called upon.

A collision of positive law on the one hand and constitutionally guaranteed basic rights on the other, is possible in a modern constitutional state. This may become a challenge calling for civil disobedience. This may be the case if nations react to globalization, migration, terrorism, and home security by enacting laws which infringe upon people’s dignity or basic human rights while fighting against threats. Civil disobedience in this conjunction is an expression of a collision between basic rights and positive law within existing basic laws, but not as is often cited, a conflict between the rule of law and high-minded do-gooders.

Civil disobedience aims at “realizing what is humanly possible, but has not been achieved yet” within a legal framework. Its ethical legitimacy is based upon supra- national, constitutionally guaranteed basic rights, from personal conscience or from divine laws. This, however, does not constitute legal legitimization for disobedience or resistance. Civil disobedience always means defiance of existing laws and thus a breach of law. In a democratic nation ruled by law, a breach of law can never become a legally protected interest. Its positive function lies elsewhere: civil disobedience may become an “ultima ratio,” a last resort, for pointing out a law’s lack of confor- mity with basic laws and demanding redress, once all other legal means have been exhausted. Seen in this light, civil disobedience is an expression of a civil and demo- cratic assumption of responsibility, indispensable for any constitutional state, as it positively and constructively helps perfect its legal system. This form of improved justice attained through civil disobedience, can only be achieved internally through an improvement of the legal system, not at variance with it (Garstecki 2005).

In the fight for food security and clean drinking water civil disobedience has proven a tried and true means of introducing these short and long-term interests into the power struggle within the whole of society. In the twenty-first century, civil soci- ety activists will increasingly (have to) resort to civil disobedience in their struggle

against agro-industrial and agro-political misuse, if the tools for guaranteeing food security prove ineffectual and in need of empowerment from below.

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Food Versus Fuel: Governance Potential