Category: Genetics

Nature for peo­ple — not for busi­ness!

The 4th Meet­ing of Par­ties to the Carta­ge­na Pro­to­col on Biosafe­ty (MOP 4) and the 9th Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP 9) to the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty (CBD) are tak­ing place in Bonn from the 12th to 30th May.

Behind the dis­guise of nature pro­tec­tion, transna­tion­al com­pa­nies use these nego­ti­a­tions to increase their con­trol over nat­ur­al resources. Many of the solu­tions they push for to tack­le cli­mate change and the loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty (agro­fu­el, GM crops and trees, Ter­mi­na­tor, pro­tect­ed areas,…) in fact lead to the pri­vati­sa­tion of bio­di­ver­si­ty, at the expense of rur­al and indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

A coali­tion of social move­ments and activists’ net­works calls to protests under the mot­to “Nature for peo­ple, not for busi­ness!” We believe that in front of mas­sive envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion result­ing from the plun­der­ing of resources by cor­po­rate inter­ests, the pri­or­i­ties are an imme­di­ate end to pri­vati­sa­tion and a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of nat­ur­al resources in the ben­e­fit of local com­mu­ni­ties.

Join the mobil­i­sa­tions, resis­tance is fer­tile!

More info at ASEED and Biotech Indy­media
——————

Protest reports:

About 100 peo­ple protest­ed out­side Bay­er on 17th May & deliv­ered this -

Open let­ter to the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion in Lev­erkusen
Bonn, 16 May 2008
Dear Board of Direc­tors of the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion,
Dear Bay­er Employ­ees,
Dur­ing inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion attempts to exert enor­mous influ­ence upon both, the process of nego­ti­a­tions as well as the results. This is now the case dur­ing the Con­ven­tion of the Par­ties of the UN Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty (COP 9), as well as the nego­ti­a­tions of the Biosafe­ty Pro­to­col (MOP 4), tak­ing place in Bonn. Thus, your com­pa­ny strives to main­tain a “green” image, as indi­cat­ed by the fact that your com­pa­ny was a spon­sor of the Unit­ed Nations Envi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP) last year.

How­ev­er, this is noth­ing more than a “green­wash­ing” cam­paign, since in oth­er instances your lob­by­ists are tak­ing every effort to fight attempts to pro­tect nature—from the Kyoto Pro­to­col, to the pro­hi­bi­tion of CFCs to the new EU laws on chem­i­cals known as REACH.

In addi­tion, Bay­er is a pro­duc­er of many high­ly dan­ger­ous prod­ucts; it emits large quan­ti­ties of dan­ger­ous gas­es and green­house gas­es; it pro­motes the plant­i­ng of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied prod­ucts and thus belongs to one of the large destroy­ers of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty.

to name but a few exam­ples:

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for the insid­i­ous poi­son­ing of soils and sources of water; it is respon­si­ble for the erad­i­ca­tion of use­ful plant and ani­mal vari­eties, an increase of pes­ti­cide-resis­tant pests and the mas­sive dam­age of eco­log­i­cal valance through agro­chem­i­cals. Pes­ti­cides are known to be a main cause of the loss of plant and ani­mal vari­eties. The UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion (FAO) has termed this “an envi­ron­men­tal tragedy”. Bay­er is the sec­ond largest pro­duc­er of pes­ti­cides and is a world leader in the pro­duc­tion of high­ly poi­so­nous insec­ti­cides. Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO), sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple cur­rent­ly suf­fer from the effects of pes­ti­cide poi­son­ing every year. Of these, up to 200,000 result in deaths.

One of the most recent cas­es con­cern­ing dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals took place in the US Bay­er fac­to­ry in Insti­tute, West Vir­ginia. On Decem­ber 28, 2007, sev­er­al vats con­tain­ing Thiodi­carb, a pes­ti­cide, explod­ed. Dozens of cit­i­zens had to be treat­ed for headaches and breath­ing prob­lems, includ­ing at least one per­son who had to be hos­pi­tal­ized. Thiodi­carb is one amongst the most dan­ger­ous agri­cul­tur­al chem­i­cals that exist. It has been banned in Europe and dur­ing the past year there were 154 orga­ni­za­tions in 35 coun­tries which demand­ed from the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion to stop the sale of pes­ti­cides cat­a­logued as being among the most dan­ger­ous, includ­ing Thiodi­carb. The same fac­to­ry in West Vir­ginia con­tained extreme­ly poi­so­nous sub­stances, includ­ing Phos­gen, MIC and Phos­gen gas, the lat­ter of which was used as a weapon dur­ing the First World War.

Nature, con­sumers and users are also threat­ened by the Bay­er-made her­bi­cide, Glu­fos­i­nat. Accord­ing to a report by Swedish author­i­ties which was based on research by the Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty, Swe­den asked that Glu­fos­i­nat be banned. Almost all genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied plants made by Bay­er are resis­tant against Glu­fos­i­nat. The Genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of plants is not aimed at fight­ing hunger, as is often claimed by Bay­er. It is aimed at secur­ing a mar­ket for her­bi­cides. For eco­log­i­cal rea­sons, con­tin­u­ing the sale of Glu­fos­i­nat can no longer be jus­ti­fied.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for the mas­sive endan­ger­ment of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty and the envi­ron­ment through the use of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied plants. The com­pa­ny belongs to one of the most impor­tant pro­tag­o­nists of “green” genet­ic tech­nol­o­gy. Cur­rent­ly we are threat­ened with the like­li­hood of the EU approval of a vari­ety of rice pro­duced by Bayer—the same vari­ety which was the cen­ter of the largest scan­dal con­cern­ing genet­ic tech­nol­o­gy to date, as rice which had not been approved for con­sump­tion reached trad­ing mar­kets world­wide. The mas­sive plant­i­ng of genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied seed would inevitably be respon­si­ble for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and dis­place­ment of tra­di­tion­al rice vari­eties. Thus, bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty among crops would be harmed and the long-term food secu­ri­ty would be threat­ened.

Oth­er exam­ples include the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of canola seeds through genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied canola, which are ille­gal in Ger­many. This kind of pol­lu­tion can be traced back to a her­bi­cide-resis­tant prod­uct from Bay­er Crop­Science which was test­ed many times in the field.

But Bay­er refus­es to take legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for the dam­ages. This exam­ple goes to show once again that coex­is­tence with­out the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of native seed vari­eties is impos­si­ble. Nev­er­the­less, Bay­er push­es for­ward to cap­ture new mar­kets: genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied canola is to be plant­ed in Aus­tralia. Bay­er has also request­ed per­mis­sion for import­ing genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied rice and canola.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for the pri­va­ti­za­tion and monop­o­liza­tion of genet­ic resources such as seeds and med­i­c­i­nal plants. Bay­er belongs to the largest transna­tion­al com­pa­nies in the area of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and agro­chem­i­cals which share the largest por­tion of patents grant­ed to date. The attempts to monop­o­lize them harm bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty in the fields and rob indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties of their med­i­c­i­nal plants and tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge.

Years of inten­sive influ­ence on law­mak­ing on the part of transna­tion­al com­pa­nies result­ed in the TRIPS (Trade Relat­ed Aspects of Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Rights) agree­ment of the WTO. This agree­ment results in the legal com­mit­ment to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights such as patents on bio­log­i­cal and genet­ic mate­r­i­al – that is, prop­er­ty rights on life. Bay­er was involved in this.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous mech­a­nism of con­trol and pow­er is so-called ter­mi­na­tor tech­nol­o­gy, offi­cial­ly known as Genet­ic Use Restric­tion Tech­nol­o­gy. This tech­nol­o­gy results in steril­i­ty of plants after their har­vest, such that they may not be reused for re-plant­i­ng.

A mora­to­ri­um was placed on ter­mi­na­tor tech­nol­o­gy in 2000 as part of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, since it rep­re­sent­ed too great a risk to bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty. The Bay­er cor­po­ra­tion is also involved in the devel­op­ment of ter­mi­na­tor technology—as is attest­ed to by cir­ca one-half dozen patent appli­ca­tions with titles such as “New Gene for the Coor­di­na­tion of Cell-Abla­tion” or “Process for the Pro­duc­tion of Ster­ile Female Plants”.

Accord­ing to Bay­er Crop­Science, how­ev­er, the cor­po­ra­tion only owns ter­mi­na­tor patents as a result of its acqui­si­tion of Aven­tis Crop­science. This is a false state­ment. Bay­er is own­er of at least five patents on seed ster­il­iza­tion tech­nolo­gies. This sug­gests that Bay­er con­tin­ues to be inter­est­ed in research and use of ter­mi­na­tor tech­nol­o­gy. Dur­ing the 2006 COP 6 meet­ings in Curiti­ba, Brazil, Bay­er lob­by­ists were involved in try­ing to reverse the mora­to­ri­um of these tech­nolo­gies.

Bay­er is also involved in the devel­op­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal plants, thus threat­en­ing bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty.

A new devel­op­ment con­cerns large Agri­cul­tur­al Com­pa­nies’ appli­ca­tion for hun­dreds on few patents on plants that are genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied to with­stand droughts and oth­er cli­mac­tic stress fac­tors. This is part of the strug­gle to com­pete a lucra­tive mar­ket that is grow­ing due to glob­al warm­ing. The Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion is a par­tic­i­pant in this process.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for the warm­ing of the earth. Present­ly, the Bay­er fac­to­ry in Krefeld is involved in the build­ing plan of a giant coal-burn­ing pow­er plant which would be expect­ed to release 4.4 mil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide and 4,000 tons of nitro­gen oxide into the air each year.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with 700 tons of phos­pho­rous, 2,700 tons of nitro­gen, 1.5 mil­lion tons of inor­gan­ic salts, 73 tons of organ­ic chlo­rine and 28 tons of heavy met­als. Bay­er belongs to the ten largest water pol­luters in Ger­many. In addi­tion one must con­sid­er Bayer’s enor­mous use of water, amount­ing to 2 mil­lion cubic meters dai­ly. The Bay­er fac­to­ry in Lev­erkusen has a high­er con­sump­tion of water as the neigh­bor­ing city of Cologne, with rough­ly one mil­lion inhab­i­tants.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for the plant­i­ng of ener­gy plants for Agro­fu­els, which com­pete with food crops. Bay­er plans to pro­duce agro­fu­els from canola oil as well as the trop­i­cal plant, Jat­ropa. In order to do so, it will rely on vast mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions as well as the heavy use of fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides. The mas­sive plan­ta­tions of Jat­ropa will be respon­si­ble for the dev­as­ta­tion of nat­ur­al land­scapes and the dis­place­ment of small farm­ers, as well as of a high­er num­ber of deaths through hunger. In India, land­less peo­ple were already dis­placed from land which was pur­port­ed­ly “fal­low”. This is the same land on which Bay­er is plan­ning to pro­duce ener­gy plants for agro­fu­els.

Bay­er is also respon­si­ble for the death of mil­lions of hon­ey­bee colonies in south­ern Ger­many, as sug­gest­ed by the news of the last few days. The sud­den death of hon­ey­bees hap­pened imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the plant­i­ng of corn. Many of the corn seeds were coat­ed with a neu­ro­tox­in, Cloth­i­an­i­din, of Bay­er Crop­Science. Bee­keep­ers sus­pect that this could be respon­si­ble for the death of the bees. The Asso­ci­a­tion of Bee­keep­ers reports that this is the worst case of the death of hon­ey­bees of the past 30 years. Vicepres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion, Man­fred Raff jus­ti­fies his sus­pi­cion of the Bay­er neu­ro­tox­in based on the expe­ri­ence of Ital­ian bee­keep­ers, since plant­i­ng in Italy hap­pened sev­er­al weeks ear­li­er. In the lat­ter case, Cloth­i­an­i­din was found in the dead bees. Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­a­tion, it is part of the agro­tox­in Pon­cho Pro which is used for the etch­ing of corn seed.

Bay­er is respon­si­ble for hunger on the plan­et. While riots have erupt­ed world­wide as a result of hunger, Bay­er cor­po­ra­tion states in its lat­est annu­al report, “we have been able to par­tic­i­pate in the pos­i­tive devel­op­ment of the world agrar­i­an mar­ket”. This is a cyn­i­cal for­mu­la­tion in the face of the dras­tic growth in prices of basic food prod­ucts and the rise of hunger across the globe. The World Food Coun­cil con­sid­ers that a sub­stan­tial cause of the cur­rent food cri­sis can be traced back to a reduc­tion in har­vests caused by agri­cul­tur­al land that has been dam­aged by agro­chem­i­cals. As the sec­ond largest pro­duc­er of pes­ti­cides, Bay­er is sig­nif­i­cant­ly respon­si­ble for this devel­op­ment.

On the occa­sion of the nego­ti­a­tion of the Biosafe­ty Pro­to­col (MOP 4) from the 12.–19. of May in Bonn and con­sid­er­ing the fact that lia­bil­i­ty in cas­es of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion are being dis­cussed there, Bay­er Crop­Science —togeth­er with Mon­san­to, Syn­gen­ta, BASF, DowA­gro­Sciences and Dupont/Pioneer have pro­posed what they term a “com­pact”. They claim that they are will­ing to pay repa­ra­tions in cas­es in which their prod­ucts are respon­si­ble for the dam­age of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty.

On the face of the mat­ter, this seems pos­i­tive. How­ev­er, their com­pact per­tains only to dam­age to bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty and human health. The envi­ron­ment as a whole or socioe­co­nom­ic or cul­tur­al dam­ages are not con­sid­ered.

Accord­ing to the pro­pos­al, dam­ages to bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty are only to be con­sid­ered if enough doc­u­men­ta­tion on this bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty exists. How­ev­er, no coun­try holds such exten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion on bio­di­ver­si­ty in order to be able to ful­fill the require­ments as have been pre­sent­ed. There­fore, the promis­es to make repa­ra­tions remain emp­ty! More­over, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion through genet­ic mate­r­i­al has been said explic­it­ly not to count as dam­age.

In addi­tion, only states may be plain­tiffs in these cas­es, such that indi­vid­u­als who have been caused dam­ages remain with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of receiv­ing repa­ra­tions. All legal pro­ce­dures are to take place pri­vate­ly, leav­ing no trans­paren­cy in the com­pact as pro­posed.

What is thus pre­sent­ed as a step towards cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty is an adept strat­e­gy of the com­pa­ny in order to pro­tect itself against many instances of lia­bil­i­ty.

We high­ly crit­i­cize, there­fore, that Ger­man as well as Euro­pean poli­cies con­tin­u­ous­ly pro­vide a plat­form for Bay­er to car­ry out its “green­wash­ing pro­gram”, thus great­ly sup­port­ing the inter­ests of indus­tries despite loss­es suf­fered by pop­u­la­tions, bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty and the envi­ron­ment.

World­wide, many indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions are resist­ing the health and envi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing poli­cies of the pol­i­tics of the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion. We declare our­selves in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them and demand that the Bay­er cor­po­ra­tion end its dead­ly and poi­so­nous pro­duc­tion.

We demand that Bay­er end imme­di­ate­ly its envi­ron­men­tal­ly harm­ful busi­ness, that it stop destroy­ing bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty, and that it stop its pri­va­ti­za­tion and monop­o­liza­tion. We demand that it take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its cur­rent actions and that it accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for any dam­ages that may fol­low from these actions here­after. As long as the cor­po­ra­tion does not realign its prac­tices, its claims to con­tribute to the con­ser­va­tion of nature ring both hol­low and men­ac­ing.

Bayer—hands off from bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty
Hands off from ‘nature pro­tec­tion’ dri­ven by prof­its and pow­er.
For eco­log­i­cal agri­cul­ture and forestry, free of genet­ic tech­nol­o­gy and pes­ti­cides!
For the end to patents and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights on life!
For the free access to seeds world­wide!
For a final pro­hi­bi­tion of ter­mi­na­tor-tech­nol­o­gy and any sim­i­lar tech­nolo­gies caus­ing ster­il­iza­tion!

Nature for people—not for busi­ness!

Sig­na­to­ries:
Aktion­snet­zw­erk glob­ale Land­wirtschaft, BUKO-Kam­pagne gegen Biopi­ra­terie, La Via
Campesina, Coor­di­na­tion gegen BAY­ER-Gefahren, Bon­ner AK gegen Gen­tech­nolo­gie,
Aktions­bünd­nis COP 9, Vere­in fair-fish e.V., Indi­en­hil­fe e.V., Ret­tet den Regen­wald e. V.,
Arbeit­skreis Eine Welt Buchloe e.V., aut­ofrei leben! e.V.

======

Bonn, Sun­day May 18 — Around 60 peo­ple have been protest­ing in Bonn against the large scale pro­duc­tion of agro­fu­els. At two petrol sta­tions car dri­vers had to make a choice: ‘petrol’ to the right, ‘food’ to the left. Ban­ners were stat­ing “agro­fu­els, no solu­tion for oil addic­tion.”

Nowa­days the media are fre­quent­ly report­ing about the neg­a­tive impacts of the use of crops for ener­gy pro­duc­tion. But so far the hon­est con­clu­sion that we have to change our lifestyle and over­con­sump­tion of resources and ener­gy is ignored by the same media and pol­i­cy mak­ers. In glob­al cap­i­tal­ism a small minor­i­ty exploits 80 per cent of the glob­al resources.
Most dri­vers had some sym­pa­thy for the action but want­ed to fill up petrol any­way this time. They had to for exam­ple to go to a foot­ball match. What can you do?

The work­er in the Shell sta­tion was furi­ous about the counter infor­ma­tion in front of her petrol sta­tion and called the police. After some dis­cus­sions the action was allowed, although dri­vers had to be giv­en more pos­si­bil­i­ties to go around the ‘gate of choice’.
At the BFT sta­tion every­thing stayed very relaxed.

Amongst the activists were many peo­ple from Via Campesina, the inter­na­tion­al net­work of small farm­ers. For them and the mil­lions they rep­re­sent, the large scale intro­duc­tion of agro­fu­els is a direct dan­ger for their liveli­hood and life. You can read more argu­ments against the over­con­sump­tion of ener­gy and agro­fu­els in the text of the brochure that has been dis­trib­uted to the passers-by.

After two hours the group start­ed to move again for a short demon­stra­tion end­ing on a field with a pic­nic with healthy and local food, as it is still pos­si­ble.

—

Fli­er text:

Agro­fu­els are no solu­tion for the cli­mate and ener­gy prob­lem!

Action against bio­fu­el and high ener­gy con­sump­tion!

Food — Petrol

Here­by we want to draw your atten­tion to the prob­lems and con­se­quences of the intro­duc­tion of agro­fu­els. The cul­ti­va­tion of bio­fu­els forms a direct com­peti­ton to food pro­duc­tion.

You, as a dri­ver, have to choose between food or petrol, as there is only 1,8 ha agri­cul­tur­al land avail­able for each human being on earth.

You have the choice between:

a) Petrol: You tank but you get a neg­a­tiv vouch­er which states how much less food you can con­sume the com­ing days.
b) Food: You receive some­thing to eat and your car leaves with­out petrol.

The rea­son for the action
This week COP 9 is tak­ing place in Bonn. The par­tic­i­pants will debate on issues relat­ed to bio­di­ver­si­ty and genet­ic resources. It con­cerns marine bio­di­ver­si­ty, agro­fu­els, genet­i­cal­ly moti­fied plants, pro­tect­ed areas and the rights of indige­nous peo­ple. How­ev­er, bio­di­ver­si­ty is also relat­ed to agri­cul­ture: ernor­mous areas are tak­en over by agri­cul­tur­al land, and large scale agri­cul­ture, as well as genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mono­cul­tur­al plan­ta­tions, are increas­ing. This is prac­ti­cal­ly the oppo­site of bio­di­ver­si­ty.

The sit­u­a­tion regard­ing agro­fu­els in Gemany and the EU
In Ger­many reg­u­lar petrol is cur­rent­ly mixed with 3 % Biodiesel / Bioethanol. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment aims to reach a per­cent­age of 6,75, although the EU impos­es only 5,75%. Instead of pro­mot­ing ener­gy sav­ing cars, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ing the pro­duc­tion of big ener­gy wast­ing cars. Unsupris­ing­ly ern­er­gy imports become a neces­si­ty. Recent­ly at a meet­ing with his Brasil­ian (now resigned) col­legue Mari­na Sil­va, the Min­is­ter of Envi­ron­ment Sig­mar Gabriel announced a bilat­er­al agree­ment to be signed in May 2008. This would enable Brasil to export ethanol to Ger­many, under the con­di­tion of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Social and eco­log­i­cal con­se­quences of agro­fu­els (three out of many)
1.Agrofuels are com­pet­ing with food: The cur­rent food cri­sis is telling. With­in a few month, the price of rice has increased with about 100 % and the price of grains by 130 % in 2007. One of the effects being food riots in many coun­tries.
2.Large scale pro­duc­tion of agro­fu­els is not envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly at all: as it extends mono­cul­tur­al cul­ti­va­tion, the use of human and envi­ron­men­tal­ly pol­lut­ing pes­ti­cides, the over-use of the soil, the loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty and the use of genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion.
3.Small scale farm­ers loose their land and resources: as large scale agri­cul­ture is led by a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of large scale farm­ers and for­eign com­pa­nies. With small scale agri­cul­ture 40 fam­i­lies could sus­tain their liveli­hoods on a sur­face of 200 hectares. Large scale soja pro­duc­tion, how­ev­er, only needs one labour­er for the same acreage.

The World Bank, the Inter­na­tion­al Moni­tary Fund and gov­ern­ments have been push­ing the lib­er­al­iza­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor dur­ing the past decades. As a con­se­quence, food became a spec­u­la­tive good and prof­its of food com­pa­nies and investors have increased enor­mous­ly. Rich peo­ple can afford pay­ing high prices for dri­ving a car or fly­ing, where­as poor peo­ple can not even pay for their dai­ly bread any longer. This is uneth­i­cal!

We demand: Food sov­er­eigni­ty, as well as the right for local com­mu­ni­ties to pro­tect their food pro­duc­tion, and to decide on their land use.

Our request to you!
These prob­lems can not (only) be solved by the politi­cians at COP9. We have to change our ener­gy con­sump­tion. Espe­cial­ly in ‘west­ern indus­tri­alised’ coun­tries, as here the con­sump­tion lev­el has been high for decades. It’s time to face the mir­ror and reduce your own ener­gy con­sump­tion dras­ti­cal­ly.

======

On Mon­day, May 19, a demon­stra­tion against the Ger­man Plant Breed­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (BDP) and in front of the botan­i­cal gar­den at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn took place.

About 30 activists and peas­ants protest­ed against bio-pira­cy and patents on life. After­wards at the Inter­na­tion­al Diver­si­ty Mar­ket at the Mun­ster square in the cen­tre of Bonn, there was a street the­atre and col­o­nized seeds were giv­en back to peas­ants from Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca.

======

We com­bined our Bonn sight­see­ing tour with some adbust­ing. The city of Bonn has placed 450 bill­boards around the town: “Bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty needs our engage­ment” Nice, but oh so vague – they fail to say any­thing about how and why our lifestyles are destroy­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty, or how to pre­serve it. To pre­vent fur­ther loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty we have to chal­lenge not only our shop­ping habits, but also the cor­po­rate-gov­ern­men­tal elites who are dri­ving the destruc­tion.

We decid­ed to help the city and put forth­ward a clear­er mes­sage. So we print­ed hun­dreds of speech bub­bles to add to the bill­boards say­ing “Bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty needs our engage­ment”, with the fol­low­ing mes­sages:

- …and our engage­ment needs action. Stop dri­ving, start bik­ing. -

- …and our engage­ment needs action. Boy­cott meat indus­try, go veg­an! -

- …and our engage­ment needs action. Sab­o­tage pol­lut­ing indus­try. -

- …and our engage­ment needs action. Sup­port small scale, instead of indus­tri­al farm­ing. -

- With­out you…nothing will hap­pen. -

We also had some oth­er posters that we put in suit­able places, such as “Biosprit macht hunger”

Armed with glue and self-made bill­board keys, we made our way through the cen­tre. It was messy, great fun!

======

Hap­py Share­hold­ers sup­port Cor­po­ra­tions at Busi­ness Lunch dur­ing COP9

Thurs­day may 22 is the UN day for Bio­di­ver­si­ty. This was the occa­sion for a group of share­hold­ers to vis­it a lunch-meet­ing organ­ised by the Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce, the lob­by organ­i­sa­tion of worlds largest cor­po­ra­tions.

“We, ‘The Small Share­hold­ers Ini­tia­tive’, TSSI are very glad about the impor­tant issues we have to report on behalf of the Inter­na­tion­al Prof­it­di­ver­si­ty Day today:

Busi­ness gets 220.000 US $ to sup­port com­pa­nies in their work at the CBD. This means that we can give our prof­its to the share­hold­ers and still make peo­ple believe that we work for bio­di­ver­si­ty.

Dur­ing the high lev­el meet­ing Thurs­day May 29, busi­ness right­ly gets a full hour to present its ideas. All oth­er stake­hold­ers togeth­er have to share the oth­er hour. After­wards all del­e­gates are invit­ed, as part of the offi­cial pro­gramme, by busi­ness for a lunch. Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty to make the del­e­ga­tions do what we want.

Hear hear!”

The rest of the speech­es of the hap­py share­hold­ers you can read in the fly­er they hand­ed out to dur­ing the par­ty: http://www.aseed.net/pdfs/SlideEvent_versionA5.pdf

======

Via Campesina Dis­rupts CBD

23.05.2008

VIA CAMPESINA JOINS BIODIVERSITY DAY CELEBRATIONS

This after­noon activists from all over the world have hung a ban­ner, banged on teacups and hand­ed out mes­sages by Via Campesina dur­ing the offi­cial cel­e­bra­tions of Bio­di­ver­si­ty Day at the 9th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP‑9) of the UN con­ven­tion on Bio­di­ver­si­ty. They did so at the end of a mes­sage by UN sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon read by the Pro­gramme Offi­cer of the Sec­re­tari­at of the CBD to the dis­tin­guished del­e­gates of the Con­ven­tion.

The ban­ners read “No Agro­di­ver­si­ty With­out Farm­ers” and “Nature for Peo­ple Not for Busi­ness”. The writ­ten mes­sage was brought to the atten­tion of the del­e­gates by farm­ers’ group Via Campesina, who were refused to be part of the cel­e­bra­tion cer­e­mo­ny just before bio­di­ver­si­ty day.

Accord­ing to Via Campesina as well as many oth­er present at the con­ven­tion small farm­ers are the key to both the solu­tion to world hunger and the safe­guard­ing of the world’s bio­di­ver­si­ty.

Via Campesina also warns against cor­po­rate inter­ests advo­cat­ing for a new Green Rev­o­lu­tion in Africa as a strat­e­gy to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Although they use con­cepts such as “sus­tain­abil­i­ty”, “par­tic­i­pa­tion”, and “bio­di­ver­si­ty man­age­ment”, the pro­duc­tion mod­el is the same as that which has cre­at­ed the present cri­sis and grow­ing loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty

Small farm­ers, though, have the abil­i­ty to feed the world. Peas­ant agri­cul­ture pro­motes food diver­si­ty, sus­tains tra­di­tion­al cul­tures and does not bur­den the envi­ron­ment. More­over, small-scale, local and eco­log­i­cal pro­duc­tion is an effec­tive and imme­di­ate way of reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions and cool­ing down the plan­et.

After a few min­utes the ban­ners were tak­en away by UN police offi­cers and offi­cials and the peo­ple hold­ing them were escort­ed out of the Mar­itim Hotel, and lost their accred­i­ta­tion badges, which are required to par­tic­i­pate in the meet­ings.

Mem­bers of Via Campesina were giv­en a round of applause from the del­e­gates when they chant­ed “nature for peo­ple, not for busi­ness”.

Pri­or to the ban­ner hang­ing action, mem­bers of Aktions­bünd­nis COP9, Via Campesina and sup­port­ers dis­rupt­ed an indus­try lunch where agro-indus­tri­al­ists were con­grat­u­lat­ing each oth­er for their excel­lent work at monop­o­liz­ing the seed sup­ply and destroy­ing agri­cul­tur­al bio­di­ver­si­ty. CBD Exec­u­tive Sec­re­tary Ahmed Djogh­laf, who has been crit­i­cized for his pro-indus­try actions, pre­sent­ed at the side event fol­low­ing the lunch.