Some fascinating notes from Patrick M (item 2) showing how the US is tring to wreck things via its Aussie proxy:
1.Biodiversity vs. Biotechnology
2.Patrick Mulvany's NOTES FROM CBD/COP 7
NB Receive video, photo and written updates from the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety via Friends of the Earth (www.foei.org/cbd) and the Biotechnology Independent Media Centre (www.biotechimc.org).
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1.Biodiversity vs. Biotechnology
Audio Visual Reporting from the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety.
Tune into Friends of the Earth (www.foei.org/cbd) and the Biotechnology Independent Media Centre (www.biotechimc.org) for updates, interviews and other news in and around the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety (www.biodiv.org).
From the 9th to the 27th of February in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the conservation of our planets biodiversity and the future regulation of the movement of genetically modified organisms will be negociated. Governments, international institutions, transnational corporations, Indigenous Peoples, NGOs and activists will converge to discuss the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety. While the safeguarding of our planet is supposed to be a common aim of these talks, not much is agreed upon.
Contentious issues are discussed within the CBD, particularly the aim of reaching an international agreement on the access and benefit sharing of genetic resources. Who owns the planets genetic resources? How shall they be shared? Should our natural environment be copy righted and sold for a profit as certain stakeholders would have it?
Other potential issues that will be discussed at the meeting will be the role of protected areas in the preservation of biological diversity as well as the transfer of technology and technology cooperation. The meeting will also discuss the biological diversity of mountain ecosystems.
The meeting for the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety promises to be just as confrontational. The protocol was developed as an international agreement to govern the transboundary movement of genetically (living) modified organisms. Initiated because of the concerns about the possible consequences of the introduction of genetically modified organisms into food and agriculture, it has been bitterly negociated between the proponents for and against the free spread of biotechnology. The protocol has recently come into force as a result of it having been ratified by over 50 nations, the 50th being the tiny island state of Palau. The meeting in Malaysia will be the first since the Protocol's ratification and signifies a crucial time for the future of biosafety and may determine the regulation of genetically modified organisms on a global scale for many years to come. The meeting will discuss a biosafety clearing house mechanism, biosafety capacity-building, liability and redress, protocol compliance, and the handling, transport, packaging and identification of living modified organisms.
Receive video, photo and written updates from the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety via Friends of the Earth (www.foei.org/cbd) and the Biotechnology Independent Media Centre (www.biotechimc.org).
If you are press, an organisation, or just an interested individual and would like to personally receive updates, articles, press releases and links to video clips and photos send an email to [email protected]
If you would like to cooperate, contribute, give an interview or opinion, or if your organisation/institution would like the compiled and edited footage of the conference please contact [email protected] or call us in Malaysia on +60 (0) 193951436
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2.NOTES FROM CBD/COP 7
Patrick Mulvany
Senior Policy Adviser, ITDG
10 Feb 2004
Invasive Australian Subversion
The status of the CBD and the Precautionary Principle was brought to the brink on Tuesday at COP 7, as the Dutch former President of COP 6 presented compromise text that attempted to resolve the impasse resulting from his bad decision in The Hague in 2002. On the face of it, the Australians have presented a legitimate concern that their interests in the control of Invasive Alien Species (IAS) were not reflected in the COP 6 decisions. Under this, though, is their attempt to undermine the Precautionary Principle as defined in the Biodiversity Convention and the Biosafety Protocol and make CBD decisions subordinate to Trade agreements such as the WTO.
The former President of COP implored Parties to accept his compromise text by acclamation but delegation after delegation, led by the African Group’s spokesman, Tewolde Egziabher of Ethiopia, demanded time to consider and reflect on the text dumped on the COP in its first days. Australia is threatening that if its demands are not met they will wreck this COP. The majority will resist this threat and this issue promises to dominate the meeting.
NB The USA, which is not a Party to the Convention, has sent 40 people to COP 7 and the following meeting of the Biosafety Protocol. The USA, as a non-Party, can only operate through others. Australia is often its proxy.
The Editorial in Wednesday 11th Feb ECO provides more insight into this problem and the possible outcomes. (See link)
Technology Transfer
The first discussions on technology transfer identified a split in delegations. A number of delegations raised issues such as local knowledge, South-South exchanges, and broad definitions of technology. However another group, mostly ‘megadiverse’ countries, wanted a focus on delivery of environmentally sound technologies by Industrialised Countries – their unfulfilled commitment as agreed in the CBD.
Kenya went further and asked that references to incentives for (subsidised) opening up developing countries to patented technologies be deleted. This would result in reverse flows of royalty payments to the industrialised countries and become a burden rather than a benefit.
The Chair will deliver revised text for negotiation in the next day or two. At this point the positions of delegations will become clearer and it is expected that the industrialised countries will attempt to forestall commitments to net flows of resources and technologies to Developing Countries, which, in turn, will demand benefits now. Lost in between these positions will be the opportunity to spearhead a process for recognising the values of local communities and enhancing the technology capabilities of countries and communities to make improved assessments before technologies are developed, promoted or disseminated.
Technology Transfer will be the subject of a lunchtime event organised by ITDG for the Civil Society Organisations at COP to be held on Thursday 12th February in the Community Kampong Space.
Agricultural Biodiversity
The issue of Terminator Technologies and GURTs (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies) rumbles around the meeting. They affect: Indigenous Peoples Rights, the subject of Article 8j; Access and Benefit sharing; Agricultural Biodiversity; LMOs and Biosafety; among others. Some have accused the FAO of promoting GURTs because of the paper, with an Annex by the USA, that they have circulated.
Sweden, in the EU, is taking the issue very seriously and is prepared to join with the African Group, India and others to call for a moratorium on development and commercialisation of the technology and a ban on Terminator seeds.
IPGRI organised a Side Event on the research agenda for Agricultural Biodiversity. After introductory remarks by IPGRI on the outcome of the Nairobi workshop (link), excellent keynote presentations by ITDG’s Anil Subedi (Director ITDG Nepal), on experiences in local and national initiatives in Nepal, and Isabella Masinde (ITDG East Africa) on the criteria for good agricultural research, opened up a lively discussion. Participants identified the need for research to be focused on the articulated needs of local communities, respecting their rights and customary laws and practices. ITDG expressed the need for the research agenda to focus on developing tools that could be used by the farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk themselves that would help them manage their agricultural biodiversity and measure changes in diversity and ecosystem function. There was a call for increasing awareness and the uptake of good local practices. As an example of this, Anil Subedi reported on the success in Nepal with incorporating farmers’ varieties in formal seed legislation and the recognition of participatory plant breeding in national agricultural research and extension systems.
In terms of taking forward this research agenda, the Director General of IPGRI made it clear that while IPGRI is initiating this work and organised the preparatory workshop in Nairobi, neither IPGRI nor the CGIAR’s System Wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) have ownership over the process and will welcome others to take the lead. IPGRI is willing to host a facilitation unit but will not control the process. It was said that an indicator of success would be if there were significant CSO and farmer organisation response to this challenging agenda.
Global Crop Diversity Trust
Tewolde Egziabher from Ethiopia and member of the interim Executive board of the Trust introduced a brief Side Event on this new Trust. The Global Crop Diversity Trust has been set up to develop an Endowment fund of $260m that will support international and national genebanks of the world’s most important agricultural seeds. It was clarified, in response to questions by Patrick Mulvany, ITDG , that only about 10% of this fund has been collected to date with another similar amount available from this year for direct funding of work on the conservation ex situ of the genebanks in most urgent need for upgrading. Further, that the donors of these funds, including the Life Sciences agribusiness Syngenta, would have no influence on the way I which the genetic resources would be used. However, a fear was expressed that this Trust will facilitate biopiracy. The policy under which the Trust will operate will be determined by the International Seed Treaty, whose Chair is also Chair of the interim Executive Board. But where are the donors of the seeds – the farmers – in the future governance of the Trust? A further concern is that the Trust will divert funds from the equally if not more important need for funding the conservation and sustainable use of farmers varieties of seeds on their farms – a priority of the CBD, the Treaty and the Leipzig Global Plan of Action.
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