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Posted 7:53 PM
by Mary
BIODIVERSITY:
GE Tree Dispute Exposes Biosafety Inequities
Stephen Leahy
BONN, May 29 (IPS) - An intense North-South debate over genetically engineered trees has sidetracked delegates at a U.N. conference on biodiversity here. African nations want a global moratorium, while a few rich countries led by Canada say it should be up to individual countries to regulate. While 168 nations that are part of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) debate the issue, a new two-year U.N.-funded study warns that developing countries simply don't have the capacity to manage or monitor biotechnology.
"Africa doesn't have the technical and scientific capacity to fully debate let alone enforce rules around biosafety of biotechnology," said the study's co-author, Sam Johnston of the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UN-IAS) in Tokyo.
"Genetic contamination by GE plants is a huge issue and it's increasing," Johnston told IPS in Bonn.
Under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, industrialised countries like Canada have a legal commitment to provide funding to help poorer countries build their capacity to regulate and enforce biosafety standards for products of biotechnology, but simply haven't provided anything close to the necessary funding, he said.
"Countries importing GE crops can't even do the most basic biosafety," Johnston said.
Countries that have ratified the CBD are obligated to protect global biodiversity -- the variety of life that sustains humanity. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety regulates the transboundary movements of GE organisms and is a subsidiary agreement to the CBD.
The U.N.-IAS study involved a comprehensive assessment of developing countries' technical, policy and enforcement capacities. It found deficiencies in more than 100 countries in Africa, Central Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean that "are so pervasive and broad that there is no effective international system of biosafety at the moment".
The United States, Argentina and Canada lobbied successfully against a more rigourous Cartagena Protocol on the promise of building self-regulatory capacity in developing countries. "They have totally failed to deliver on their promise," Johnston said.
Meanwhile, the biofuels boom has sparked concern that research on genetically engineering trees for use as biofuels is ramping up, with field trials in the U.S., Canada, China, New Zealand and elsewhere. Before the Bonn conference began, 46 environmental groups from two dozen countries called on the government delegates to accept a proposal to suspend all releases of GE trees into the environment "due to their extreme ecological and social threats".
Trees have been genetically engineered to resist pesticides and insects, to grow more quickly and have less lignin so they are easier to convert into biofuels. None are commercially available as yet. Scientists have long warned that trees are not like food crops, which have significant genetic differences, for example, between domestic wheat and wild grassland species.
The risk of interbreeding between GE trees and normal trees is high. Pollen from trees can be transported more than 1,000 kilometres, according to some research. Moreover, faster growing, low-lignin trees resistant to common pests could easily become an invasive species and dominate natural forests.
"Genetically engineered trees threaten to contaminate native forests around the world with unnatural and destructive traits such as the ability to kill insects, or have reduced lignin -- the substance that enables a tree to stand up straight and withstand disease," said Anne Petermann, co-director of the Global Justice Ecology Project, in a release.
Members of the CBD previously agreed that countries ought to use the precautionary approach with regard to genetically engineered trees. In Bonn, all of the African countries and some in Europe have proposed that the CBD recommend a moratorium. Even though Canada has a small GE tree research programme, it opposes the moratorium, insisting that countries can use their own national regulations to deal with any biosafety or contamination issues.
"Canada has boldly ignored the African moratorium proposal and ignored our concerns here in Canada," Lucy Sharratt, coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, said in an interview in Bonn."The six African environment ministers who addressed the opening high-level plenary Wednesday affirmed the need for a GE tree moratorium," Sharratt said.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his environment minister also addressed the plenary but did not defend Canada's position. Indeed, they said nothing about GE trees.
Africa's concerns are "very valid", says Johnston. Simply plowing ahead with GE trees shows the proponents of biotechnology have not learned from past mistakes that created public opposition and concern over the technology in the first place, he said, adding: "Society will not trust or tolerate a new technology without effective safety standards and enforcement."
Biotechnology is mortgaging its future by undermining safety standards for short-term gain, Johnston said, and this imperils any potential benefits the technology may have for the food crisis or for future biofuels.
"Governments and biotech corporations have handled biotechnology extremely badly and they still haven't learned," he said.
Labels: Biotech, Cartagena Protocol
Posted 10:11 AM
by Mary
World 'failing on human rights'
World leaders are failing to tackle human rights abuses around the globe, Amnesty International says.
In an annual report, the group says people are still being tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries.In at least 54 states they face unfair trial and cannot speak freely in at least 77 nations, the group adds.
It says world leaders should apologise for 60 years of human rights failures since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
The group also challenges them "to re-commit themselves to deliver concrete improvements".
The report - which covers 150 countries - was published ahead of the 60th anniversary of the human rights declaration, which was adopted on 10 December 1948.
Mary Robinson, who was from 1997 to 2002 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said recognising the declaration was a very different matter from implementing it.
"I think we have an opportunity during the 60th anniversary year to redress some of the problems since the terrible attacks on the United States, what we now call 911," she said.But Amnesty's document accuses the US of failing to provide a moral compass for its international peers.
"As the world's most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behaviour globally," the report says.It notes that Washington "had distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law".
The report says the US must close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for terror suspects and either prosecute the inmates under fair trials or free them.It also urges Washington to ban all forms of torture and stop propping authoritarian regimes.
It singles out the support of President George W Bush's administration for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf when he imposed a state of emergency, clamped down on media and sacked judges.
The report also says other leading nations must act to improve their human rights records:
* China is urged to adhere to its human rights promises and allow free speech and end "re-education through labour"
* Russia is encouraged to show greater tolerance for political dissent, and none for impunity on human rights abuses in Chechnya
* The EU is being asked to investigate the complicity of its member states in "renditions" of terror suspects.
Launching the document, Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan said: "Injustice, inequality and impunity are the hallmarks of our world today.
"The human rights flashpoints in [Sudan's] Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar [Burma] demand immediate action.
"2007 was characterised by the impotence of Western governments and the ambivalence or reluctance of emerging powers to tackle some of the world's worst human rights crises." Khan stressed that "governments must act now to close the yawning gap between promise and performance".
She said: "2008 presents an unprecedented opportunity for new leaders coming to power and countries emerging on the world stage to set a new direction and reject the myopic policies and practices that in recent years have made the world a more dangerous and divided place."
Story from BBC NEWS:
Labels: Amnesty, guantanamo, Human Rights, torture
Posted 9:09 PM
by Mary
Britain ready to sign cluster bomb treaty
The Times UK Michael Evans
Britain is ready to sign a treaty that will outlaw the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs and millions of pounds will have to be spent on destroying them, senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources said yesterday.
The change in Britain’s position on the Armed Forces’ remaining cluster munitions – the helicopter-mounted M73 and artillery-launched M85 – was confirmed in Dublin at the 109-nation conference that is trying to negotiate a treaty that will ban all such weapon systems.
Senior sources said that the definition of cluster bombs which was now being agreed would mean that the M85 and the M73 would be “caught”...
The United States has not taken part in the Dublin conference, and countries such as Britain, France and Germany, which operate with American troops, want legal assurance that they will not be in breach of the treaty if they are part of a multi-national force that includes nations that have refused to be signatories.
Britain’s negotiating team in Dublin includes military advisers from the Ministry of Defence who, until now, have emphasised that both the M85 and M73 cluster-bomb systems were needed to protect British troops when confronted by an enemy in armoured vehicles. But the sources said: “The policy we’re adopting is a British government position.”
Labels: Cluster bombs, Treaty
