by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 4, 2012 | Agriculture, Toxification
By Pesticide Action Network
Results released today from water sampling across four Midwestern states – Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota – indicate that the endocrine disrupting pesticide atrazine is still being found in drinking water at levels linked to birth defects and low birth weight. Syngenta, one of the world’s largest pesticide corporations, has continued to promote the use of the chemical, despite growing concerns from independent scientists. The US Environmental Protection Agency will weigh these findings as it continues its re-evaluation of the chemical in the coming months.
“These water monitoring results should raise concerns for policymakers, they confirm that atrazine continues to contaminate Midwest drinking water at meaningful levels,” said Emily Marquez, PhD, endocrinologist and staff scientist for Pesticide Action Network. “Endocrine disrupting chemicals like atrazine are hormonally active at vanishingly small amounts. That is why scientists are looking again at atrazine, and that is why the EU set water contamination tolerance levels at 0.1 ppb. EPA’s current legal limit of 3 ppb is 30 times that and much too permissive. The best way to ensure rural communities and farmers are protected is to keep atrazine out of their water entirely.”
In the results released today, atrazine was found in a majority of water samples from Midwestern homes and farms. Atrazine is found more often than any other pesticide in groundwater – 94% of drinking water tested by USDA contains the chemical. The weed killer is the second most widely used pesticides in the U.S., with more than 76 million pounds used last year, mostly on Midwestern corn fields. Atrazine is applied most heavily in Illinois, where applications exceed 85 pounds per square mile.
The results, on average, demonstrate that levels frequently found in drinking water are five times the former legal limit in Europe, and five times the levels associated with adverse health effects, including low birth-weight in babies. Europe’s legal limit was 0.1 ppb before the chemical was banned in 2003. One Illinois sample is above the EPA limit for atrazine in drinking water, and is well above the level associated with significantly increased risk of birth defects.
“Syngenta’s atrazine is linked to irreversible harms like cancer and birth defects. Rural families are on the frontlines of pesticide exposure and we risk contaminating the water of millions of people with the chemical’s continued use,” said Julia Govis, a mother, author of Who’s Poisoning Our Children, and Statewide Program Coordinator of Illinois Farm to School.
As EPA continues its reevaluation of the chemical and plans to release additional findings on atrazine in June, new studies highlight the link between low-level exposure atrazine and adverse human health effects, including cancer and altered development. At the same time, the chemical’s manufacturer, Syngenta, continues to influence scientific analysis of the chemical, downplaying evidence showing that atrazine is harmful.
Last summer, EPA’s independent scientific advisory panel concluded an 18-month review of atrazine’s health and environmental effects. They pointed to “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential” for ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer.
Unfortunately, EPA has been misled or ignored key findings. Dr. Jason Rohr, a scientist from University of South Florida, took a look at industry-funded reviews of the effects of atrazine on fish and frogs, indicators of impacts on human health, and he found: “The industry-funded review misrepresented more than 50 studies and included 122 inaccurate and 22 misleading statements. Of these inaccurate and misleading statements, 96.5% seem to benefit the makers of atrazine in that they support the safety of the chemical.”
Despite pressure from pesticide maker Syngenta, farmers across the Midwest are demonstrating ways of producing corn and growing food without relying on Syngenta’s atrazine.
“Levels of atrazine in our water raise concerns about the health impacts on farmers and communities like mine. The results underscore the challenges facing many farmers; they are caught in a pesticide trap, and it’s no surprise that they are forced to use more and more pesticides. These results should spur state and federal officials to take action and support farmers as they transition away from Syngenta’s atrazine, towards safe and healthy farming,” said Anita Poeppel, owner of Broad Branch Farm in Central Illinois.
From Pesticide Action Network: http://www.panna.org/press-release/atrazine-found-water-dozens-midwest-communities
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 30, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Tom Knudson / The Sacramento Bee
The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes.
Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn’t intended to kill.
There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle.
“I called my supervisor and said, ‘I just caught a golden eagle and it’s dead,’ ” said Strader. “He said, ‘Did anybody see it?’ I said, ‘Geez, I don’t think so.’
“He said, ‘If you think nobody saw it, go get a shovel and bury it and don’t say nothing to anybody.’ ”
“That bothered me,” said Strader, whose job was terminated in 2009. “It wasn’t right.”
Strader’s employer, a branch of the federal Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services, has long specialized in killing animals that are deemed a threat to agriculture, the public and – more recently – the environment.
Since 2000, its employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West. They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves.
And in most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures were killed, or why. But a Bee investigation has found the agency’s practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.
The Bee’s findings include:
• With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family pets; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists.
• Since 1987, at least 18 employees and several members of the public have been exposed to cyanide when they triggered spring-loaded cartridges laced with poison meant to kill coyotes. They survived – but 10 people have died and many others have been injured in crashes during agency aerial gunning operations over the same time period.
• A growing body of science has found the agency’s war against predators, waged to protect livestock and big game, is altering ecosystems in ways that diminish biodiversity, degrade habitat and invite disease.
Sometimes wild animals must be destroyed – from bears that ransack mountain cabins to geese swirling over an airport runway. But because lethal control stirs strong emotions, Wildlife Services prefers to operate in the shadows.
“We pride ourselves on our ability to go in and get the job done quietly without many people knowing about it,” said Dennis Orthmeyer, acting state director of Wildlife Services in California.
Basic facts are tightly guarded. “This information is Not intended for indiscriminate distribution!!!” wrote one Wildlife Services manager in an email to a municipal worker in Elk Grove about the number of beavers killed there.
And while even the military allows the media into the field, Wildlife Services does not. “If we accommodated your request, we would have to accommodate all requests,” wrote Mark Jensen, director of Wildlife Services in Nevada, turning down a request by The Bee to observe its hunters and trappers in action.
“The public has every right to scrutinize what’s going on,” said Carter Niemeyer, a former Wildlife Services district manager who worked for the agency for 26 years and now believes much of the bloodletting is excessive, scientifically unsound and a waste of tax dollars.
“If you read the brochures, go on their website, they play down the lethal control, which they are heavily involved in, and show you this benign side,” Niemeyer said. “It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s a killing business. And it ain’t pretty.
“If the public knows this and they don’t care, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” Niemeyer said. “But they are entitled to know.”
Agency officials say the criticism is misleading. “If we can use nonlethal control first, we usually do it,” said William Clay, deputy administrator of Wildlife Services. “The problem is, generally when we get a call, it’s because farmers and ranchers are having livestock killed immediately. They are being killed daily. Our first response is to try to stop the killing and then implement nonlethal methods.”
In March, two congressmen – Reps. John Campbell, R-Irvine, and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. – introduced a bill that would ban one of Wildlife Services’ most controversial killing tools: spring-loaded sodium cyanide cartridges that have killed tens of thousands of animals in recent years, along with Compound 1080 (thallium sulfate), a less-commonly used poison.
“This is an ineffective, wasteful program that is largely unaccountable, lacks transparency and continues to rely on cruel and indiscriminate methods,” said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, a Bay Area nonprofit.
“If people knew how many animals are being killed at taxpayer expense – often on public lands – they would be shocked and horrified,” Fox said.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 29, 2012 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Listening to the Land, Mining & Drilling, Strategy & Analysis
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
Lester Brown’s exhaustively researched book, Plan B 4.0 – Mobilizing to Save Civilization, is a bold and impressive effort to chart a course to ecological sustainability, one of very few books that attempts this worthwhile goal. Brown lists 4 steps that Plan B 4.0 focuses on to achieve sustainability:
- Stabilize climate by cutting emissions by at least 80% by 2020
- Stabilize population at 8 billion or lower
- Eradicate poverty
- Restore natural earth systems (soil, aquifers, forests, grasslands, oceans)
These are excellent goals to begin with, and show that Brown is extremely serious about his mission, and is truly concerned about justice and the welfare of the human population. They also show that he understands one of the fundamental obstacles to true change – the interlocking relationship between environmental destruction and human exploitation. For example, Brown calls for debt relief for poor nations – an admirable position against the interests of international financiers and for the interests of poor and exploited people. Few analysts truly understand this relationship at both a theoretical and real-world level, and Brown moves beyond the average call for sustainability by acknowledging the seriousness of this issue.
Plan B lays out a compelling and comprehensive vision of the converging crises that are threatening life on earth – from oceanic collapse and peak oil to soil erosion and food instability. Brown understands that the collapse of global civilization is likely if business-as-usual continues. The undermining of the biological life-support systems of the earth has left life as we know it teetering on the brink. For many species and communities around the world, it is already too late.
The fundamental basis of Brown’s approach is that it is a social change approach. Brown understands that social problems require social solutions. While personal lifestyle changes (to transport, diet, and other consumption) are an important and moral way to address these problems, they are not sufficient to solve ecological and social injustice by themselves. This is an important step – a foundation for serious political work. From here, we can analyze each of the goals of Plan B 4.0 for strategic soundness, moral rigor, and good scholarship.
Step 1: Stabilize Climate
Brown’s approach to solving the climate problem relies on several strategies. First, he advocates massive adoption of alternative energy. Second, he calls for replanting of billions of trees to sequester carbon and rehabilitate habitat. Third, he describes an efficiency revolution centering on recycling, reusing, and refining urban planning and architecture and material flows throughout global society.
The focus on replanting of forests and restoring habitat around the world is extremely important and is an admirable goal, as is the elimination of coal and gasoline as energy sources. However, the fundamental failure of Brown’s approach to solving climate change is the insistence on maintaining an industrial way of life. Efficiency in cooking, housing, and production is doubtlessly important, but too many of Brown’s solutions call for centralized industrial production instead of local self-sufficiency – the maintenance of privileged lifestyles.
In short, while Brown’s plan is truly radical, he does not go far enough. In advocating massive production of solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and trains, a “smart grid,” and other industrial technologies, Plan B 4.0 does not question the fundamental system of resource extraction and industrial production. It does not question global capitalism, which will continue to get rich by feeding on human and non-human communities.
The industrial products sold within the capitalist economy are created through a complex global system of mining, refining, production, distribution, and trashing/recycling. In each stage of this process, natural communities of humans and non-humans are exploited, poisoned, and destroyed for the sake of luxury goods like cars and electricity.
Electric cars and alternative energy do not address this fundamental destruction that is required for industrial technology to exist. Wind turbines, to use one example, still require mining for bauxite, the ore refined into aluminum. In central India (and other regions around the world) mountains containing bauxite are blown up and strip-mined to extract bauxite. About six tons of bauxite and a thousand tons of water a required to produce one ton of aluminum. There is no sustainable way to do this – most rich countries have exported this process to poor nations. The pollution is hidden.
This process not only destroys or displaces the non-human life on these mountains, but leads to runoff, pollution, and extirpation of indigenous communities. Smelting bauxite requires extremely high temperatures – usually provided by big dams – and leads to vast amounts of carbon emissions and other air pollution. And the entire system of distribution depends on vast ocean-going ships that burn bunker fuel, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. It is estimated that one container ship releases as much carbon dioxide as 50 million cars.
Another example: the Toyota Prius, widely praised by environmentalists (including Brown), requires 5 times as much energy to produce as an average car due to the complex process of creating electric motors, circuitry, and batteries. Accounting for production energy and transportation fuel and average over the lifetime of the car, a Prius actually uses 1.4x as much energy per mile as the average American car.
Solar panels provide another example. The average solar cell requires the mining of about 2,000lbs of earth material for Silicon. The production process is extremely dangerous – in China, workers at a solar panel factory went on strike in 2011 because of the pollution released by the plant had toxified a lake nearby that was causing respiratory problems and cancers in the community.
This is just touching the surface of the devastation that is wrought by these “environmentally friendly” technologies. These technologies also require rare earth minerals like cadmium and tellurium, which simply do not exist in sufficient quantities to allow mass adoption of alternative energy.
This reliance on technological solutions is one the major failings of Plan B 4.0. Brown has bought into the hype surrounding these alternative technologies, when in reality they only represent more of the same – more resources extracted from poor nations, more money flowing to corporations and rich nations, more pollution, more destroyed communities. While the standards of research and scholarship in Plan B 4.0 are generally very high, Brown does not apply the same rigorous research methods to the technological solutions he advocates.
A better model for halting global warming would revolve around the creation of land-based communities that are able to take their sustenance from within healthy, flourishing ecosystems that they coexist with. This model is the way of life practiced by humans for 99% of our existence, so it is clearly not impossible, but it would require addressing the serious issue of population, to which Brown turns next.
Step 2: Stabilize Population
In addressing overpopulation Brown is facing an issue before which many have balked, with good reason. There is a history of racism, eugenics, and forced sterilization that makes population reduction a touchy issue to deal with directly. But Plan B 4.0 takes the right tact. Brown’s plan calls for massive programs of education and empowerment of women, combined with government incentives for small families, widespread family planning programs, and universal birth control availability. This humane and effective model has been used around the world in places like Iran with great success.
While this approach is laudable, Plan B 4.0 could use a slightly more radical feminist analysis. While Brown does call for the education of women, he does not explicitly state that empowered women rarely chose to have large numbers of children. High birth rates usually occur in patriarchal arrangements where women have few rights and little power of their own. Acknowledging this fact and working to dismantle patriarchal social forms will be a much more difficult task than the more straightforward path that Brown presents, but will lead to more lasting and fundamental change in birth rates and the overall direction of society.
Step 3: Eradicate Poverty
By acknowledging the fundamental connections between global poverty and environmental degradation, Brown goes further towards truth than many of his contemporaries. He advocates for debt relief for poor nations, which would go a long way towards relieving the pressures on “developing” nations. He calls for an increase in small gardens and other simple techniques that reduce burdens on poor people around the world, planting forests and allowing degraded lands to fallow.
However, without access to land, poor people have no chance for survival. The critique of contemporary land grabs is an important part of Plan B 4.0. Here Brown details how food importers, nations that cannot grow enough food to support their population, are purchasing and leasing arable land in poor nations to grow food for export. Many times these poor nations cannot even feed their own population, so these vast foreign-held farms must employ armed guards to ensure that the food is not taken back.
Brown understands that agriculture, logging, and overgrazing are devastating much of the land around the world through salinization, soil erosion, and desertification, and that this process is destabilizing populations and leading to poverty and social breakdown.
However, Brown is lacking a fundamental critique of industrial agriculture as a practice. He advocates the use of pesticides and fertilizers, which are overwhelmingly toxic and derived from fossil fuels. He advocates for increased efficiency in irrigation, while acknowledging the fact that 70% of the fresh water used worldwide is used for irrigation. And he advocates for the use of genetically modified and high-yield varieties, which is a gamble with the genetic code. This is also leading to a narrow range of varieties, which are more vulnerable to future disease of plague. The result has been an arms-race between GMO and pesticide companies and the constantly evolving creatures that feed on monocropped fields.
Even more fundamentally, Brown does not appreciate the fact that annual monocrop agriculture is the practice that has enabled rampant overpopulation. Population tracks food supply, and it has been well documented is recent years that many creatures (including humans) regulate their own population based on the food available. When humans began farming the land and stopped getting their food from within biodiverse, perennial ecosystems, they stopped paying attention to these natural limits. They were not sharing their food anymore.
This lack of sharing is also the foundation of modern ecological devastation. After all, agriculture is the practice of clearing natural ecosystems and replanting them for human use. The forests and grasslands that have fallen before the plow are the primary location for species loss worldwide. Ninety-eight percent of old-growth forests and 99% of native grasslands are gone. Human population has grown in direct proportion to the decline in non-human populations worldwide, because they have been consumed by civilization, by agriculture.
Brown’s failure here is the same as above – he has no fundamental critique of capitalism (the dominant economic system) and civilization (the dominant form of social organization – a way of life based on annual monocrops and life in cities). These systems are a major reason why people are poor.
By extracting resources in destructive ways and exploiting workers for less than the full value of their labor, capitalism impoverishes people around the world. A large class of poor people is required for the functioning of the global economy – it is structurally mandated. And civilization is a social form that inevitably leads to overshoot of natural limits, colonial expansion, wars of conquest, further environmental damage, and finally collapse (for a further explanation of these ideas, see Sources). Any efforts to address poverty will have to first deal with the stifling influence of capitalism and civilization.
Step 4: Restoring Earth
The final goal of Plan B 4.0 is to restore natural ecosystems around the world – oceans, grasslands, soils, and forests. In order to protect biodiversity and the range or natural services provided by these ecosystems, Brown advocates massive replanting of forests (as previously mentioned), soil conservation measures, and the creation of protected marine zones in the ocean, as well as a program of parks and other measures to protect biodiversity.
Replanting forests is an important way to restore the life-support systems of the planet, and Brown is the right advocate for it. However, he also advocates for an increase in plantation style forests to be grown for timber and pulp products. While the US Forest Service is a division of the Department of Agriculture, forests are not fields, and few soils can sustain more than three consecutive harvests of timber before soils are too depleted to continue. An imposition of human standards upon a natural system decreases the health of the system, and as such, plantations are not a long-term solution.
Restoring soils is perhaps the most critical task in this section. Terrestrial life as we know it is only possible because of a thin layer of topsoil – without it, plants cannot grow. Brown’s tactic of allowing steeper slopes and other marginal farmland to fallow and return to forest is a good one, but he still lacks a full critique of agriculture as a practice. Annual monocropped fields lead to erosion and loss of soil fertility – this type of agriculture kills the soil. This is true around the world, except in small river valley regions where alluvial soils are constantly replenished.
However, these natural wetlands are also biodiversity hotspots, which means the one place where agriculture can be practiced somewhat sustainably is also the place where it will lead to the biggest loss of habitat for other creatures. Brown’s plan for protecting biodiversity is not elaborate – there are almost no details in the book. But any course of action that does not challenge the human appropriation, destruction, and toxification of land, water, and atmosphere will not lead to substantial progress in the conservation of biodiversity.
Conclusion
Plan B 4.0 is a unflinching attempt to chart a course for sanity, but Lester Brown and his researchers fail to apply the same rigor to human society and proposed solutions that they apply to environmental problems. Brown states that in 1950 the world economy was based on “sustainable yield, the interest of natural systems.” This is simply not true. Europe was deforested before industrialization. So was the Middle East. The forests and soils of North Africa fueled the Roman war machine until they were exhausted, and now support only goats and olives – ecological poverty food that can survive on desiccated, impoverished soils. The forests of the United States were felled largely before the mechanical saw. While industrialism greatly accelerated in the 1950’s, the problem goes much deeper than that.
Brown’s approach, along with the approach of many other environmentalists, is fundamentally anthropocentric and short sighted. He does not account for the experience of prehistory, that span of 99.7% of human existence when the natural world flourished alongside us. He does not even mention indigenous people, the only communities that have truly lived in a sustainable manner. Any understanding of environmental sustainability must advance from the basic position that humans have the ability to coexist with the natural world. These model societies exist, but they are being destroyed by the very industrialism that Brown supports with his calls for alternative technology (for example, the Dongriah Kondh of the central Indian foothills).
Instead of exploring how human societies may better conform themselves to the needs of the land, Brown falls into the trap of reform – how can we adapt nature to better fit our needs? How can we maintain the energy grid, industrial production, a high population, and the conveniences of globalized capitalist civilization while simultaneously addressing environmental problems? The fundamental answer to this question is that such a solution is not possible. In failing to see this point, Plan B 4.0 stumbles and falls along with the vast majority of the environmental movement.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 27, 2012 | Agriculture, Climate Change
By Mongabay
Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil processor and trader, has hired a major lobbying firm to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that palm oil-based biodiesel will not meet greenhouse gas emissions standards under America’s Renewable Fuels Standard, reports The Hill.
Wilmar Oleo North America hired lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman to pressure the EPA on its finding that biofuels produced from palm oil do not offer substantial emissions savings relative to conventional gasoline. The EPA based its decision on analysis of lifecycle emissions from palm oil production, which at times occurs at the expense of carbon-dense rainforests and peatlands.
The Hill notes that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group that drafts legislative language favoring corporate interests that fund it, is working to overturn the EPA’s finding.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to restrict the trade of tropical palm oil marks an abandonment of free trade principles that have been so beneficial to so many,” the group said in comments submitted to the EPA.
Malaysian and Indonesian groups have also complained about the EPA’s ruling. The period for comment on the matter closes April 27.
But environmental groups said the assumptions underlying the EPA’s conclusion were too conservative, noting that the agency expects only nine percent of palm oil expansion in Malaysia and 13 percent in Indonesia to occur on peatlands. But a study published today in the National Academy of Sciences, found that half of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo were established on peat lands. Conversions of peat for plantations generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is a disturbing development to see a politically motivated group like ALEC join forces with the shadowy palm oil lobby from Malaysia and Indonesia as well as with huge agribusiness companies Cargill and Wilmar to pressure the EPA to overturn what is supposed to be a science-based decision made in the best interests of the American people,” said Laurel Sutherlin with the Rainforest Action Network, in a statement. “The question the EPA is tasked with answering is whether biofuels made with palm oil meet our nation’s greenhouse gas requirements as a renewable fuel. The stark reality of the impacts of palm oil plantation expansion in Southeast Asia, where nearly 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from, makes it clear that it does not.”
“The emissions of palm oil based biofuels substantially exceed the emissions from conventional petroleum diesel,” added Jeremy Martin, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The renewable fuels standard targets 7.5 billion gallons of ‘renewable’ fuels to be blended into gasoline by the end of 2012. The initiative aims to reduce dependence on foreign oil and cut emissions from transportation, but some analysts have questioned the effectiveness of the program, since the bulk of ‘renewable’ fuel is expected to come from corn ethanol, which environmentalists say has mixed climate benefits.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 23, 2012 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, NEWS
By John Vidal & Claire Provost / The Guardian
The World Bank is helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities, environment and farm groups said in a statement released on Monday to coincide with the bank’s annual land and poverty conference in Washington DC.
According to the groups, which include NGO Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and international peasants’ group La Via Campesina, decades of World Bank policies have pushed African and other governments to privatise land and focus on industrial farming. In addition, they say, the bank is playing a “key role” in the global rush for farmland by providing capital and guarantees to big multinational investors.
“The result has often been … people forced off land they have traditionally farmed for generations, more rural poverty and greater risk of food shortages”, said FOEI in a separate report launched ahead of the World Bank conference.
The event, which promises to focus on “land governance in a rapidly changing environment”, is billed as a forum to discuss “innovative approaches” to land governance challenges including climate change, the growing demand for key natural resources, and rapid urbanisation. But campaigners say the conference mistakenly focuses on how to improve large-scale land deals rather than on helping local communities to secure or retain access to their land.
The FOEI report suggests land grabbing is intensifying and spreading, especially in rural areas of Africa and Asia. “High levels of demand for land have pushed up prices, bringing investment banks and speculators into farming,” it says.
“The World Bank’s policies for land privatisation and concentration have paved the way for corporations from Wall Street to Singapore to take upwards of 80m hectares (197.6 acres) of land from rural communities across the world in the past few years,” said the groups in a statement accusing the bank of promoting “corporate-oriented rather than people-centred” policies and laws.
In 2010, the World Bank spearheaded the development of new principles for responsible agricultural investment to better ensure that land deals respect local rights, livelihoods and resources; these guidelines have also been criticised for legitimising, rather than challenging, the global rush for land.
Allegations of land-grabbing have hit countries around the world and have been accompanied by growing concern about whether large-scale land deals are delivering promised income and employment for local people. This week, a coalition of NGOs and research institutes is expected to release the latest findings of the Land Matrix project, which has attempted to systematically document recent land acquisitions.
Current estimates suggest that 80-230m hectares of land have been leased or bought in recent years, largely to produce food, feed or fuel for the international market.
Read more from The Guardian
Photo by Floriane Vita on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 12, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Toxification
By Jill Ettinger / Organic Authority
West Coast salmon, an already threatened species, are the victim of a new, potentially detrimental threat according to a recent evaluation conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.
NOAA’s Fisheries Services identified the culprits as three pesticides commonly used in more than 100 pesticide products for home and agricultural applications including the treatment of soy, cotton, corn, grapes and Christmas trees: triflurali, oryzalin and pendimenthalin.
The request for restrictions on the pesticides was submitted as a result of legal action taken by conservation groups and salmon fishers concerned for the health and survival of the species.
According to the NOAA Fisheries report submitted to the EPA, the contamination from the pesticides may be jeopardizing as much as half of the 26 protected West Coast salmon populations already facing survival issues that make them protected by the Endangered Species Act.
In its submission to the EPA, NOAA requested the agency enforce restrictions including no-spray areas that would buffer the fish and help to keep the pesticide run-off from entering streams.
The three most common West Coast salmon species are chinook, coho and sockeye. More than 135 species depend on salmon, according to Salmon Nation. After returning to the place of their birth for spawning, salmon die, leaving their bodies as food for future generations. But the pesticides are creating new challenges for the species, making wild salmon an unsustainable catch for fishers who depend on the species, too. Trifluralin deforms the backbones of the fish, oryzalin poisons plants in the salmon’s environment as does pendimenthalin, which also poisons the food salmon eat.
From Organic Authority: http://www.organicauthority.com/blog/organic/from-lawn-to-line-home-pesticides-poisoning-west-coast-salmon/
