by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 22, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Environmental Investigation Agency
MUARE TAE, Indonesia — The fate of a Dayak community deep in the interior of East Kalimantan demonstrates how Indonesia must safeguard the rights of indigenous people who practise a sustainable lifestyle if it is to meet ambitious targets to reduce emissions from deforestation, alleges an organisation that specialises in investigating environmental crimes.
The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) claim Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, in West Kutai Kabupaten, today face a two-pronged assault from palm oil companies aggressively expanding into their ancestral forests. Together with Indonesian NGO Telapak, the community is manning a forest outpost around the clock in a last ditch attempt to save it from destruction.
The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has witnessed at first-hand the Dayak Benuaq’s struggle, and how their sustainable use of forests could help Indonesia deliver on its ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
EIA Forests Team Leader Faith Doherty said: “There are more than 800 families in Muara Tae relying on the forests for their food, water, medicine, culture and identity. Put simply, they have to keep this forest in order to survive.
“The rhetoric from the President of Indonesia on curbing emissions by reducing deforestation is strong but on the front line, where indigenous communities are putting their lives at risk to protect forests, action is sorely missing.”
President Yudhoyono has pledged to reduce carbon emissions across the archipelago by 26 per cent by 2020 against a business-as-usual baseline, alongside delivering substantial economic growth.
Plantation expansion will inevitably be a significant element of growth, but it has historically been a major driver of emissions and it is widely acknowledged that in order avoid them, expansion must now be directed to ‘degraded’ lands.
The EIA believe that as a result of weak spatial planning, however, the forests of Muara Tae are identified as ‘APL’, a designation meaning they are not part of the national forest area and are open to exploitation. The EIA claim the theft of indigenous forests also raises serious questions as to what form of ‘development’ these plantations offer.
In indigenous communities such as the Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, Indonesia has perhaps its most valuable forest resource. It is due to their sustainable methods, honed over generations, that the forest even remains.
The remaining forest is home to a large number of bird species including hornbills, the emblem of Borneo. There are about 20 species of reptiles and it is also a habitat for both proboscis monkeys and honey bears.
From Gáldu
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 21, 2012 | Agriculture
By Reuters
France asked the European Commission on Monday to suspend authorization to plant Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) MON810 corn, the environment ministry said, as the country seeks to keep a ban on GM crops despite losing court rulings.
France banned in 2008 the growing of MON810 corn, the only GM crop approved for planting in the European Union, citing environmental risks.
Its highest court ruled against the ban in November, following a similar decision by the European Court of Justice last September, leading the government to say it would look at all ways to maintain the freeze on GM planting.
The French government’s request to the EU executive was based on “significant risks for the environment” shown in recent scientific studies, the ministry said in a statement.
EU governments are divided over authorising GM crop cultivation, with some countries like France reluctant to allow them in view of public hostility.
Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, is seeking to revive stalled talks on allowing individual countries to decide on whether to allow GM crops.
The stalemate over GM crops has frustrated crop farmers and biotech companies, most of which have scaled back research on such varieties in Europe.
From dawn.com: http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/21/france-asks-eu-to-suspend-monsanto-gm-corn-approval.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 19, 2012 | Agriculture
By Ian Sample, The Guardian
Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in the Netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food. The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat, and a milestone on the path to the world’s first burger made from stem cells.
Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger – produced at a cost of more than £200,000 – this October.
He hopes Heston Blumenthal, the chef and owner of the three Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, will cook the offering for a celebrity taster as yet unnamed.
The project, funded by a wealthy, anonymous, individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food, and in doing so reduce one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
“Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock,” Post said.
“You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don’t do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive.”
Livestock contribute to global warming through unchecked releases of methane, a gas 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, Post said the burger would be a “proof of concept” to demonstrate that “with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat”.
Post is focusing on making beef burgers from stem cells because cows are among the least efficient animals at converting the food they eat into food for humans.
“Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more,” Post said. “If we can raise the efficiency from 15% to 50% it would be a tremendous leap forward.”
Post and his team of six have so far grown thin sheets of cow muscle measuring 3cm long, 1.5cm wide, and half a millimetre thick. To make a burger will take 3,000 pieces of muscle and a few hundred pieces of fatty tissue, that will be minced together and pressed into a patty.
Each piece of muscle is made by extracting stem cells from cow muscle tissue and growing them in containers in the laboratory. The cells are grown in a culture medium containing foetal calf serum, which contains scores of nutrients the cells need to grow.
The slivers of muscle grow between pieces of Velcro and flex and contract as they develop. To make more protein in the cells – and so improve the texture of the tissue – the scientists shock them with an electric current.
Post said he could theoretically increase the number of burgers made from a single cow from 100 to 100m. “That means we could reduce the number of livestock we use by 1m,” he said.
If lab-grown meat mimics farmed meat perfectly – and Post admits it may not – the meat could become a premium product just as free range and organic items have.
He said that in conversations with the Dutch Society of Vegetarians, the chairman estimated half its members would start to eat meat if he could guarantee that it cost fewer animal lives.
Meat grown in the laboratory could have several advantages, because its manufacture is controlled at each step. The tissue could be grown to produce high levels of healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids, or to have a particular texture.
Because the burgers are made from animal stem cells, researchers could make products from more exotic animals. “We could make panda meat, I’m sure we could,” Post said.
He believes it will be a relatively simple matter to scale up the operation, since most of the technical obstacles have already been overcome. “I’d estimate that we could see mass production in another 10 to 20 years,” he said.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/19/test-tube-burger-meat-eating
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 16, 2012 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Dominic Brown
The Lower Omo Valley in south-western Ethiopia is a vast and rugged region of mountains and valleys, inhabited largely by nomadic agro-pastoralist tribes numbering some 200,000 people. Many live a simple existence, living in straw thatched huts and have little contact with the outside world. But the Ethiopian government’s new found appetite for large-scale sugar production threatens the very existence of many of these tribes.
Nearly 300,000 hectares of land in the Omo and Mago National Parks, which comprises much of the Lower Omo Valley, has been earmarked for the Kuraz Sugar Development programme. Backed by large-scale investment from Indian companies, the programme aims to help increase overall sugar production in Ethiopia to 2.3 million tonnes by 2015, with the goal of achieving a 2.5 per cent global share by 2017.
Whilst revenues from the sugar plantations will undoubtedly fill the coffers of central government, the forced relocation of tribes from their traditional lands is already having catastrophic consequences. The permanent damage to a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site is also raising alarm amongst environmentalists.
“We stand to lose everything,” one tribal leader explained, tears welling in his eyes, as he stood surrounded by his villagers. “Our traditional hunting grounds, the land we use for grazing our cattle, our homes. Everything will be gone. We will be left with nothing. We need the outside world to help us.”
Early in 2011, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi spoke of the importance of the project to the country’s economy, outlined in the government’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). “In the coming five years there will be a very big irrigation project and related agricultural development in this zone. Even though this area is known as backward in terms of civilisation, it will become an example of rapid development.”
This “rapid development” has come at a price. There have been almost inevitable human rights abuses inflicted upon those resisting relocation since the Kuraz Sugar Development programme began last June. A report [PDF] by the Oakland Institute, a US-based think-tank, details how Ethiopian Defence Forces “arrive at Omo Valley villages (and in particular Bodi, Mursi and Suri villages) questioning villagers about their perspectives on the sugar plantations. Villagers are expected to voice immediate support, otherwise beatings (including the use of tasers), abuse and general intimidation occurs”.
Other allegations of abuse to have leaked out include the rape of male tribesmen, as well as of women and children by Ethiopian soldiers. Dozens of villagers from the region also remain in detention after voicing opposition to the development plans.
Violent clashes between the Ethiopian army and tribes from the region are on the rise. A local human rights worker told me of their fears of an escalation in the crisis to civil war. “Many tribes are saying they will fight back rather than be moved off their traditional lands to make way for these plantations. They are living in fear but feel they have nothing to lose by fighting back.”
Roadblocks are now in place in many parts of the Lower Omo Valley, limiting accessibility and ensuring the relocations remain out of the spotlight. Tribal rights NGO Survival International is leading calls for a freeze on plantation building and for a halt to the evictions. They have been campaigning to draw more attention to the deteriorating situation in the region since the Ethiopian government announced plans for the Gib III Dam [PDF] – Africa’s tallest, and one that is scheduled for completion later this year.
When completed, it threatens to destroy a fragile environment and the livelihoods of the tribes, which are closely linked to the river and its annual flood. Up to 500,000 people – including tribes in neighbouring Kenya – rely on the waters and adjacent lands of the Omo River and Lake Turkana, most of which lies in Kenya. The Karo people, now estimated to number just 1,500 along the eastern banks of the Omo River, face extinction. Already suffering from dwindling fish stocks as a result of the dam, the reduced river levels have also harmed their crop yields.
Read more from Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/ethiopias-tribes-cry-for-help/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 13, 2012 | Agriculture, Toxification
By Reuters
A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.
In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004.
He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, southeast France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois’s losses to establish the amount of damages.
“It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a (pesticide) maker is found guilty of such a poisoning,” François Lafforgue, Francois’s lawyer, told Reuters.
Monsanto said it was disappointed by the ruling and would examine whether to appeal the judgment.
“Monsanto always considered that there were not sufficient elements to establish a causal relationship between Paul Francois’s symptoms and a potential poisoning,” the company’s lawyer, Jean-Philippe Delsart, said.
Previous health claims from farmers have foundered because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.
Francois and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products.
The agricultural branch of the French social security system says that since 1996, it has gathered farmers’ reports of sickness potentially related to pesticides, with about 200 alerts a year.
But only about 47 cases have been recognised as due to pesticides in the past 10 years. Francois, who suffers from neurological problems, obtained work invalidity status only after a court appeal.
Read more from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/france-pesticides-monsanto-idUSL5E8DD5UG20120213
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Agriculture, Lobbying
By Julia Moskin / The New York Times News Service
Silent in flannel shirts and ponytails, farmers from Saskatchewan and South Dakota, Mississippi and Massachusetts lined the walls of a packed federal courtroom in Manhattan last week, as their lawyers told a judge that they were no longer able to keep genetically modified crops from their fields.
The hearing is part of a debate that is coming to life around the country, in courtrooms and Occupy sites, in boardrooms and online, with new petitions, ballot initiatives and lawsuits from California to Maine.
Last year, according to the Department of Agriculture, about 90 percent of all soybeans, corn, canola and sugar beets raised in the United States were grown from what scientists now call transgenic seed. Most processed foods (staples like breakfast cereal, granola bars, chicken nuggets and salad dressing) contain one or more transgenic ingredients, according to estimates from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, though the labels don’t reveal that. (Some, like tortilla chips, can contain dozens.)
Common ingredients like corn, vegetable oil, maltodextrin, soy protein, lecithin, monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, yeast extract, sugar and corn syrup are almost always produced from transgenic crops.
No known health risks are associated with eating transgenic foods (though many scientists say it is too soon to assess the effects), and the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as safe.
But consumer resistance to transgenic food remains high. In a nationwide telephone poll conducted in October 2010 by Thomson Reuters and National Public Radio, 93 percent said if a food has been genetically engineered or has genetically engineered ingredients, it should say so on its label – a number that has been consistent since genetically modified crops were introduced. F.D.A. guidelines say that food that contains genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s, don’t have to say so and can still be labeled “all natural.”
In California, voters in November will decide on a ballot initiative requiring the labeling of such foods. In October, an online campaign called Just Label It began collecting signatures and comments on a petition to the F.D.A., requesting rules similar to those in the European Union, Japan, China, India and Australia, stating what transgenic food is in the package. (For example, an ingredients list might say “genetically engineered corn” instead of just “corn.”) Six hundred thousand Americans have commented, according to the group.
“You don’t have to be a technophobe or think corporations are evil to not want G.M.O.’s in your food,” said Ashley Russell, a college student who attended a rally sponsored by Food Democracy Now after the Manhattan court hearing.
Read more at TruthOut:
