Time Running Out for Sustainable Future

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 by Common Dreams 
Worldwatch maps sustainable 'good life', warns great changes must be made before it's too late

The planet will not be able to sustain levels of consumption typical of today's 'consumer class' without irreparable consequences to the globe, according to the just released Worldwatch Institute in State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity. They have proposed a redefinition of 'the good life' as one that aligns with sustainable practices and have mapped out a hopeful plan leading up to this year's Rio+20; however, the plan's window of opportunity is quickly closing.

"The aspirations of the original 1992 meeting in Rio collided with a set of painfully sobering developments, including unfriendly politics, orthodox economics, and a dominant culture of consumerism. The 20 years since then have made it clear that necessary change is not merely technical, but encompasses changes in lifestyle, culture, and politics," states Worldwatch.

"There won't be much point in revisiting the Rio+20 conference in another 20 years to try to figure out what went wrong," says Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. "We know enough right now about the state of the world to see clearly that we have to change the way we live and the way we do business. Working out new paths towards true sustainability will take much more than a conference of governments, though such a gathering can help. The task begins with the recognition that perpetual economic and demographic growth aren't possible on a finite planet. We can work with the hope that ecological stability is possible, along with a good life based on health, literacy, strong communities, and access to 'enough' rather than ever more."

* * *

Time Running Out to Ensure Sustainable Prosperity for All (Worldwatch Institute):

"The Industrial Revolution gave birth to an economic growth model rooted in structures, behaviors, and activities that are patently unsustainable," says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, co-director of State of the World 2012. "Mounting ecosystem stress and resource pressures are accompanied by increased economic volatility, growing inequality, and social vulnerability. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the economy no longer works for either people or the planet."

Instead, we need to reprioritize basic needs and pursue true sustainable prosperity: development that allows all human beings to live with their fundamental needs met, with their dignity acknowledged, and with abundant opportunity to pursue lives of satisfaction and happiness, all without risk of denying others in the present and the future the ability to do the same. This, in turn, means not just preventing further degradation of Earth's systems, but actively restoring them to full health. [...]

The report's 35 contributors describe many of the currently untenable social and economic patterns and explore opportunities for creative alternatives on sustainability topics ranging from agriculture, communication technologies, and biodiversity to "green" construction, local politics, and global governance. Specific topics include:

• A Green Economy that Works for Everyone: For industrial, emerging, and developing countries, a green economy will mean different things. But they have in common the need to create green jobs that offer a decent living, and they all can benefit from policy innovations such as a network of cooperative green innovation centers, a standard-setting global "top runner" program, green financing and skills training, and greater economic democracy. 

• Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries: Humanity uses 1.5 Earths' worth of ecological capacity, with much of that consumed by overdeveloped industrial countries. Sustainable prosperity will require economic degrowth in these countries. This can be achieved by a mix of tax shifting, shortening work weeks, denormalizing certain types of consumption, and de-marketizing certain sectors of the economy, such as food production and child care. 

• Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Development: Urban poverty is pervasive, and absolute numbers are expanding in both the developed and developing worlds: some 828 million people live in slums worldwide. Urban planning needs to include strategies such as explicit and transparent spatial plans, democratic engagement of the poor and community-based organizations, and coordination across sectors, especially affordable housing, transportation, and economic development. 

• Sustainable Transportation: Today there are nearly 800 million cars on the world's roads, and in the developing world transportation is the source of up to 80 percent of harmful air pollutants. A sustainable and socially progressive alternative requires a shift toward denser cities that generally require less motorized travel, invest in high-quality transit, and support vibrant, healthy communities by enabling walking and cycling. 

• Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs): More than half of the world's population lives in cities, and 90 percent of urbanization is occurring in the developing world. ICTs can help cities become safer, cleaner, and more sustainable places to live, but they are currently underutilized in both the developed and developing worlds. Reversing this trend must go beyond the current public-private partnerships and "smart cities" projects by providing broad public access to data and boosting public involvement. 

• Measuring Sustainable Urban Development: Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, there has been limited progress in developing a universal sustainability indicator system that is scientifically valid and credible. This has been true in the United States as well, but efforts are under way to develop a database of indicators that will inform discussions at Rio+20 about how to measure urban sustainability. 

• Reinventing the Corporation: Transnational corporations (TNCs) have evolved over the past five centuries into globally influential entities. They often go unchecked, with no limits placed on their impacts on society, the environment, or the economy. TNCs must adapt if sustainability is to become a reality, including shifts in their purpose, ownership, capital investment, and governance. 

• The Global Architecture of Sustainable Governance: Sustainability efforts worldwide will be shaped by the reforms being discussed for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). If UNEP is going to play a valuable and productive role in these efforts, it must enjoy increased authority and financial resources, but above all it must be better connected to other international agencies so it can play the coordinating and visionary role its founders had in mind. 

• Population Growth Strategies: In 2011, global population passed the 7 billion mark, and confronting population growth is critical to the future sustainability of the planet. Over time, population growth will end and reverse with no need for "population control" through assuring reproductive health and rights for all, adequate education for girls and boys, and equal economic activity for both sexes with internalization of the environmental costs of economic activity. 

• Sustainable Buildings: The construction and operation of buildings use 25-40 percent of all produced energy, accounting for a comparable share of global carbon dioxide emissions. We must aim for the goals of net zero energy use, zero emissions, and zero waste if new construction and existing buildings are going to be sustainable. 

• Public Policy and Sustainable Consumption: Combating the rise of consumerism will require government involvement, including advertisement management, tax modification to include the true cost of a product or service, and the establishment of sustainability certification programs. 

• Mobilizing the Business Community: Our current economic model does not consider planetary limits, is socially exclusive, and places private interests above public ones. A recipe for a successful 21st-century economy needs to be green, inclusive, and responsible, which will take a combination of business-led voluntary initiatives reinforced by new corporate structures and strong government policy and public oversight. 

• Sustainable Agriculture: Almost 2 billion people are fed by produce from the 500 million small farms in developing countries. Yet these small-scale producers are some of the most food-insecure people: 80 percent of the world's hungry live in rural areas. To optimize the productivity and environmental sustainability of small farms, future agricultural policy must combine a rights-based approach with legislation that is localized and culturally specific. 

• Food Security and Equity: In recent decades, factory farming has increased meat, egg, and dairy consumption worldwide, particularly in the developing world. But this industrial meat production system has been harmful to human health and the environment. The internalization of costs, restoration of ecosystems, and education of the public----among other strategies----can help create a new food system that is more efficient, equitable, and climate-compatible. 

• Biodiversity: The rate at which species are becoming extinct is estimated to be up to 1,000 times higher today than in pre-industrial times. Efforts such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services are needed to better understand and reverse the erosion of nature's resiliency. 

• Valuation of Ecosystem Services: The human ecological footprint has grown so large that progress is now constrained more by limits on natural resources and ecosystem services than by limits on infrastructure or technology. Ecosystem services help evaluate the benefits derived from ecosystems by assigning a monetary or physical unit to those benefits, which can in turn help to better facilitate natural resource management. 

• Local Governance: Decisions at the local level can be the greatest catalysts for progress because they contribute directly to poverty reduction, job growth, gender equity, and environmental protection. As a result, the development of local democratic procedures that are transparent and reliable is critical to global sustainable development.

Corporate Takeover of Food Production

Food Sovereignty Responds 

Wednesday 8 June 2011

by: Yve le Grand , Truthout 

 

Introduction 

Although the credit crunch has pushed the issue of the global food crisis to the background, it is still going on today. In fact, the number of chronically hungry people worldwide has risen and is estimated to amount to 967 million people according to the new Declaration of Human Rights, launched by the Cordoba process[1] at the end of 2008, on the occasion of the Declaration's 60th anniversary.

In 1948, the of the United Nations declared "... everyone has a right to be free from hunger and to adequate food including drinking water, as set out in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."[2]

The world famine in the 1970s led the Declaration to introduce the concept of food security: "... the availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices."[3]

This definition of food security, which is basically a technical matter of providing adequate human nutrition, led to the assumption that more food production would solve the problem of mass starvation. The Green Revolution led to a spectacular increase in the amount of food produced, but the numbers of the chronically hunger did not diminish accordingly.[4]

In his landmark book on poverty and famines,[5] Amartya Sen, concluded that enough food was being produced (i.e. enough calories per capita), but that the access to food, the entitlement to it, was the core of the problem. The poor simply lacked the financial and political means to claim their share of world food production. Sen made it clear that the world food problem was, thus, not so much a matter of food production, as it was one of social inequality and injustice. To see how a perfect storm has been in the making since the first Declaration of Human Rights, it is necessary to go back to the root of all food: seeds.

The Seed Situation 

In and of themselves, "Seeds are the very beginning of the food chain. He, who controls the seeds, controls the food supply and thus controls the people."[6] To understand why this is important for current developments in the agrarian industrial complex, it is necessary to have an understanding of how "normal" agricultural practices and techniques have evolved over time, in contrast to contemporary corporate practice in the last few decades.

When people first settled down and started to grow crops for food, through a lot of hard work and through trial and error, indigenous plant breeds were improved upon over time by cross pollination. Thus, plants developed that were suited best for local circumstances and climate conditions (e.g. drought, wind, flooding, soil). Through the techniques of crop rotation, mixed crop planting and by using natural fertilizers (manure, compost), the soil was not too depleted to recover and be (re)used.

Two of the most important agricultural practices are brown bagging and seed exchange. Brown bagging is the farmer's custom to save part of the seeds from the current harvest, to sow them in the following year. Seed exchange makes for the dissemination of new strands of DNA that have been obtained through crossbreeding plants. In this way, the various genetic materials guarantee biodiversity, which is of the utmost importance in order to withstand insect attacks or other pests that threaten a growing crop.

After the Second World War, chemical companies that had already diversified into seed fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, began to invest heavily in the research and development (R & D) of so-called "hybrid" seeds, while buying up seed companies. Hybrid seeds grow with the input of petroleum-based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides; e.g. "Roundup Ready" seeds developed by Monsanto the devil would only be able to grow through the exclusive use of their Roundup chemicals. A short while later, R & D would focus on genetically modified (GM) seeds, for which use companies could charge money on the basis of intellectual property rights (IPR).

How has the jump from seed saving and exchange to IPR on seeds been legally possible? In 1980, in Diamond v. Chakrabarty,[7] 447 US 303, the US Supreme Court ruled that a patent covering a living organism from now on was extended to cover "a live human-made micro-organism. "

In other words, whereas prior to this process, plants and animals themselves were subject to property rights and ownership, their genetics were not. After the process, the genetics of plants and animals could be owned and, thus, subject to intellectual property rights.

As a consequence, farmers could neither freely and legally plant nor save seeds for replanting of any plant variety registered under the plant variety provisions of the new patent law. This development marked a shift from public agrarian practice in which seeds could be exchanged and saved freely, to privately owned seed DNA, subject to IPR.

Source: International Seed Federation.[8] Since 1985, the trade in commercial seed has been soaring.

IPR deprives farmers from what they and many others worldwide claim as their inherent right to save and replant seeds. Seed varieties, which have been developed over centuries, have adapted to their particular environments, while their gene pool has to survive unforeseen factors such as pests and diseases - or climate change. Thus, farmers are losing their independence and become "extensions" in the field for the biotech corporations the world over,[9] as IPR clauses in the contracts between them and the farmer forbid the farmer to save and replant their seeds. Though farmers buy the GM seeds, they do not own them. In fact, farmers are renting the GM seeds from the biotech corporation on an annual basis.

Another consequence of the court ruling is the explosion of tactical cooperations, strategic mergers and takeovers among agro-chemical-biotech companies and the ensuing consolidation of power in the hands of a few transnational corporations (TNCs).

Based on a report published by the ETC Group, the action group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration:[10]

• From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales.
   
• From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control almost 90 percent of agrochemical sales worldwide.
   
•  From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now account for three-quarters of industry revenues.

The concentration of power makes for strong industry lobbies in governmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank, in favor of governmental deregulation and the promotion of free trade, including agriculture. This directly affects the lives of people, in particular in the global South.

Free Trade and Agriculture

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) came into being at the same time as the WTO - until then GATT[11] - on January 1, 1995. The AoA, effectively considering agricultural crops as commodities, was based on three pillars for trade regulation: domestic support, market access and export subsidies.[12]

The first pillar, domestic support, is a set of rules that regulate under which circumstances local producers can be subsidized. The second pillar, market access, is aimed at reducing the tariff on imported goods, in an attempt to "create order, fair competition and a less distorted agricultural sector."[13] Non-tariff barriers on imports - such as import quotas or import restrictions - have to be "tarifficated" in order to become part of the global market process. Once bonded to a tariff, the rate will subsequently be reduced over time. The third pillar obliges developed countries to reduce the export subsidies given to local producers, in order to reduce false competition.

Only developed countries are rich enough to sponsor their agricultural producers one way or the other.[14] These subsidized crops flood the global market at below-cost prices. This both undercuts and lowers the farm gate prices for the local producers in developing countries, while these countries cannot afford to support their domestic producers or pay them export subsidies. In practice, this leads to what has become known as export dumping.

Due to the asymmetric power relations between developed and developing countries, it seems that the trade regulations have had a virtually opposite effect from that ostensibly intended: the reduction of tariff protections has negatively affected small-scale farmers - who make up 70 percent of the population in developing countries - who see the key source of their income slip away, driving them off the land and into the cities, in search of a new way to make a living.[15]

Subsistence farmers are effectively threatened by the conditions put forward once their state government takes out a loan from the World Bank or signs a WTO Trade agreement, as these come with structural adjustment programs (SAPs). SAPs are in effect prescribed economic "reform" policies, such as the reduction of government budgets and social spending; the cutting of programs and subsidies for basic goods; the elimination of restrictions on foreign ownership; the increase in interest rates; the promotion of a switch from subsistence farming to export economies, while eliminating import tariffs.[16]

Government deregulation thus favors TNCs over smallholders[17] in a bid to compete with export crops in a global market that, in fact, is seriously distorted by the agricultural subsidy policies of the developed countries.

Recently, the dash for agrofuels, diverting food crops to produce energy, has put yet more strain on the competition for land and other resources such as water.[18] The social and environmental consequences of business as usual has driven many farmers off their land toward cities, putting additional pressure on the land, as agricultural land is urbanized. Nowhere can these non-trade concerns[19] be witnessed better than in the growing number of slums around cities in the developing world.

The dispossessed are fighting back, however. They have organized themselves in all sorts of organizations, the aim of which is to resist further global appropriation of their lands and local economies. They campaign for agricultural reform and the human right to food; they demand food sovereignty for all.

Food Sovereignty

"People facing hunger and malnutrition are, to a large extent, smallholders, landless workers, pastoralists and fisherfolk, often situated in marginal and vulnerable ecological environments. Neglected by (inter)national policies, they cannot compete with increasingly subsidized industrialized agriculture, both nationally and in the world market. Many farmers tried to catch the Green Revolution train, but became stuck in the debt trap of increasing input costs and decreasing product prices. Concentration in the food market chain is another worrying trend causing increasing dependence of both consumers and producers on a declining number of seed, inputs and food products conglomerates."[20]

Food sovereignty is a term originally coined in 1996 by the members of La Via Campesina as an alternative policy framework, countering the narrow view of food security as access to global food imports by food-deficient countries as a political goal.

Emerging in 1993, Via Campesina is "an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers that fight for the right of people to determine their own local policy to food security through agrarian reform and rural development."[21]

Via Campesina's Seven Principles of Food Sovereignty[22]

1. Food: A Basic Human Right

Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.

2. Agrarian Reform

A genuine agrarian reform is necessary, which gives landless and farming people - especially women - ownership and control of the land they work, and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.

3. Protecting Natural Resources

Food sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agro-chemicals.

4. Reorganizing Food Trade

Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must neither displace local production nor depress prices.

5. Ending the Globalization of Hunger

Food sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced code of conduct for TNCs is therefore needed.

6. Social Peace

Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, repression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.

7. Democratic control

Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.

The acceptance of this framework[23] in the context of the Declaration of Human Rights, is extremely important, not only for the small, food-producing people involved, but also for the end consumer in the developed world: the true right to food and the true right to produce food, mean that all people have an unalienable right to safe, nutritious and culturally-appropriate food as well as to food-producing resources, while they have the ability to sustain themselves and their societies in the process.

If the no consensus on a G8-driven global partnership against hunger is the surprise outcome of the High Level Meeting on Food Security held in Madrid in January of this year, it may well be an indication that the food sovereignty movement is conquering terrain. In the final declaration of the farmers' and civil society organizations, they state that:

"We see the proposed Global Partnership as just another move to give the big corporations and their foundations a formal place at the table, despite all the rhetoric about the 'inclusiveness' of this initiative. Furthermore it legitimates the participation of WTO, World Bank and IMF and other neoliberalism-promoting institutions in the solution of the very problems they have caused. This undermines any possibility for civil society or governments from the Global South to play any significant role. We do not need this Global Partnership or any other structure outside the UN system."[24]

After all, until a few decades ago, it was primarily the small farmers of this world who sustained us all with their hard work in the field.

Footnotes:

[1] "The Cordoba process was started at an international seminar on the right to food at CEHAP [Chair of Studies on Hunger and Poverty], Cordoba October 2007, further pursued at the Right to Food Forum organised by the FAO Right to Food Unit in October 2008 and completed in its present version following a second meeting convened in Cordoba by CEHAP on November 28-29, 2008. It will be subject of further consultations and possible revisions during 2009." Source.

[2] Source.

[3] FAO 1974

[4] See here.

[5] Sen, Amartya (1981): "Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation," Claredon Press, Oxford.

[6] Dominique Guillet, Association Kokopelli.

[7] Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 US 303 (1980)

[8] See here.

[9] For a brief history of the seed industry, see here and here.

[10] The ETC Group, an international advocacy organization based in Canada, has been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for the past 30 years, revealed this in a report in November 2008 that can be downloaded here.

[11] General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 1947. A tariff is a tax on goods upon importation.

[12] See here.

[13] See here.

[14] United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2005, p.129 vv.

[15] UNDP Human Development Report 2005, chapter 4.

[16] See here.

[17] Raj Patel in "Stuffed and Starved" (2007), London Portobello Books, describes this process in detail.

[18] GRAIN, "Stop the Agrofuel Craze."

[19] Fourth Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture (2000).

[20] Jonas Vanruesel, 2008. "Food as a human right: a struggle for human dignity and food sovereignty" in Omertaa Volume 2008/2.

[21] See here.

[22] A concise summary of the principles of food sovereignty can be found on the site of the organization for the defense of family farms in the USA.

[23] See here and here.

[24] Final declaration of farmers and civil society organizations.

Biodiversity Versus Biotech

Politics and Direct Action in the 21st Century
By ALEXANDER REID ROSS

There are many different campaigns to preserve biodiversity here on Earth, and they all seemed to come together when two spunky Florida Atlantic University alumnus decided to climb a tree and fight for 700 acres of endangered Florida forest. While the activists remain perched in their tree, protecting a hand-made, 12”x8” banner reading “Protect This Forest!”, the Scripps Research Institute undergoes the final stages in the process to gain permission to slash and burn some of the purest Florida pinelands in South Florida.

Called the Briger Forest, this rare pine flatwoods ecosystem straddles the I-95 amidst the gaping sprawl of Miami. In spite of its precarious situation, it is one of the last habitats of endangered hand fern and gopher tortoise left in the USA, and the FAU graduates, who are also members of the radical environmental group, Everglades Earth First!, intend to keep it that way. Since their campaign got off its feet (and into the trees), the Briger Forest has come to represent open space, a side of Florida relatively unscathed by development, versus the selling off of nature, piece by piece, to companies that wish to control our way of life, our land and our species.

The fight against Scripps has a history down in the muggy, mosquito infested land of Southern Florida. Three years ago, Scripps tried to clear out orange grove land to open up a lab in 19,191-acre Mecca Farms, West Palm Beach. With their sights set on a “biotech city” consisting of 11,000 homes, research labs and spin-off shopping franchises, Scripps failed to navigate the political terrain of farmers, locals, and activists, in particular, the scrappy direct action-oriented Everglades Earth First!, and their biotech city idea was shot down in court.

In efforts to ameliorate the debt that the State of Florida incurred to Scripps during the loss, Scripps was allowed to purchase a piece of property alongside the campus of FAU, where they have since erected the contemporary Bauhaus-style, concrete-glass-and-brick monstrosity that is now the largest biotech facility in Florida. Their dream of a Scripps City has now led them onto new grounds — the neighboring Briger Forest, where FAU and the State of Florida promises to fund their wild exploits out of taxpayer dollars. There they will be allowed to pursue animal testing on primates as well as rodents, cats and dogs using government funds and University assistance.

Recently, the National Institute of Health gave Scripps $3.45 million to collaborate with Novartis Pharma AG on a project called, “National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group for the Treatment of Mood Disorders or Nicotine Addiction". In an ironic twist worthy of A Brave New World, Scripps boasts on its website that “this new research may generate new models of depression.” With its reputation for funding the notorious animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), the name Novartis indicates that the network of international animal cruelty is, indeed, sadly spreading.

Extensive research done by rigorous activists has uncovered scientists working in the area, who have sourced their primates through the infamous company, Primate Products, whose brutal methods were uncovered in leaked photos last Summer. Scripps, itself, has been sited by the Food and Drug Administration for cruel practices used on chimpanzees undergoing testing for Hepatitis C and the street drug, Ecstasy. Furthermore, their ongoing collaborative relationship with the notoriously corrupt and paranoid multinational seed company Monsanto the devil, raises questions about a third party — the possible use of private security firms like Blackwater to investigate environmental activists. But the reach of Scripps goes far deeper than biotech alone.

The Scripps family is well connected. H.W. Scripps Company was started by its namesake with $10,000 way back, about a century ago, and has become the ninth largest mass-media conglomerate in the US with ties to a myriad of newspapers as well as television networks and other forms of media. In 2006, news broke that a journalist working for the Scripps Howard Media Service received $60,000 from Monsanto the devil in exchange for pro-biotech articles, revealing the depth of informal relationships between the newspaper conglomerate and animal testing as well as GMO products in general.

More revealingly, H.W. Scripps owns the Home and Garden cable TV station, with 85 million subscribers, along with a shop at home network and the Food Network, while being ensconced in the interests of the largest seed and pharmaceutical corporations in the world. From the animal testing labs to Monsanto the devil and Novartis to your television set in one great whirlwind. This is, of course, not to mention the Scripps family's ties to hospitals and “permanent cosmetics” companies. (According to one website, “A 'Wellness Day' will be coming to a Scripps Hospital near you.”)

To round out the portrait of monopolization and graft, H.W. Scripps owns a small conglomerate of at least six newspapers in South East Florida — one of which, the Jupiter Courier, is the weekly rag that serves the same city where all this is taking place: Jupiter, Florida. Suffice it to say, until the treesit came up, coverage of Scripps had been one dimensional to say the least, but the reigns of human nature are starting to slip from the grasp of industry.

Risking SLAPP suits and charges under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, activists maintained a 56-hour vigil outside of the Scripps Research Institute with rotating protests in solidarity with the treesit. The combination of on-the-ground direct action, media work, letter writing, and months of grassroots organizing has paid off with surprisingly good coverage from local television stations and newspapers that are not in line with the Scripps family. Scripps has even dug themselves into a little hole in the eyes of the public by reneging on their promise to employ locals to staff their lab, so the campaign is likely to generate support from more diverse sectors of society than it otherwise would.

Although Scripps employees are up to their necks in Greenwashing, joining international symposiums on biodiversity while animals from all around the world are dieing in their labs, the public is becoming increasingly savvy in avoiding the quagmire of public relations and lies upholding their logic. Recognizing the urgent need to reclaim urbanizing spaces from miserablist biopolitics, Everglades Earth First! and other activists are taking a stand against development by occupying the last bits of wild heritage left through peaceful methods and holding onto it, quite literally, for dear life.

When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature

by Julio Godoy | Friday, August 6, 2010 | Inter Press Service

BERLIN - A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of meat and animal food products.

Delegates from some 300 environmental and consumer organizations from all over the world gathered last month in Bavarian capital Munich, some 500 kilometers south of Berlin last month to demonstrate outside the headquarters of the European Patent Office (EPO) against the patent the agency accorded on broccoli seeds, plants and breeding methods to the British agrochemical company Plant Bioscience.

EPO granted the patent in 2002, on a method claimed by Plant Bioscience for increasing a specific compound in broccoli through conventional breeding methods. The patent, which also faces opposition by two other agrochemical multinationals, includes the breeding methods, and the broccoli seeds and edible broccoli plants obtained through these procedures.

The demonstration in Munich took place as the EPO opened its litigation procedure on the legitimacy of its own patent agreement. A decision on the issue is expected in October.

Plant Bioscience claims that its breeding methods increase the anti- carcinogenic glucosinolates in the species. This is one of hundreds of similar claims presented by numerous agrochemical multinational companies, such as Monsanto and Syngenta.

For environmental and consumer activists and independent farmers, such patents amount to an attempt to expropriate natural biodiversity for the benefit of a handful of corporations, which would rule as a cartel upon agriculture, especially in developing countries.

Christoph Then, expert on intellectual property rights for the environmental organization Greenpeace, told IPS that what a handful of biochemical multinational companies are doing is to "misappropriate biodiversity."

Then is co-author of a study on the 'The Future of Seeds and Food', in which he warns of the "monsantosizing of biodiversity." Earlier this year he led a successful European campaign against a patent filed by Monsanto, in which the company claimed it had invented a particular sort of ham.

Last April, EPO revoked this patent given to Monsanto in 2005. Then told IPS that the "revocation of the patent is a major success for consumers and farmers in Europe. The EPO's decision shows that even the most powerful transnational companies must give in to public pressure."

According to Greenpeace and other environmental organizations researching patent claims by agrochemical corporations, the EPO has to decide on more than 1,000 other property rights filed on vegetables, seeds and animal products presented by the firms Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Bayer Cropscience, BASF and Dow Agrosciences, and others.

The broccoli case is typical of this battle among multinationals over conventional breeding methods. The agrochemical companies Limagrain and Syngenta, which have filed opposition against the Plant Bioscience patent, argue that the patent has to be revoked as its claims refer to an essentially biological process, and so to conventional methods.

According to the European Patent Convention, essentially biological processes are not patentable.

Despite this, most patents filed today by agrochemical multinationals concern conventional breeding methods. In a study for the Gen-Ethical Foundation, German biologist Ruth Tippe showed that the number of patents filed by agrochemical multinationals on conventional breeding methods has grown more than 20 percent since 2000.

"Nowadays, 30 percent of all patent applications on plant breeding filed by Monsanto involve conventional breeding methods," Tippe told IPS. "Before 2005, such patent applications did not reach five percent of the total."

"The patent on broccoli has become a test case for the patentability of conventional seeds and breeding methods," Franz Schaettle, director of the international campaign No Patent on Seeds, told IPS.

No Patent on Seeds represents hundreds of environmental, consumer, and farmer organizations across the world, to fight the "monsantosizing of biodiversity", and has formulated a global appeal against patents on conventional seeds and farm animals addressed to the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office, governments, and the executive boards of agro-business companies.

"The continuing patenting of seeds, conventional plant varieties and animal species leads to far reaching expropriations of farmers and breeders," Schaettle told IPS. "Farmers, especially in developing countries, are deprived of their rights to save their harvested seeds, and breeders are under strong limitations to use the patented seeds freely for further breeding."

Numerous examples of patent applications by agrochemicals confirm the warnings of Tippe, Schaettle, and Then. In Monsanto's patent application WO2008021413 on maize and soy, methods are claimed that are widely used in conventional breeding.

"On more than 1,000 pages and in 175 claims Monsanto apply for patents on various gene sequences and genetic variations, especially in soy and maize," Schaettle said. "Monsanto even goes as far as explicitly claiming all relevant maize and soy plants, inheriting those genetic elements. Furthermore, all uses in food, feed and biomass are listed."

By filing specific regional applications Monsanto shows especial interest in applying for this patent in Europe, Argentina and Canada.

By the same token, in patent application WO 2009011847, on meat and milk, Monsanto broadly claims methods for cattle breeding, the animals, as well as "milk, cheese, butter and meat." Other companies have also filed patents on genetic resources needed for feed and food production.

"All these patents are the backbone of a strategy for taking over global control on all levels of food production, "Schaettle said. "The patents do not stifle research and innovation; they are simply meant to block access to genetic resources and technology and to establish new dependencies for farmers, breeders and food producers."

This is particularly the case in developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. In such regions, in contrast to Europe, small farmers and consumer organizations do not have legal or financial resources to fight unfair patents. Under such circumstances, the likes of Monsanto can claim they have actually invented natural diversity.