NGO WORK
Defending peasants’ rights to seeds and genetic resources, against the biopiracy
Published
1 year agoon
The International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty’s (IPC) Working Group on Agrobiodiversity is in Rome this week to participate in the Open-Ended Working Group negotiations. The aim is to enhance the functioning of the Multilateral System, and to fight the private interests that try to get rid of their obligations as set by the FAO Plant Treaty 20 years ago. La Via Campesina members are also part of this group in the Rome meeting, to defend peasants’ rights to seeds and genetic resources, against the biopiracy of the seed industry supported by rich countries.
What is the Multilateral System?
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) was adopted by the Thirty-First Session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 3 November 2001. The Treaty’s Multilateral System, puts 64 of our most important crops – crops that together account for 80 percent of the food we derive from plants – into an easily accessible global pool of genetic resources that is freely available to potential users in the Treaty’s ratifying nations for some uses.
Most of these samples have been collected from the fields of the farmers who selected them and reproduced them from generation to generation. They represent nearly 40% of the samples stored in germplasm banks. Sixty percent of them come from national collections, 5% from private collections and 35% from international seed banks (CGIAR).
Agriculture needs an enabling access and benefit-sharing system. Such a system should recognize interdependence, trigger the exchange of genetic material of plant origin on a multilateral and facilitated basis. But most importantly such a system must instill fairness and recognize that the global pool to which access is facilitated is continuously enriched by the contributions of farmers worldwide.
A practical and fair access and benefit-sharing system must ensure that genetic resources continue to flow worldwide, while those individuals who selected and conserve those resources are adequately rewarded.
How the access to the Multilateral System works?
The mechanism for obtaining specific genetic resources is through a standardized contract referred to as a “Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA). The SMTA is a binding private bilateral contract between the provider and recipient which states the terms and conditions for use of the genetic resource.
According to the IPC, “Governments, when they negotiated the mechanism, limited the application of the Multilateral System to resources that they could manage and control directly, since most of them are held in national germplasm banks. Plant genetic resources in the public domain should be considered as those which are not the subject of intellectual property rights…[]..Facilitated access through the multilateral system is for the purposes of utilization and conservation for research, breeding and training for food and agriculture… Such purposes do not include chemical, pharmaceutical and/or other non-food/feed industrial uses.”
How the benefit sharing mechanism should work?
The ITPGRFA sets forth the basic structure of monetary benefit sharing under the Multilateral System, but it is the SMTA that defines how much is to be shared.
The beneficiary who markets products (containing PGRFA or genetic parts or components of PGRFA from the Multilateral System) with restrictions has two alternative options for monetary benefit sharing:
- he or she pays 0.77 per cent on the net sales of the commercialized product with restrictions for a period corresponding to the duration of such restriction (for instance, 20 years in the case of intellectual property rights-based restrictions), OR
- he pays 0.5 per cent on the sales of all PGRFA products of the same crop to which the accessed material belongs for 10 years (renewable).
In this second case, the payment is higher and in return, the beneficiary can access all the genetic material of that crop without paying for other SMTAs.
SMTA-generated monetary benefits flow into a multilateral fund – namely the Benefit Sharing Fund. This fund is also open to direct contributions and benefits arising from the use of PGRFA that are shared under the multilateral system would flow primarily to farmers, especially in developing countries, who conserve and use PGRFA in a sustainable manner.
However, these payments are optional when commercialized seeds are available “without restriction for research and breeding”, i.e. when they are free of any intellectual property rights or covered by a plant variety right that only limits farmers’ rights and not breeders’ rights.
But industry’s not paying its share
For 15 years, no payments have been made. Seed companies holding patents restricting facilitated access (for research and breeding), which are the only ones subject to mandatory payments, do not pay by taking advantage of the absence of a traceability requirement for PGRFA trade to avoid reporting their use of PGRFA from the Multilateral System. At the time of the blockchain, however, such traceability is technically possible and exists within each company. But industry hides behind trade secrets to provide no information.
In the absence of contributions from beneficiaries, some States and private individuals made voluntary payments to initiate the Fund. Over the past years, the Fund has only raised around $10 million. In comparison, the Global Crop Diversity Trust Fund for ex situ conservation (in gene banks) mobilized $314 million from contributions from rich countries and industrial foundations. It is therefore not the lack of money that explains the negligence of the Benefit Sharing Fund, but the political choice not to pay for the work of farmers in selecting, retaining and renewing PGRFA.
To get out of the circumvention of benefit sharing by beneficiaries, the IPC Working Group on Agrobiodiversity proposes to make payments mandatory through two mechanisms.
Access to the sole information on a genetic sequence contained in a PGRFA allows today, without the need to access the physical PGRFA itself, to reconstitute this sequence in the laboratory with synthetic biology or to identify it in other plants for integration into new seeds with new biotechnologies, or by crossbreeding if it has been identified in sexually compatible plants. Such information is compiled in huge databases of data that are freely accessible via the Internet. Whatever the conclusions of current international discussions on regulating access to such genetic information for benefit sharing, no State can now control free access to the databases that compile it on the Internet.
So, while the seed industry has benefited enormously from this facilitated access to the Treaty material, they never shared the benefits equitably and the majority of States continue to adopt intellectual property laws, which violate farmers’ rights. In response to this failure, the Treaty began work in 2013 to “improve” its functioning. The Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-Sharing was created.
Over the last five years no agreement has been reached, because differences remains between developing and reach countries. After 20 years since the Treaty entered into force, its survival is threatened by the seed industry’s refusal to pay its debt and respect farmers’ rights.
Digital Sequence Information – DSI
Recent advances in biotechnology and genetic sequencing enormously increase that risk. In fact, they allow industry plant breeders to stop working by observing the physical characteristics of plants, and to analyze on their computer screens the digital representation of their genetic sequences. Access only to the digital information of a genetic sequence (Digital Sequence Information – DSI) contained in a PGRFA now allows, without the need to access the physical PGRFA itself, to reconstitute this sequence in the laboratory with synthetic biology or to identify it in other plants for integration in new seeds with new biotechnologies, or by crosses if it has been identified in sexually compatible plants. Rich countries and industry consider that this DSI is not a genetic resource subject to prior consent and benefit-sharing obligations of the Nagoya Treaty or Protocol.
Industrialized countries make these claims even if the Treaty is very clear when it refers to the access to the physical material and the “associated information”. However, there is no agreement on this and rich countries do not take a step behind this red line.
Another main unsolved (and maybe unsolvable) issue is the payment rates in the subscription system. The industrialized countries, especially Canada, Germany and Switzerland want to set a very low payment rate of 0,011% of the sales of the material covered by the Multilateral System of the Treaty, while the payment requested by developing countries is 0,1%.
Source: La Via Campesina
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Opinion: Why we cannot celebrate the World Bank’s 80-year anniversary
Published
3 weeks agoon
September 12, 2024This July, the World Bank Group celebrates its 80th anniversary. But for women and communities across the Global South there is nothing to celebrate. In this op-ed originally published by Devex on 19 July 2024, three close partners of the Coalition (Titi Soentoro from Aksi!, gender, social and ecological justice” – Indonesia; Verónica Gostissa from Asamblea Pucara – Argentina; and Mbole Veronique from Green Development Advocates – Cameroon) share stories from their countries showing how the World Bank is exacerbating the exact problems it claims to solve.
This July, the World Bank Group celebrates its 80th anniversary. But for us — women rights defenders from Asia, Africa, and Latin America — there is nothing to celebrate.
While the World Bank is proudly presenting its successes in fighting poverty and building a greener future, the stories of communities in our countries paint a very different picture. From recent controversial projects to old ones where communities never found justice, the World Bank has a 80-year legacy of harm and impoverishment.
The negative impact of development projects can be long lasting. In 1985, the World Bank funded the Kedung Ombo Dam in Indonesia. Over 27,000 people were forcibly and violently evicted, with the military threatening those trying to resist. Forty years later, the harm inflicted remains unaddressed. Resettled women don’t have close access to water sources, health facilities, and a market. Pregnant women have failed to get checkups, while children have often dropped out of school and are being forced into early marriages. Yet, despite acknowledging the harm it caused, the World Bank keeps replicating old mistakes.
In 2022, a community in Cameroon filed a complaint raising serious concerns about the World Bank-funded Nachtigal hydroelectric project, one of the largest dams in Central Africa. Imposed without people’s participation, the project is destroying livelihoods, taking lands, causingdeforestation, and destroying sacred sites. Our Cameroonian sisters are particularly affected: They have lost access to the forests where they used to pick medicinal herbs and other key natural resources. The complaint process has come to an end, but the hopes for justice are extremely limited. The investigations conducted by the bank’s accountability mechanisms are known to be extremely lengthy — and only rarely lead to some remedy.
Civil society has been calling on the World Bank Group to strengthen its safeguards and accountability mechanisms, which are currently falling short of a human rights-based approach. But for every step forward, there has been a step back. Moreover, safeguards have often been used as a pretext to protect the institution from the international human rights legal system and to avoid applying more stringent standards.
Under its new president, Ajay Banga, the World Bank has been undertaking a series of reforms, to become bigger and bolder in its response to climate change. But the bank’s actions appear to indicate more of the same. Beyond the catchy slogans, the World Bank is still replicating a top-down and neocolonial development model that ends up exacerbating the exact problems the bank claims to solve. For example, in Indonesia the World Bank Group — despite its pledges to address climate change — is funding the expansion of the Java 9 and 10 plants, considered the largest and dirtiest coal plants in Southeast Asia.
In its 80 years of existence, it is our view, as shared with other civil society groups, that the World Bank has fueled the spiraling debt crisis, growing inequality, and climate change, with a disproportionate impact on women and children. Some stories — like the scandal of the child sex abuse case in Kenyan schools funded by the World Bank — have hit the headlines. Others, unfortunately, have remained largely unreported.
Last year, the International Finance Corporation — the World Bank’s private arm — approved a $180 million loan to Allkem, for its Sal de Vida lithium mining project in Argentina’s Salar del Hombre Muerto. On paper, this investment falls under the bank’s green portfolio, because lithium is needed for the electric car batteries. In reality, this project has a catastrophic environmental impact, dried up one of the most important rivers in the area,, and violates the rights of the local Indigenous communities.
Before the project was approved, local communities and civil society organizations had sounded the alarm bell. They had prepared briefings on the project’s impacts and engaged with IFC to raise their concerns. But despite being recognized as “beneficiaries,” local communities say they are routinely ignored or silenced. The bank approved the loan without the community’s consent and did not take any action when local activists were threatened and criminalized.
As women defenders and caregivers, for generations we have been protecting our ecosystems sacrificed in the name of development and cared for our communities harmed under the pretext of economic growth. For generations, we have stood in solidarity with our sisters and brothers across the world who have been demanding a different type of development.
The World Bank cannot get it right by putting blinders on the past. The evicted Indonesian communities will not get their flooded land back. The women in Cameroon will not be able to access their precious medicinal herbs, as their forests have been cleared. And the Indigenous people in the Salar del Hombre Muerto lost their meadow near the river Trapiche, which dried up because of the huge volumes of fresh water used to extract lithium. But the World Bank is still on time to withdraw from controversial new projects, to provide remedy to the harmed communities, to speed up the investigation processes, and to seek meaningful consent before building something. Eighty years are enough. If bank President Banga wants the institution to grow bigger, it should learn from the past as it looks forward.
Original Source: Coalition for Human Rights In Development.
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New publication: Promise, divide, intimidate, and coerce: Tactics palm oil companies use to grab community lands. Summary Edition
Published
1 month agoon
September 3, 2024Recently, the Informal Alliance against industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa has launched a new summary edition of the booklet “Promise, divide, intimidate, and coerce: Tactics palm oil companies use to grab community lands”.
Recently, the Informal Alliance against industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa has launched a new summary edition of the booklet “Promise, divide, intimidate, and coerce: Tactics palm oil companies use to grab community lands”.
This new edition consists of a collection of more than 20 tactics that oil palm companies use to grab people’s land for plantation expansion. It is the result of many years of experience of community activists and grassroots groups who have been struggling to resist the corporate takeover of community lands.
Although the focus is on the tactics of oil palm corporations, many similarities exist with other industries and sectors involved in land grabs and extractivism. The booklet is available in French here, and in English here. If you think the booklet would be useful in other languages too, do not hesitate to let us know!
The the long version, from 2018, is available here: French / English.
Source: World RainForest Movement.
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Global Witness condemns escalating arrests of climate campaigners in Uganda
Published
2 months agoon
August 21, 2024A total of 96 cases of people being detained or arrested for opposing the controversial East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) have been reported in the past nine months, with the number of arrests skyrocketing in recent months.
In December, Global Witness released a report ‘Climate of Fear’ documenting reprisals against land and environmental defenders challenging plans to build the world’s longest heated crude oil pipeline through both Uganda and Tanzania. At the time, 47 people had been arrested for challenging the pipeline in Uganda between September 2020 and November 2023. Double the number of incidents have since been reported in less than a year.
Reports of attacks and threats have continued despite the French oil major behind the project TotalEnergies “expressing concern” to the Ugandan government over arrests in May 2024. Since then, the state crackdown has stepped up against a civil society mobilising to protest the pipeline.
Global Witness is calling on TotalEnergies to meet prior public commitments to respect the rights of human rights defenders and to take immediate action to end the violent crackdown on climate campaigners in Uganda.
Hanna Hindstrom, Senior Investigator at Global Witness’s Land and Environmental Defenders campaign, said:
“The tsunami of arrests of peaceful demonstrators fighting EACOP has exposed the limits of TotalEnergies’ commitment to human rights.
“The company cannot in good conscience press ahead with the pipeline while peaceful protesters are being attacked for exercising their right to free speech. It must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to reprisals.”
On 9 August, 47 students and three drivers were intercepted on their way to protest the pipeline and diverted to a police station. Just six weeks earlier, 30 people were arrested outside the Chinese embassy. In early June, environmental campaigner Stephen Kwikiriza was abducted and detained by the army, who reportedly beat him and dumped him on the side of a road a week later.
NGOs working on environmental conservation and oil extraction have also reported that their offices have been raided, and their staff intimidated and harassed, which has deterred many from speaking out about the pipeline.
Hindstrom added:
“Climate activism is under threat around the world, while fossil fuel companies quietly benefit. European oil companies cannot absolve themselves from responsibility while their investments fuel climate destruction, reprisals and violence overseas.”
Original Source: globalwitness.org
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