Farmers' Rights and the Mindanao Agriculture Development Agenda

 

FARMERS’ RIGHTS AND THE MINDANAO

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE)

Statement on the 1st Mindanao Agriculture Forum 

November 21-23, 2007

 

 

It is not possible to conceive of an agenda for agricultural development without conceiving of an agenda for farmers and farmers' rights.

 

SEARICE has been working in Mindanao since 1992 when we started the Community Based Native Seeds Research Center (CONSERVE) in Pres. Roxas, Cotabato. CONSERVE itself was built from the local farmers' movement in Cotabato, which in turn had been nurtured mainly by the Church from the time of the anti-Marcos dictatorship struggles. We simply inherited and continued what had been started by local farmers as their struggle for a better life and for a fuller realization of their rights, politically, economically, culturally and socially.

 

Even then, when we started CONSERVE, we did not come with a full agenda for local agricultural development nor did we aspire to achieve one. We still don't claim to have one now. We came in with quite a simple idea: seeds. Yet even from that seemingly simple idea of seeds our years of work with farmers have taught us and eventually led us to a better appreciation of something broader than what we started out, and that is, farmers' rights. And this appreciation come through years of lessons, wisdom and struggles imparted to us by farmers themselves. Yet, we are not claiming expertise on the subject of farmers' rights. We do know enough however that there could not be an agenda for agriculture without farmers' and farmers' rights being central to the discussions.

 

What now appears to be obvious at this point in the 1^st Mindanao Agriculture Forum: that it suffers from a gaping hole in its heart, the heart of farmers' rights! We are not merely saying that Farmers' Rights is the missing element here because that is the terrain of advocacy that we happen to be working in. We are saying so because this terrain has become global in significance, which we especially Mindanawans may ignore only at our own loss.

 

Recently, the second meeting of the Governing Body of the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), of which the Philippines is a signatory, took place in Rome early this month. The Treaty, which took effect in 2004 is the foremost international instrument governing discussions and negotiations among Parties with regard to policies about Plant Genetic Resources in Food and Agriculture. At the heart of the Treaty is Farmers' Rights, enshrined in Article 9.

 

It is an imperfect Treaty no doubt and the section on Farmers' Rights among its many imperfections. Farmers' movements themselves have criticized Farmers' Rights provision in the Treaty for, among others, the narrowness of its scope and to its being made subject to national legislation. Nevertheless, the Treaty remains the only one that explicitly recognizes Farmers’ Rights and calls upon countries to implement it. It is a historic Treaty and under ideal circumstances, is a work in progress.

 

For us at SEARICE, we came into the Rome meeting having conducted a series of consultations among farmers in Mindanao, Visayas and at the national level about Farmers' Rights. The objective of those consultations was to try to form a consensus among farmers about what they understand Farmers' Rights to be and the key issues that affect them.

 

What those consultations basically showed is that farmers consider Farmers' Rights as mainly a bundle of rights, or a collection of rights ranging from the economic to the political, from the social to the cultural. They are interlocking rights that define what a farmer is or what he or she ought to be in the eyes of society. Farmers regard their rights to land as a very basic right, hence the struggle for land reform, including in Mindanao, remains very much alive. The farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon who are marching right now towards Malacanang are living proof of this struggle. But also important for farmers are their rights to seeds, i.e., unimpeded access to use, sell, share and market seeds. So too are rights to participation in government, to appropriate and safe technologies, to access to health care, to safe and nutritious food, to fair market access, among others. Indeed, what those consultations showed is that farmers do hold a holistic view of their rights and consequently of their role in society as a whole and in agriculture as a sector.

 

Farmers from South-Central Mindanao during the consultations particularly articulated the core issues that impede them from realizing and asserting their basic socio-economic,cultural rights.  According to them, the so-called ‘development projects’ such as mining explorations and  the expansion of  agricultural plantations, in fact deduced farmers into mere tenants and/or daily laborers,  has not only contaminated their lands and water system but also showered their communities  with toxic sprays  and in the process, disregarded their efforts  to practice a more environment-friendly sustainable agriculture.  Underlying issues behind this are the absence of comprehensive information dissemination for farmers to have informed decision and the lack of  farmers’,  local communities’ and women’s voices in decision-making processes at all levels. 

 Farmers during the consultation also lamented the seemingly lack of recognition for their efforts in conservation and sustainable management of the agroecosystem from the formal sector.  On seeds/ plant genetic resources for example, farmer-partners of SEARICE in North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat during the span of 1994-2006 have developed and bred some 110 rice varieties from local and traditional varieties that are adaptable and suited to their specific local conditions. In second cropping in 2006, about 42.6 tons from these seeds have spread to some 328 hectares in 21 farming communities in North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon, in the process increasing the varietal diversity in lowland rice farming communities.  The Government thru the Department of Agriculture, however is bent on subsidizing and promoting only 5 varieties of hybrid seeds, further subjecting lowland agroecosystems more prone to disease and pest epidemics and also in promoting genetically modified crops whose long-term impacts to human and animal health and to the environment remains unknown. Moreover, these bias promotion of one-size fits all technologies undermines farmers’ conservation efforts and accordingly, further marginalizes their sector to become dependent and ‘tenants’ to what technology, inputs, seeds the scientists, government, traders, and seed companies prescribe and promote.

Albeit the lack of support, this did not hamper farmers from crafting their own development as forms of assertions of their rights – by organizing themselves into groups, networks and movements that freely exchange and share not only seeds and related knowledge, technologies and increasingly by engaging local government units and thru participation in special bodies at the community and local levels to protect and support their initiatives, among others. Farmers are showing the way, it is about time we let them lead the way to agricultural development.

Henceforth, we believe that Mindanao Agriculture Agenda should be defined by the farmers of Mindanao with active and diverse participation of different stakeholders particularly small farmers, indigenous peoples, rural youth and rural women.  It is our call and our challenge to develop a   Farmers’ Rights- based agenda for agricultural development  in Mindanao - with  Mindanawan farmers as central to the process of defining the agenda.

- End-

SEARICE Mindanao

Bautista Farms, Tacurong City

Sultan Kudarat 

Telefax:  +6364 477 0045; +632 922 6710

Email: searice@searice.org.ph, searice_mindanao@searice.org.ph  

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming

Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron
or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large

algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible 

solution to global warming because the growing
algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Brett Hillyard)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/1 1/0711291
32753.htm

Web address:
http ://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/
071129 132753.htm

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming
Discredited By New Research
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — Scientists have revealed an
important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of
plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected
$100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities
suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of
reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to
global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or
other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been
proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the
growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a
lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to
deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the "Biological
Pump", has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of
algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom,
the more carbon is transported, or "pumped", from the
atmosphere to the deep ocean.

To test this theory, researchers compared the abundance of algae in the surface waters of the world's oceans with
the amount of carbon actually sinking to deep water. They found clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance
and carbon sinking rates. However, the relationship between the two was surprising: less carbon was transported to
deep water during a summertime bloom than during the rest of the year. This analysis has never been done before
and required designing specialized mathematical algorithms.

"By jumping a mathematical hurdle we found a new globally synchronous signal," said Dr. Lutz.
"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep
water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this
ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an
artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they
ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

This study closely follows a September Ocean Iron Fertilization symposium at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI) attended by leading scientists, international lawyers, policy makers, and concerned
representatives from government, business, academia and environmental organizations.

Topics discussed included potential environmental dangers, economic implications, and the uncertain effectiveness
of ocean fertilization. To date none of the major ocean fertilization experiments have verified that a significant
amount of deep ocean carbon sequestration occurs. Some scientists have suggested that verification may require
more massive and more permanent experiments. Together with commercial operators they plan to go ahead with
large-scale and more permanent ocean fertilization experiments and note that potential negative environmental
consequences must be balanced against the harm expected due to ignoring climate change.

During the Ocean Iron Fertilization meeting Dr. Hauke Kite-Powell, of the Marine Policy Center at WHOI,
estimated the possible future value of ocean fertilization at $100 billion of the emerging international carbon trading
market, which has the goal of mitigating global warming. However, according to Professor Rosemary Rayfuse, an
expert in International Law and the Law of the Sea at the University of New South Wales, Australia, who also
attended the Woods Hole meeting, ocean fertilization projects are not currently approved under any carbon credit
regulatory scheme and the sale of offsets or credits from ocean fertilization on the unregulated voluntary markets is
basically nothing short of fraudulent.

'There are too many scientific uncertainties relating both to the efficacy of ocean fertilization and its possible
environmental side effects that need to be resolved before even larger experiments should be considered, let alone
the process commercialized,' Rayfuse says. 'All States have an obligation to protect and preserve the marine
environment and to ensure that all activities carried out under their jurisdiction and control, including marine
scientific research and commercial ocean fertilization activities do not cause pollution.
Ocean fertilization is 'dumping' which is essentially prohibited under the law of the sea. There is no point trying to
ameliorate the effects of climate change by destroying the oceans -- the very cradle of life on earth. Simply doing
more and bigger of that which has already been demonstrated to be ineffective and potentially more harmful than
good is counter-intuitive at best.'

Indeed, the global study of Dr. Lutz and colleagues suggests that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not
be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.
According to Dr Lutz "The limited duration of previous ocean fertilization experiments may not be why carbon
sequestration wasn't found during those artificial blooms. This apparent puzzle could actually reflect how marine
ecosystems naturally handle blooms and agrees with our findings. A bloom is like ringing the marine ecosystem
dinner bell. The microbial and food web dinner guests appear and consume most of the fresh algal food."
"Our study highlights the need to understand natural ecosystem processes, especially in a world where change is
occurring so rapidly," concluded Dr. Lutz.
The findings of Dr. Lutz and colleagues coincide with and affirm this month's decision of the London Convention
(the International Maritime Organization body that oversees the dumping of wastes and other matter at sea) to
regulate controversial commercial ocean fertilization schemes. This gathering of international maritime parties
advised that such schemes are currently not scientifically justified.

Strategies to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, including the enhancement of biological sinks through
processes such as ocean fertilization, will be considered by international governmental representatives during the
thirteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali next month.

This research was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Mi ami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science (2007, November 30). Ocean
Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming Discredited By New Research. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 30, 2007,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/1 1/071129132753 .htm

Searice urges DA to review GMO rice-evaluation process

Businessmirror November 16, 2007
By Jennifer A. Ng Reporter

THE Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment
(Searice) is urging the Department of Agriculture (DA) to make its
evaluation process for a genetically modified (GM) rice variant "more
transparent."

Searice also called on the DA to reject Bayer Philippines' application
to commercially distribute its GM rice variant Liberty Link 62 (LL62).

"Allowing the importation of this GM rice requires transparency and
public knowledge as rice is the Filipinos' staple food," said Socrates
Lugasip, technical officer of Searice.

"The people need to know the reasons behind the government's rush to
allow this while this has not been grown commercially elsewhere, no
history of safe consumption by humans, much less by a population that
eats rice three times a day, whole-year round," Lugasip said.

The international nongovernment organization also posed serious
questions on the independence of the Scientific and Technical Review
Panel (STRP) from multinational firms producing GM products.

"We urge the Department of Agriculture to divulge the composition of
the STRP and assure the public of the members' independence from any
GMO [GM organism] company's interest. It is the responsibility of the
DA officials to ensure that the people's staple food is not dictated
by the GMO companies' profit interests," said Lugasip.

Searice points to Administrative Order 8 issued by the DA which states
that the STRP shall be "composed of at least three reputable and
independent scientists.to evaluate the application, particularly the
risk- assessment studies conducted and actions taken by relevant
regulatory authorities in the country of origin, and submit its
report to the Bureau of Plant Industry within 30 days from its receipt
of the application."

The Searice official noted a recent Greenpeace report which alleged
that the STRP is composed mostly of experts who were commissioned by
multinational firms to do research on genetic-plant materials.

Meanwhile, a member of the STRP said he would dismiss the application
of Bayer for LL62 right away for "lack of merit."

"Would it enhance agricultural productivity, global competitiveness,
lower the price of rice in the market, alleviate poverty and hunger,
improve the health of the rice-eating Filipinos? These were the
justifications for the country to hitch a ride with the biotechnology
bandwagon in the early years of the GMO debate, but these are now
conveniently forgotten in the decision-making process," said Dr.
Emerlito Borromeo.

Borromeo also said the evaluation of GMO applications should not be
left to the STRP alone because their perspective is confined to
"technical aspects" only and could not defend the economic and
socio-cultural implications of a particular GMO product.

Advocates of GM products had earlier defended the country's regulatory
and approval process and said it can ensure that any GM product
screened and approved will be safe for human consumption.

NGO asks gov't to deny Bayer petition

http://business.inquirer.net/money/breakingnews/view_article.php?article_id=
101164
By Amy R. Remo
Posted date: November 15, 2007

An international nongovernmental organization has asked the government
to deny an application of pharmaceutical giant Bayer for commercial
distribution of its genetically modified rice, Liberty Link Rice 62,
on grounds that the evaluation process is "concealed from the public."

The Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment
(SEARice) raised the alarm, saying the "concealment" also posed
serious questions on the independence of the government's Scientific
and Technical Review Panel from GMO-producing firms.

"We urge the Department of Agriculture to divulge the composition of
the STRP and assure the public of the members' independence from any
GMO firm's interest," said Socrates Lugasip, SEARice technical
officer.

According to the DA, the STRP is composed of at least three "reputable
and independent scientists ... to evaluate the application,
particularly the risk assessment studies conducted and actions taken
by relevant regulatory authorities in the country of origin."

Lugasip said allowing the importation of this GM rice required
transparency and public knowledge as rice is the Filipinos' staple
food.

"The people need to know the reasons behind the government's rush to
allow this, despite the fact that the rice has not been grown
commercially elsewhere nor does it have any history of safe
consumption by humans," Lugasip said.

Bayer, for its part, said it could not issue an official statement due
to a pending case on the commercialization of the LLRICE62.

Greenpeace filed this year a petition against the use of Bayer's
LLRice62 for food, animal feed and processing.

SEARice said a member of the STRP had said he would dismiss the
application of LLRICE62 for lack of merit.

"Would it enhance agricultural productivity, global competitiveness,
lower the price of rice in the market, alleviate poverty and hunger,
improve the health of the rice-eating Filipinos?" said STRP member
Emerlito Borromeo.

Borromeo added that the evaluation of GMO applications should not be
left to STRP alone because the panel's perspective was confined only
to technical aspects, and does not cover the economic and
sociocultural implications of a particular GMO.

Farmers oppose GMO rice

Saturday, November 17, 2007
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/nov/17/yehey/metro/20071117met3.html
BY Chino Leyco Researcher

The Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (Searice) urged the Department of Agriculture to heed the petition of farmers to stop the importation of genetically modified (GM) rice, codenamed as LLRICE 62.

In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap, the farmers raised alarm over the possible contamination of local rice varieties in case LLRICE 62 is accidentally mixed with the farmers' traditional varieties in the market.

The farmers also warned that importing LLRICE 62 may signal the start of the planting of GM rice that will pose a greater danger of contaminating the local rice fields, especially those that have switched to organic rice.

About 200 rice farmers from Bohol and Mindanao individually wrote their letter to Yap, asking him to deny the application of Bayer CropScience to import LLRICE 62.

Socrates Lugasip, Searice technical officer, said that the lack of transparency in the application and approval process of GM food and crops has denied the farmers with the venue for redress, especially on rice that embodies their life and tradition.

"This is the heart of the petition filed before the court seeking to declare the DA Administrative Order No. 8 as unconstitutional. It denies the people of their constitutional right to information, health and balanced and healthful ecology," Lugasip said.

In August, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 101 issued a 20-day temporary restraining order against the Bureau of Plant Industry, an attached agency of the DA, prohibiting them from approving Bayer's GM rice application until the case is being heard.

Enviros Challenge Dumping Urea in Ocean to Sink Carbon

This artist's rendition of an Ocean Nourishment Corporation plant shows how the company would pump urea into the ocean to stimulate plankton growth. Photo credit: Courtesy of Ocean Nourishment Corporation.

Science : Planet Earth
Enviros Challenge Dumping Urea in Ocean to Sink Carbon
By Brandon Keim 11.07.07 | 5:00 PM
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/urea_dumping

An Australian company is injecting urea into the ocean, hoping to sequester greenhouse-gas pollution and cash in on carbon credits.
If all goes according to plan, oceanic plankton will thrive on the nitrogen-rich urea broth and absorb carbon dioxide. When the plankton die, they'll sink to the bottom of the sea taking the carbon dioxide with them. The business plan: Companies licensing the technology can sell carbon offsets.
But some scientists worry the technique hasn't been rigorously studied. The nitrogen injections, they say, could feed toxic algae, disrupt poorly understood ecosystems and ultimately release more carbon dioxide than is deep-sixed.
"If we're going to entertain such massive measures, they need to be informed by scientific fact and experimentation, and less by opinion and profit motivations," said ocean fertilization researcher Kenneth Coale, director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California.
The scheme, conceived by Sydney-based Ocean Nourishment Corporation and slated for large-scale testing off the coast of the Philippines next year, captures the Wild West reality of climate engineering in the 21st century. Scientists and entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on global warming concerns have proposed everything from iron seeding to orbital mirrors to reflect the sun. Meanwhile, these practices are governed only by a skimpy patchwork of laws.
Ocean Nourishment recently dumped one ton of urea into the Sulu Sea. Researchers haven't finished evaluating that data, said managing director Jim Ridley, but noted that early analysis supports claims of plankton nourishment and subsequent carbon-dioxide sequestration.
In the next several months, the company will conduct another one-ton Sulu Sea experiment, this time monitoring the effects more closely. Over three weeks, researchers will track plankton blooms with satellites, combine samples taken directly from the water with geographic information, and observe how the area evolves.
Critics aren't worried about the risks of these early tests. A ton of urea affects just a few hundred square meters of ocean. But depending on the next set of test results, Ridley said, the company could conduct a 500-ton experiment early next year. If that goes well, he said, ONC will start licensing its technology.
At that scale, unintended consequences, such as toxic algal blooms and food-chain disruptions, could be more profound -- and scientists worry that the company might not notice.
"To date, none of the iron-enrichment experiments have been designed to test these unintended consequences, and none of the urea-enrichment studies are designed to do that, either," Coale said.
Apart from the often-destructive aquatic effects of nitrogen runoff from industrial farms, only Ocean Nourishment has studied the effects of urea fertilization.
"It's the early days," Ridley said. "We're still very much in the R&D phase."
Nevertheless, the company's website implies that the technology is well-understood. The site already offers licenses for sale (.pdf). Developing countries from "all over the world" have shown interest, Ridley said.
Critics are skeptical of Ocean Nourishment's ability to measure, much less sell, the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by this process.
"Nobody has a way of measuring how much carbon is sinking into the lower levels of the ocean," said Jim Thomas, a research-program manager at the ETC Group, an Ottawa-based environmental advocacy organization.
To produce urea, the company would need to build natural-gas-burning factories. Whether plankton blooms would offset the carbon dioxide released by those factories is unknown. Ocean Nourishment factors urea production into its carbon equations, but commercial pressures threaten the integrity of companies pursuing climate modification, Coale said.
He said that people pursuing climate-engineering projects for profit need to be separated from those who decide whether the projects are a good idea. "Right now, they're the same."
Asked whether the company's marketing has outpaced its science, Ridley said, "You might read it that way, but it's not the case."
Edwina Tanner, an oceanographer with Ocean Nourishment's research partner, Earth Ocean & Space, said the company's findings will be submitted to scientific journals in coming years, minimizing the chance of mistakes.
"The scientific community is really overseeing this," Tanner said.
To better regulate geo-engineering, Coale recommends establishing an organization like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to regulate ocean fertilization. Thomas wants the International Maritime Organization to handle the job. Even Ridley agrees that oversight is sorely needed.
"You hear concern from the scientists: What might happen to the oceans? We don't know that yet," he said. "It's inevitable that there will be some kind of United Nations control over these technologies, especially when they're commercialized. I think there has to be."

Urea 'climate solution' may backfire

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/09/2087099.htm

By Anna Salleh for ABC Science Online

Posted Fri Nov 9, 2007 6:38pm AEDT
Updated Fri Nov 9, 2007 7:03pm AEDT


A NASA satellite image of an enormous bloom of phytoplankton floating off the northern coast of Norway. (AFP: NASA)

Plans by an Australian company to sink hundreds of tonnes of urea into the ocean to combat climate change may backfire and exacerbate global warming, critics say.

Sydney-based company Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC) is looking at using nitrogen-rich urea to boost the growth of CO2-absorbing phytoplankton.

The idea, says the company, is for this form of carbon sequestration to lock up carbon in the oceans for thousands of years.

It says that encouraging the growth of more phytoplankton could also boost fish stocks.

But several scientists and civil society groups are worried about the lack of independent oversight of such private exploration of 'ocean fertilisation', which they say could trigger environmental problems rather than solve them.

ONC plans to develop this method of carbon sequestration to generate valuable carbon credits.

And it is using the research of Adjunct Professor Ian Jones at the University of Sydney's civil engineering department to do so.

Adjunct Professor Jones has conducted laboratory experiments to show that nitrogen is important in boosting the growth of phytoplankton in ocean samples.

ONC has taken the research out of the lab. Managing director John Ridley says the company has just completed an experiment involving one tonne of nitrogen in the Sulu Sea off the Philippines.

The company is now discussing with the Philippines Government plans to scale up the experiment to 1,000 tonnes of nitrogen over the next year.

Mr Ridley says the company is also talking to the Moroccan Government about similar experiments in the Atlantic Ocean.

Scientists' concerns
But scientists involved in publicly funded basic research into the role of nutrients including iron in the oceans are worried about the commercial imperative behind the latest experiments. Biogeochemist Dr Philip Boyd of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is one of them.

"This latest development in the Sulu Sea has all of our community concerned, as there doesn't appear to be any published evidence of how urea fertilisation impacts ocean biology and ecology," he said.

Dr Cliff Law of NIWA and others say independent scientific experts should oversee research by a growing number of private companies developing ocean fertilisation.

"At the end of the day we're dealing with companies that want to make money out of carbon credits," he said.

ONC says there is little publicly available material on the field experiments, partly because of the need to protect intellectual property.

It says the experiments are mimicking natural upwelling of nutrients that occur in productive ocean areas.

In a commercial plant this would involve using urea produced from natural gas to sequester 10 megatonnes of CO2 per year.

It also says each of its plants could provide 50 grams of marine protein per day for 38 million people.

But others say such moves could bring bad news as well as good.

Dr Law says natural upwelling of nutrients can trigger toxic algal blooms and the release of nitrous oxide - a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

ONC's Mr Ridley says the company will use ships to monitor phytoplankton growth and concentrations of nitrogen will not be allowed to go high enough to cause algal blooms.

"If we step the scale of this up we can actually track it by satellite," he said.

Dr Law is not impressed.

"That all sounds very neat. If only it was so easy," he said.

Sequestration's huge challenges
Dr Law says boosting phytoplankton for fish stocks will also keep carbon circulating in the ecosystem, which would therefore undermine any sequestration efforts.

In addition, he says one of the challenges to long-term sequestration is drawing the dead phytoplankton down deep into the ocean.

Dr Law says experiments seeding the ocean with iron have shown hardly any plankton sink below 100 metres, which means any carbon in them would be re-released within months.

Even if the plankton appear to sink, he says currents can bring them up again quite quickly.

Dr Law says verifying long-term ocean carbon sequestration is difficult and expensive and he wonders how ONC will do this.

London meeting
An international scientific group on ocean dumping, known as the London Convention, is understood to be discussing urea ocean fertilisation at a meeting in the UK this week.

Earlier this week a coalition of civil society groups urged the convention to stop urea experiments until their impacts had been properly assessed.

Earlier this year the convention cautioned against ocean fertilisation using iron.

Mr Ridley of ONC says the convention only has jurisdiction over experiments carried out in the high seas.

Instead, he says ONC will focus on territorial waters so it can be involved in carbon credit schemes.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has labelled ocean fertilisation as a hypothetical solution to climate change, carrying unknown side-effects and economic costs.

Tags: environment, climate-change, oceans-and-reefs, science-and-technology, research, australia

Agenda Item 14 on Article 9: Farmers' Rights: In Search of International Relevance

October 31, 2007 marked the day that the fate of the lives of farmers in terms of their rights to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture were to be deliberated by the international community. The crux of the contentions focused on the relevance of the Governing Body in providing guidance to the Contracting Parties as to the implementation of Article 9 within their national jurisdictions. The G77 and China group were steadfast in asserting the need for the Governing Body to discuss Farmers' Rights, in view of its critical role in fulfilling the objectives of the International Treaty on conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture today and for the future, and proposed the adoption of a draft Resolution on Farmers' Rights, stating as follows:

THE GOVERNING BODY,

RECALLING the recognition in the International Treaty of the enormous contribution that farmers of all regions of the world have made, and will continue to make, for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources as the basis of food and agriculture production throughout the world,

AWARE that Farmers' Rights, as covered in Article 9 of the International Treaty, are about enabling farmers to continue this work and about recognizing and rewarding them for their contribution to the global genetic pool, especially in the light of the challenges presented by climate change,

ACKNOWLEDGING that there is great uncertainty and constraints in many countries as to how Farmers' Rights can be implemented and that the challenges related to the realization of Farmers' Rights are likely to vary from country to country,

RECOGNIZING that exchange of experiences, as well as guidance and assistance from the Governing Body, are required to make progress in the implementation of the provisions on Farmers' Rights in the International Treaty,

THEREFORE REQUESTS the Secretary to compile views and experiences on the implementation of Farmers' Rights as set out in Article 9 from the Contracting Parties and other relevant organizations - and to present the results of this compilation in the form of a report that will be the basis of a substantive item of the agenda of the Third Session of the Governing Body to promote the realization of these rights,

ENCOURAGES the Contracting Parties to prepare their reports in an inclusive and participatory manner, involving farmers' organizations as appropriate,

APPRECIATES the involvement of farmers' organizations at this Second Session and affirms its commitment to continue to involve farmers' organizations in relevant work of the Governing Body, including in its future sessions, according to the procedures established by the Governing Body.

This, however, encountered oppositions from Canada, representing the North American Regional Group, and Australia, representing the Southwest Pacific Regional Group, which asserted that the responsibility for implementation of Article 9 rests with national governments and that the resources of the Governing Body should not be allocated to implementation of Article 9 which is not a core function of the International Treaty.

Brazil emphasized in support of the G77 and China position that there is a need to provide policy space at the international level to allow development of policies in line with the International Treaty.

Portugal, representing the European Regional Group, on the other hand, requested official translations of the draft Resolution before the document could be discussed as a working document to be adopted by the Governing Body.


November 1, 2007 paved the way for the fate of the lives of farmers with the adoption of the negotiated final text of the Resolution. Despite numerous revisions on the text of the draft Resolution during the negotiations of the plenary, the Contracting Parties came to an agreement to provide international space and relevance for Farmers' Rights:

THE GOVERNING BODY,

RECALLING the recognition in the International Treaty of the enormous contribution that local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world have made, and will continue to make, for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources as the basis of food and agriculture production throughout the world;

RECALLING the importance of fully implementing Article 9 of the International Treaty;

RECALLING also that according to Article 9 of the International Treaty, the responsibility for realizing Farmers' Rights, as they relate to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, rests with national governments;

ACKNOWLEDGING that there is uncertainty in many countries as to how Farmers' Rights can be implemented and that the challenges related to the realization of Farmers' Rights are likely to vary from country to country;

RECOGNIZING that exchange of experiences and mutual assistance between Contracting Parties can significantly contribute in making progress in the implementation of the provisions on Farmers' Rights in the International Treaty;

RECOGNIZING the contribution the Governing Body may give in support of the implementation of Farmers' Rights;

1. ENCOURAGES Contracting Parties and other relevant organizations to submit views and experiences on the implementation of Farmers' Rights as set out in Article 9 of the International Treaty, involving, as appropriate, farmers' organizations and other stakeholders;

2. REQUESTS the Secretariat to collect these views and experiences as a basis for an agenda item for consideration by the Governing Body at its Third Session to promote the realization of Farmers' Rights at the national level, and to disseminate relevant information through the website of the International Treaty, where appropriate;

APPRECIATES the involvement of farmers' organizations at this Second Session and affirms its commitment to continue to involve farmers' organizations in its further work, as appropriate, according to the Rules of Procedure established by the Governing Body.

Guidance by the Governing Body on Article 9: A Non-Issue to Begin With

Much of the contentions on the draft Resolution and the working documents on Article 9 as an agenda item to be deliberated by the Governing Body in its 2nd Session lay on the issue of the role of the Governing Body in providing guidance to Contracting Parties on the implementation of Article 9 in their respective jurisdictions. As argued by the North American Regional Group (Canada), European Regional Group (Portugal), and Southwest Pacific Group (Australia), its implementation rests with national governments and guidance is not a core function of the Governing Body.


Finding that the crux of the differences was mainly on the issue of whether or not the provisions of the International Treaty preclude the Governing Body from providing guidance to the Contracting Parties on the implementation of Article 9, the legal counsel of FAO succinctly and rhetorically answered. Undeniably, implementation of Article 9 of the International Treaty rests with national governments. Considering that it is the Contracting Parties themselves which came to an agreement to come up with the International Treaty, there is no arguing that the Contracting Parties themselves can submit to the Governing Body issues they deem the Governing Body can provide guidance on.


Whether or not the Governing Body can provide guidance on the Treaty's implementation, specifically on Article 9? This is a non-issue.

Seed Treaty in Peril

For immediate release – endorsed by the civil society and farmers’ organizations present at FAO

Thursday, 1 November, 2007

Farmers Call for Suspension of Seed Treaty

Governments fail to meet minimal Treaty obligations

UN conference told

Farmers’ organizations who were invited to attend a United Nations meeting on the Treaty that governs the exchange of crop seeds for research and plant breeding late yesterday told the assembled governments that the Treaty would have to be suspended. Speaking on behalf of 30 farmers’ and other civil society organizations, Ibrahima Coulibaly of ROPPA (regional farmers’ organization of West Africa) said that, “the Treaty, hosted in Rome by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), must halt the exchange of crop germplasm – the critical material for plant breeding. The suspension should remain in effect until governments meet the minimal obligations of the Treaty including its core financial arrangements”, the African farmer leader concluded.

The second meeting of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture ("the Law of the Seed") began on Monday and is expected to run through Friday but has been blocked -- indeed, almost completely silent -- because it's 115 member governments have been unable to find the $4.9 million necessary to keep the lights on in its Secretariat and to maintain fundamental monitoring mechanisms that could ensure equitable sharing of the benefits of the seeds to be exchanged for research. Governments have also failed to commit funding to support in situ (“on-farm”) seed conservation or for capacity building in the global South.

“We are faced with the greatest case of institutional biopiracy ever seen,” said Andrew Mushita of the Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation Network (a network of conservation programs in 21 countries). “In effect, governments are now enabling multinational seed companies to impose a legally-binding regime that forces the exchange of farmers’ seeds without reciprocal benefits,” said Mushita who also addressed governments yesterday.

Another civil society representative in the meeting, Wilhelmina Pelegrina from a SEARICE, a Phillipines-based organization said, “We also expect the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to suspend its germplasm exchanges in order to remain compliant with the spirit of the Treaty." Eleven institutes of the CGIAR have distributed 100,000 seed samples under the terms of the Treaty so far this year. "We hope the suspension will be temporary and governments will come to their senses quickly”, said Pelegrina.

Negotiations for the Treaty began in the mid-1990s because scientific researchers and multinational plant breeders were experiencing a substantial decline in their access to vital breeding material. Scientists and farmers, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, were denying requests from northern breeders because private companies were taking farmers’ varieties, patenting and profiting from them. The decline in seed exchange was threatening world food security and governments decided to act. The Treaty – after seven years of acrimonious negotiations – includes provisions for Farmers’ Rights and is supposed to guarantee an equitable flow of financial benefits to developing countries. Without funding for core administrative services, farmers and developing countries can have no confidence that there is equity in the system.

According to Pat Mooney of ETC Group headquartered in Canada, who also attended the meeting, "The global seed industry has annual commercial sales of $23 billion. Beginning in the 1970s multinational pesticide enterprises began buying seed companies. Today,” Mooney said, “the top 10 seed companies have 57% of the commercial seed trade. Last year, a single company’s biotech seeds and traits – Monsanto’s – accounted for 86% of the total worldwide area devoted to genetically modified seeds.” These multinational gene giants are thought to be the major beneficiaries in the current Treaty dispute.

“It’s not all governments,” said Guy Kastler, Via Campesina/Europe “the real biopirates at this meeting are France, Germany and Australia. These governments are making it impossible for the international community to fulfill its Treaty obligations. Although their seed industries are major beneficiaries of the Treaty, these three countries haven't contributed a penny to the Treaty’s operations and they are actively blocking negotiations here.”

Farmers’ organizations – who are attending the meeting at FAO's invitation but at their own expense – sat stunned yesterday as governments refused to discuss the proposed program of work for the Treaty. Even the most contentious issues passed by without comment.

Farmers undertake the overwhelming majority of the world’s seed conservation and plant breeding. This was confirmed Tuesday when the representative of UPOV, the Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (the Geneva-based intergovernmental body that oversees intellectual property related to plant varieties) reported that breeders had only “protected” 70,000 varieties in recent decades. Farmers breed and adapt more than one million varieties every year.

“If negotiations collapse at FAO,” said Maria Elza Gomez from a Brazilian small farmers’ organization, “the matter might move to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, whose scientific subcommittee will meet at FAO in Rome in February 2008. Governments and FAO could lose control of the Treaty to a different UN body. This would be a serious mistake: the control over seeds -- the first link in the food chain -- would be left with a bunch of environmentalists who know nothing about agriculture.”

Farmers' Reports: Status of Farmers' Rights Realization - Side-event on Farmers' Rights in the 2nd Session of the Governing Body

October 30, 2007, 1300-1430, Iran Room
Farmers' Reports: Status of Farmers' Rights Realization

Organized by the Community Biodiversity Development Conservation (CBDC) Network to highlight the status of Farmers' Rights based on the perspectives and understanding of farmers through farmers' reporting and translate farmers' reports as a means of assessment of International Treaty implementation to assist and inform in the realization of Farmers' Rights, farmers from the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil shared the results of various processes that lead to their reports on the status of the realization of Farmers' Rights in their respective countries. The farmers also shared their experiences on their work on conservation and sustainable use, as well as their perspectives and understanding of what farmers' rights is based on the reality that they live in.

The first presentation was by Mrs. Estela Calamba and Mr. Candido Baldapan, both from the Farmers' Consultative Council in Bohol, Philippines which is comprised of six people's organizations involved in conservation work and in-situ development of seeds in their communities in Bohol. They emphasized their experiences and contribution in maintaining crop diversity through their work on conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, in particular, on their work in rice breeding, seed banking, seed exchanges, varietal evaluation, regeneration of traditional varieties, soil and pest management and organic farming. Likewise, experiences in exchanges between farmers, with students, and other institutions, as well as successes by their people's organizations in directing policy direction in their province on its commitment to be free from genetically modified organisms and their municipality's support and recognition on farmers' community registry systems as a means of recognizing and protecting farmers' seeds.

The next presentations focused on the farmers' reports in the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil, where it was significantly pointed out that the concept of Farmers' Rights for farmers exceeds the issue of seeds. Farmers' Rights is a bundle of rights that include farmers' rights to seeds, to land, to water, to culture, to information, to technology, to support services and policies, to participation and decision-making, to market, among others. A detailed account of their presentations can be found here.

The results of the national process enabled the CBDC Network to view Farmers' Rights in a more holistic and expansive perspective that includes the rights of farmers to seeds. In particular, the CBDC Network emphasized the following points:

The CBDC Network undertook a number of consultative processes in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia in an endeavor to determine the conceptual understanding and perspectives of various stakeholders, initiatives directed towards domesticating and realization of Farmers' Rights. The consultative processes were undertaken in seven representative countries which include Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Lao PDR, Philippines, Venezuela, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The interactive and participatory consultative processes were carried out from June to October 2007.

The primary objective of the consultative processes was to have an inclusive definition and interpretation of Farmers' Rights by farmers themselves, farmers' organizations and civil society organizations. The following are the farmers' perspectives and demands for the realization of Farmers' Rights:

1. Farmers' Rights are understood in a broader context that includes their rights to land, water, seed, technology, biodiversity, and culture and gender equity among others. These rights are considered collective and inalienable towards providing mechanisms for facilitating livelihoods in terms of realizing food security, food sovereignty, poverty alleviation and enhancing farmers' rights to food as a fundamental human right. Farmers consider and exercise their right to seed security as a means of determining their own means of production without outside influence and as a prerequisite to national food security.

In this regard, farmers require policy, legislative and technical support to strengthen their rights. Such policy and legislative measures need to strategically protect traditional knowledge, innovations, technologies, social and cultural practices related to the sustainable conservation and utilization of genetic resources for food and agriculture.

2. We note with concern that the International Treaty merely recognizes the contribution of farmers to agro-biodiversity without putting in place concrete measures for protecting, promoting or actualizing the fruits of these contributions. On the other hand, the Treaty is replete with measures for allowing governments, research institutions and industry users of PGRFA to access these resources and mechanisms for sharing benefits arising therefrom. This imbalance negates the Treaty's own recognition of farmers' contribution to PGRFA in the Preamble and makes the rights in Article 9 illusory. It is for these reasons that we call upon the Governing Body to put in place specific guidelines that enables Contracting Parties to formalize and successfully implement farmers' rights with tangible reporting mechanisms.

3. The International Treaty calls upon Contracting Parties to implement Farmers' Rights but national governments are much more committed to the adoption of commercial agricultural models which promote IPR, GMOs, chemical and increased pesticide pesticide and herbicide use that enhance monoculture and restrict diversity and sustainable cropping systems and practices. The enormous support provided to emerging technologies including GMOs is a major threat to Farmers' Rights as they necessarily lead towards genetic contamination, biodiversity loss, and increased cost of production and farmer dependence on the seed industry.

We therefore call upon national governments to review and revise national policies and legislation so as to remove any restrictions on the exercise of Farmers' Rights that relate to community seed banks, seed fairs, right to save, sell and exchange seeds, re-use and select seeds of their choice, carry-out on-farm crop improvement practices designed to enhance food security and sustainability of agriculture.

4. We note with amazement, shock and dismay that the International Treaty, having facilitated the exchange of PGRFA from the CGIAR (collected freely from farmers' fields) in favor of the multinational corporations and research institutions, has now been reduced to merely a medium of legitimized mechanism of gross biopiracy. We note that this is a result of lack of a transparent and committed and legally binding funding mechanism. We recall that this was never the intended objective of the International Treaty. If the Contracting Parties are unable to redeem the International Treaty from this malaise then it is prudent to suspend its operations forthwith until such funds are availed to facilitate its effective implementation. In our considered view, the International Treaty cannot be used as a means of legitimizing global fraud of farmers' materials.

Finding Farmers' Rights through Article 6 on Sustainable Use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

With discussions on the funding strategy having been suspended in view of a lot of concerns raised by the Contracting Parties of the International Treaty on the emphasized disinterest of developed countries to provide for and push through with the funding whereas developing countries have already complied in good faith, negotiations on the draft mechanism on compliance and non-compliance of the International Treaty was also suspended, which compelled the Governing Body to move into the next agenda on Article 6 of the International Treaty on Sustainable Use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.


Recognizing Article 6 of the International Treaty as an entry point to emphasize the need to recognize and implement Article 9 of the International Treaty on Farmers' Rights in view of the remarkable work and contributions of farmers in the past and in the present in the conservation and sustainable utilization of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and the future contributions that farmers can make in maintaining and developing the crop diversity, Mr. Candido Baldapan, a farmer representing the Farmers' Consultative Council (a federation of 6 people's organizations from Bohol Philippines) and speaking in behalf of other farmers from the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba who shared their experiences in a side event organized by the Community Biodiversity Development Conservation (CBDC) Network, expressed his perspective as a farmer on Article 6 as follows:

xxx xxx xxx

In Bohol, Philippines where I come from, our farmers' federation is involved in a lot of activities on conservation and sustainable use of seeds on our farm. We continuously develop our seeds by selection, breeding, evaluation, seed keeping including work to improve our soil and manage pest. Our group, from 1996 to 2006 was able to develop 63 farmer varieties from off-type selections, 48 farmer varieties from our own breeding work and we are currently evaluating 17 segregating lines. In contrast, our national rice research institute was able to release only 55 inbred lines from 1994-2004.

In Lao PDR, farmers were able to develop about 99 varieties of sticky rice to add to their already diverse rice planted in their filed in 5years. In Vietnam, there are more than 100 varieties developed by farmers in the Mekong Delta also in the last 5 years.

We continuously conserve our seeds by planting them every season and keeping them in our own homes or in community seedbanks. We have even asked a local agricultural college to give us the space to keep some of the seeds for replanting and free distribution. Whatever seeds are left, we sell to finance our group and to maintain our local seedbanks.

My farmer friend from Zimbabwe mentioned yesterday that they produce around 180 tons of different seeds, of good quality, but under their national legislation, they cannot sell these seeds through the formal market because they are not registered seed growers and their seed is not inspected by registered inspectors. How is this possible?

In Vietnam, one local government recognized the work of farmers in seed production and conservation and has valued farmers contribution to their province at US$1.2M in 2006. That is a significant contribution, about 1/4 of what the Treaty needs as Funds in order to operate. We farmers make this contribution, but how come the recognition of our work stops short in paper?

In Brazil, a great number of local experiences of production and use of traditional seeds may become illegal if the government puts in practice its proposals to amend seed and plant variety protection acts.

In Malawi, my friend here asks if it is possible to be consulted in setting prices of produce, including seeds before the government decides on the price?

We came to this Governing Body Meeting with positive hope of finding active support to our work, but there is silence.

We have been trying our very best to follow and understand the discussions in this meeting but found that there was no mention on how our rights as farmers can be supported in the Funding Strategy. We have heard in this Meeting of the Multilateral System but it is difficult for us to understand how this Multilateral System can assist us farmers, nor the benefits we can receive from all those crops places in the system.

We need to have Farmers' Rights realized and implemented now, in relation to our work on conservation and sustainable use of seeds.

We farmers call on the Governing Body to:

1. Recognize our work on conservation and sustainable use by calling for our participation. We are facing a number of challenges on seed laws and policies. We call on the Governing Body to review the national laws, to guarantee free use of seeds and trade policies in relation to Farmers' Rights.

2. To encourage parties for concrete, tangible support to on-farm conservation and farmers' work in breeding and sustainable agriculture.

Our rights to seeds is important for us. It gives us the food we eat. It gives us our livelihoods. Our rights to seeds also needs that we are provided with other rights - to land, to water, to culture, to knowledge, to information, to be free of genetically modified organisms, to participation and decision-making. It is our right to life. The realization of Farmers' Rights starts here, right now in the Governing body meeting.\

Salamat po.

Highlighted also in the short discussion on Article 6 are the following concerns: the need to emphasize how farmers benefit from the sustainable use of PGRFA; transfer of technology from developed countries to assist developing countries in building their capacities in conservation and sustainable use; the need to have a more comprehensive report reflecting efforts from both developed and developing countries on sustainable use, and, in particular, recognizing farmers' use of traditional varieties and the potential to learn from farmers. In closing, the Chair emphasized two points on Article 6 as an agenda item: (1) that Article 6 is an important component of the International Treaty; and (2) there is lack of information on policy measures for sustainable use.

Opening of the 2nd Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

The 2nd Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) opened on October 29, 2007, Monday, at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization office in Rome, Italy. The start of the 2nd Session officially opened negotiations and discussions among the Contracting Parties of the International Treaty on multifarious issues and concerns surrounding the proper implementation of the ITPGRFA, an international treaty which focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, farmers' rights, and the multilateral system on facilitated access and benefit sharing of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, particularly on crops listed in Annex I of the International Treaty.


Highlighted in the opening program of the Governing Body's 2nd Session by speakers from various fields relevant to the International Treaty are expectations on public and private sector collaborations to meet the need of farmers and increasing the number of crops, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and its support on conservation of ex-situ collections. challenges to be faced in achieving global food security, promotion of grassroots conservation, sustainable farming and innovations, and the role of the Treaty in supporting farmers' rights.


Received with welcomed attention during the opening program were the presentations of Professor Anil K. Gupta with an Indian farmer-innovator, and Guy Kastler from Via Campesina. Professor Gupta emphasized the remarkable role of farmers through their local knowledge systems in the International Treaty's work on conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, as substantiated with the Indian farmers' sharing of his developed varieties of various crops which he makes freely available to other farmers. Professor Gupta also proposed the following in order to support the work of farmers and further recognize their rights to seeds: a grassroots informations system to inform and empower farmers as concerns their resources, an international fund to support farmers' work, material and non-material incentives to target individual farmers and farmer communities, a global recognition of farmers as breeders and innovators, a funding mechanism for farmers' conservation work, and the need to bridge formal and informal systems as a means to support the overall objectives of the Treaty among others. Guy Kastler, on the other hand, emphasized the immediate need to support and implement farmers' rights, and, in particular, on farmers' right to sell seeds and actual participation through worldwide farmers' consultations.


During the plenary, representatives from the various regional groupings welcomed the opening and developments in the implementation of the International Treaty. In addition, they stressed the need to address during the present session concerns on the development of an effective funding strategy for the implementation of the Multilateral System and implementation of the Treaty's article on Farmers' Rights with support on those who conserve and maintain plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.


Note: Photos from IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin

SEARICE @30 Anniversary Series: World Food Day 2007 Celebrations

World Food Day 2007
“THE RIGHT TO (SAFE) FOOD”
SAFE RICE, SAFE FOOD: SEARICE Joins World Food Day Celebrations


The United Nations designates October 16 of every year as World Food Day. This year’s theme is The Right to Food in recognition of this very basic and universal human right. Right to food means that every person – woman, man and child – must have access at all times to food, or to means for the procurement of food, that is sufficient in quality, quantity and variety to meet their needs, is free from harmful substances and is acceptable to their culture.

While persistent hunger caused by poverty remains the biggest obstacle to the people’s right to food, there is also another problem that relates to the adverse health impacts of certain types of food produced through environmentally damaging and unsustainable food production technologies. One of these is food from genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a technology that remains highly controversial and is being rejected by farmers and consumers alike in various parts of the world.

Rice is the staple of Filipinos, but we are on the verge of allowing the rice that we eat to be genetically modified, thereby posing untold health and environmental risks. GMOs violate our right to safe, healthy, and nutritious foods produced through environmentally sustainable methods.

Last year, Bayer CropScience, a multinational company that makes agro-chemicals and seeds, applied with the Department of Agriculture to be allowed to import into the country, a genetically modified variety of rice called LLRice62. LLRice62 has been genetically modified to resist heavy doses of herbicide, which means that besides the unnatural gene sequence that has been inserted into the rice plant, it is grown with inordinate amounts of chemicals, more than usual. LLRice62 can potentially cause harmful health effects, especially to us Filipinos who consume rice at least three times a day.

Because of this concern, GREENPEACE, SEARICE and concerned individuals petitioned before a Regional Trial Court in Quezon City to stop the DA-Bureau of Plant Industry to approve Bayer’s importation application. The petition was filed on the basis that the DA’s guidelines on evaluating and approving GMO applications violates the constitutional right of the public to be adequately informed and consulted in government affairs, especially with regard to approving a product that potentially threatens human health and environment. The RTC has issued a preliminary injunction upon the DA-BPI stopping it from taking action on importation of LLRice62 while the court conducts further hearings on the case.

It is ironic that this threat to the Filipino’s staple food rice should take place just prior to WFD 2007 when the theme of right to food takes center stage. We, the Filipino public need to take our right to food seriously, or suffer the consequences. We therefore commemorate WFD 2007 with a “genetically modified” Damocles sword hanging over our heads. There are other ways of producing food that are safe, nutritious and environmentally sustainable, and these are part of organic agriculture.

SEARICE joins farmers, civil society organizations and the rest of the world in celebrating the World Food Day with a Call:
GMOs desecrate life, organic agriculture respects and celebrates life!
Our right to food is our right to life!
Keep our Rice GM-free!


SEARICE @ 30 Anniversary Series
World Food Month Event Schedules

October 10 -17, 2007

Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines - Stand Up for Your Rice: Boholanos Protecting their Rice Heritage, Saying NO to GMO Rice
Venue: Fence Wall fronting Bohol Cultural Center
Event: Mural Painting Contest (BISAD and Young People for Development)

October 14-15, 2007

Quezon City, Philippines – 3rd National Congress of the Pambansang Kilusan ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (PKKK)
Venue: Claret Formation Center, Coliat, Quezon City
Event: 3rd National Congress
• SEARICE exhibit and information drive on GE rice

October 16, 2007

Isulan, Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat - Hinumay Festival 4: Securing Food Safety, Ban LL Rice 62 Safety
Venue: Crystal City, Aujero St., Kalawag 1
Events:
• Open Forum on Right to (Safe) Food – Why GE Rice Impedes Filipino’s Right to Food?
• Cultural expressions: Right to Safe Food, Farmers’ Seed Exchanges

Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines – Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Food: A Right of Every Boholano
Venue: Agriculture Promotions Center Conference Room, 9:00 am -4:00 pm
Event: TECHNO-FORA SERIES
• Organic Home Gardening: Simple Technologies for Households to Produce Safe and Nutritious Organic Food
• Preparing Nutritious Local Organic Foods as Alternative to Commercial Food Product for Home Consumption and Small Food Businesses


October 17, 2007

Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines – Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Food: A Right of Every Boholano
Venue: Agriculture Promotions Center Conference Room, 8:30 am – 12:00 nn
Event: FARMERS AND CONSUMERS POLICY FORUM
Topics:
• Right to Food as Human Right
• Challenges and opportunities to the organic food movement in Bohol towards Food Security and Sufficiency
• GE Rice: Issues and Risks to the Boholano public
• Enhancing consumer awareness and support to organic production

Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines - Stand Up for Your Rice: Boholanos Protecting their Rice Heritage, Saying NO to GMO Rice
Venue: Plaza Rizal, 4:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Event: An Evening of Boholano Cultural Expressions
Activities:
• Photos and IEC exhibits
• “Puso” celebration: Symbolizing Bohol’s rich agricultural heritage and our opposition to GMO Rice
o Display of “longest” line of puso
o Opening ritual: Bohol rice myth interpretive dance, offerings
o Solidarity Dinner with the “Foodless”: Puso and organic viands with marginalized groups (e.g., candle vendors' group); to be served by local personalities (from POs, NGOs, GOs, business, church)
• Video showing (Food/GMO-related issues)
• Cultural Performances
o Tadiyandi
o Balak / balitaw (farmers, local poets' group)
o Children's songs
o Rondalla (farmers, Bullecer family)
o Dances
o Bugjong singing group
o Invited local Bands

Geoengineering: Can 'fertilising' the ocean combat climate change?

Can 'fertilising' the ocean combat climate change?
12 September 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Emma Young
RUSS GEORGE calls it a "voyage of recovery". His opponents call it blatant pollution. Only time will tell who is right.

In May this year, 350 miles north-west of the Galapagos Islands, George's company, Planktos, based in Foster City, California, began the first of six large-scale trials to release more than 50 tonnes of finely ground haematite into the ocean. The company aims to show that fertilisation with iron can safely boost levels of phytoplankton - single-celled photosynthetic organisms responsible for half of the carbon fixation on Earth. More of such plankton, Planktos reasons, means the ability to trap more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which will help combat global warming.

Not everyone is convinced. The Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos Islands calls the project "an unwelcome visitor" and says it is "alarmed... because of the unknown effects it could have on marine life". So is this, and other projects like it, a real environmental fix or an eco-disaster in waiting?

Iron seeding is based on the well-accepted idea that plankton growth in the equatorial Pacific, the Southern Ocean and the north Pacific is restricted by low levels of iron. The concept was first proposed in 1990 by John Martin, then director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California. Since then, 12 international experiments in these waters have shown that adding iron can cause plankton to bloom, increasing the amount of CO2 drawn into the surface of the ocean. By contrast, in sub-tropical ocean regions such as the waters off Australia, nitrogen, rather than iron, is the main brake on plankton growth. Researchers there are experimenting with seeding the ocean with nitrogenous fertiliser.

Now, though, private companies are getting in on the act. They are keen to talk up the benefits. George maintains that iron seeding should be seen as "remediating" the oceans, restoring what some say are falling plankton levels. Ian Jones, head of the Ocean Technology Group at the University of Sydney, Australia, and director of the Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC), intends to release 1000 tonnes of urea off the coast of the Philippines later this year. He says that more plankton will ultimately mean more fish, and fewer hungry people.

Critics argue that talk of ocean remediation or boosting fish stocks is simply window dressing and that these groups are racing not to save the Earth, but to carve out a slice of the booming market in carbon-credit trading. "These are very much business projects, not research projects," says Philip Boyd at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Dunedin. "Planktos, for example, views the ocean as a simple, predictable system that can be readily manipulated. The bottom line of the manipulation is that it's all about carbon offsets and carbon credits."

There are certainly large amounts of money at stake. In February, British entrepreneur Richard Branson launched the $25 million Earth Challenge prize. The award will go to the best scheme for removing at least one billion tones of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, for a decade. A bigger lure, however, is the carbon-offsets market, which allows companies to invest in carbon-reduction schemes to mitigate their own greenhouse-gas emissions. According to World Bank figures released in May, this market virtually doubled in 2006, to $5 billion. Ocean-fertilisation projects are particularly attractive as they could be cheaper than alternative methods, such as renewable energy sources or carbon capture and storage. Urea fertilisation, for example, would cost $10 to $15 per tonne of CO2 sequestered, Jones estimates, whereas George reckons iron seeding could be done for as little as $4 per tonne. By comparison, carbon capture and storage from coal-fired power stations could cost $50 per tonne of CO2.

That assumes, of course, that ocean seeding will work - something that has yet to be shown, according to Boyd. In a review of iron-seeding experiments in February (Science, vol 315, p 612), Boyd and his colleagues found that the amount of carbon drawn into the ocean's surface layer varied widely. One study, which involved adding 1.1 tonnes of iron, found no increase in carbon fixing, but it was conducted in the autumn - possibly too late for plankton to bloom. Another found that 350 kilograms of iron boosted plankton levels sufficiently to fix an extra 1250 tonnes of CO2 - 250 times the average British citizen's annual emissions.

It sounds good, but it's not enough. To lock carbon away for the long term, the plankton has to die of natural causes and sink to the deep ocean, where the carbon may be trapped for hundreds or thousands of years. None of the 12 iron-seeding experiments in Boyd's review showed that adding iron increased the amount of plankton reaching the deep ocean. Part of the problem is that it's very difficult to measure sinking carbon. Recent studies, though, have made some progress.

In April, a team led by Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts published a study that used automated plankton traps to monitor plankton movement in the water column. The team found that in the north-west Pacific, half of surface plankton managed to sink through the "twilight zone" - the layer between the sunlit surface water and the deep ocean. Near Hawaii, on the other hand, 80 per cent of the plankton was gobbled up by zooplankton or other predators during its downward journey. This means its carbon was recycled, a proportion being excreted and respired by the predator, rather than sequestered. What's more, getting through the twilight zone only means that plankton have made it down to about 500 metres. Boyd says that studies of natural plankton blooms suggest that only a fraction of the carbon that makes it this far falls down into the deep ocean. In fact, field research reveals that just a few per cent of each bloom becomes deeply sequestered, he says.

Then there is the question of how long the carbon will stay there if and when it has sunk. Modelling studies by Jorge Sarmiento at Princeton University and colleagues have addressed this issue. They suggest that one century after a month of continuous iron fertilisation of a given area of Pacific waters, the reduction of atmospheric CO2 would be between 2 and 44 per cent of the tiny amount of CO2 that made it to the deep ocean. The rest would be recycled by predators or microbes and potentially re-released to the atmosphere rather than being sequestered. It is practically impossible to confirm the actual figure, and indirect verification would require long-term monitoring of the ocean depths - something that no company is currently proposing.

Undeterred, Planktos commenced the first of six large-scale iron-seeding trials in May, 550 kilometres from the Galapagos archipelago. George estimates that each test site will sequester between 3 million and 5 million tonnes of CO2 per bloom. If all goes to plan, the company will apply for certification with various emissions-reduction programmes, such as the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme or Australia's planned carbon-trading scheme.

In each trial, Planktos will release between 50 and 70 tonnes of haematite over an area 100 kilometres squared and monitor the results for three to four months to assess the amount of carbon sequestered. The team will keep track of the health of the ocean by recording changes in pH, macronutrients, the concentrations of different species in any plankton blooms and any changes to predator populations. They will also measure the precipitation of particles in the water, and the carbon levels below 500 metres, George says, and take water samples at various depths down to 1000 metres. "This will ensure an accurate measure of the quantities of carbon reaching the deep ocean," he says.

Boyd is far from convinced. Demonstrating that iron seeding has increased the amount of plankton reaching the depths requires measurements of sinking particles, not just stationary particles, he says. It also requires the ability to show that those sinking particles came from an area of water that had been fertilised, rather than drifting in from a neighbouring patch of ocean. The technical challenge is immense. "Even with experiments where in some cases we've had multiple research ships with aircraft and helicopters and up to 50 scientists involved," says Boyd, "we have still not been able to show definitively that there had been a carbon increase to a depth of 300 metres, never mind carbon sequestration into the deep ocean."

Boyd and others also take issue with Planktos's claim that it will be "restoring" phytoplankton levels in the ocean to what they once were. George cites a NASA study based on satellite data from the early 1980s and late 1990s that concluded plankton levels declined by 6 per cent over this period. Yet questions have been raised about the quality of the early satellite data. "There is not an established belief that productivity levels are declining," says Dave Siegel of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who uses satellite data to study the ocean.

Despite these concerns, the ONC in Australia is moving ahead with its plans to use urea as an ocean fertiliser. Jones envisages factories making 2000 tonnes of urea per day from natural gas. This would then be dissolved in seawater and pumped through a pipe laid on the seabed at the edge of the continental shelf. Vertical risers attached to the end of the pipe would then release the urea at a depth of 50 metres, from where it would diffuse into the sunlit layer. Each factory could maintain an area of about 20 square kilometres of plankton, at densities of about 200 micrograms per litre, says Jones, which is much less than the density produced in a toxic plankton bloom caused by pollution or nutrient run-off from land.

Taking into account the CO2 created in the production of the urea, Jones estimates that 1 tonne of nitrogen could sequester 12 tonnes of CO2 - so the output of each plant could sequester 8 million tonnes of CO2 each year, at a cost of US$10 to US$15 per tonne. Jones hopes that the company could be taking part in carbon-trading schemes by 2008.

The ONC team is currently working on a number of small test sites, attempting to demonstrate that adding a macronutrient like urea, in some cases in combination with phosphate, really can boost plankton levels. Later this year it plans to conduct its first large-scale field trial, releasing 500 tonnes of dissolved urea off the coast of the Philippines. This will be followed by a trial involving 1000 tonnes of dissolved urea off Malaysia.

Counting carbon

Jones believes urea fertilisation has advantages over iron, in that while some of the added iron probably sinks before it can be used by the plankton, the tight chemical relationship between carbon and nitrogen means that, in theory, every added atom of nitrogen in the ocean will trap and hold seven atoms of carbon, even if deep ocean waters eventually return those bound molecules to the surface.

This, says Jones, helps get around one key criticism of other schemes in which trapped carbon may eventually be released - such as when trees in carbon-sink forests die. Nitrogen added to the oceans will always be available to lock away carbon, he argues.

Jones reckons that satellite images providing an indication of plankton volume would be all they need to work out how much carbon has been sequestered. "We argue that if you create organic carbon, all of that organic carbon is eventually exported to the deep ocean." He says some will be remineralised in surface waters, some will be exchanged back into the atmosphere and some will go up the food chain into fish and be respired. In this way, within a decade or so, Jones says, the vast majority of the carbon will be sequestered.

Boyd, for one, is sceptical. "So where are the peer-reviewed papers showing this? If people are going to have confidence in schemes like this, they have to demonstrate their claims."

For Sallie Chisholm, principal investigator in biological oceanography at MIT, urea fertilisation is a scarier idea than iron seeding. The ocean regions deficient in nitrogen are classed as "desert" regions. "But they are not barren, they are teeming with life - life that is exquisitely adapted to these low-nutrient situations," she says. "Thousands of species depend on this ecosystem. When you fertilise it, you disrupt all that, just as you do when fertiliser runs off the land into streams and causes 'dead zones' in coastal water."

Jones says the urea concentrations will be too low to create dead zones. While he admits that ecosystems will change, he insists this is a price worth paying to boost global fish stocks. For every tonne of reactive nitrogen added to the ocean in the form of urea, he estimates that 5.7 tonnes of phytoplankton will be produced, ultimately leading to roughly an extra tonne of local fish. "We transform the land to provide food for people. This is just like practising agriculture in the sea," he says. Chisholm disagrees. Agriculture on land happens in discrete regions, which are easy to control and monitor. The ocean, she warns, is an entirely different matter.

There are also concerns that fertilising the Southern Ocean could change global patterns of plankton growth, robbing ecosystems elsewhere of nitrogen and phosphorus. Changes in nitrogen and phosphorus levels can be monitored around a fertilisation site, but it is impossible to predict what knock-on effects there might be by extrapolating from studies of small patches, says Chisholm. Contrary to Planktos's claims, she says, the ocean system is just too complicated.

The most alarming possibility of all, perhaps, is that fertilisation might actually produce greenhouse gases. The process of breaking down dead plankton requires oxygen, which must come from surrounding water. If oxygen levels dip too low, the microbial community could shift towards those creatures that produce greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane.

Despite this, some independent scientists think the potential risks have been overplayed. Ken Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, is one. He reckons that large-scale fertilisation would produce one of several scenarios: "One: the ocean will turn greener, atmospheric CO2 will decrease and not much bad will happen, or two: the ocean won't turn green and CO2 won't decrease but nothing much bad will happen - other than companies losing money."

Until some of the nagging questions have been answered, many researchers believe that commercial ocean fertilisation should be discouraged. "Ocean fertilisation is predicated on there being a policy need to reduce greenhouses gases in any way that we can," says Siegel. "I'm not sure we're at that point. And there are many other ways we could do this besides changing the ocean without much knowledge of the consequences."

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Weblinks

Planktos
http://www.planktos.com/
Ocean Nourishment Corporation
http://www.oceannourishment.com/
Ian Jones, University of Sydney
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/people/jones.shtml
Sallie Chisholm's research lab
http://web.mit.edu/chisholm/www/
From issue 2621 of New Scientist magazine, 12 September 2007, page 42-45