Tag Archives: etc group

by | May 8, 2013 · 12:00 pm

A dream of trees aglow at night

Note: If successful, this would be the world’s first environmental release of a Synthetic Biology (also known as “extreme Genetic Engineering”) organism, setting a disastrous precedent for industry without any regulatory oversight whatsoever.

ETC Group and others have launched a “Kickstopper” project to put the brakes on this dangerous development.  Relatedly, later this month, Global Justice Ecology Project, Earth First!, and the Campaign to STOP GE Trees will be coordinating a major week of protest at the Tree Biotechnology 2013 Conference in Asheville, NC — click here to join us!

-The GJEP Team

By Andrew Pollack, May 7 2013. Source: The New York Times

Antony Evans, left, and Kyle Taylor show E. coli with jellyfish genes. Photo: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Antony Evans, left, and Kyle Taylor show E. coli with jellyfish genes. Photo: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Hoping to give new meaning to the term “natural light,” a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by.

The project, which will use a sophisticated form of genetic engineering called synthetic biology, is attracting attention not only for its audacious goal, but for how it is being carried out.

Rather than being the work of a corporation or an academic laboratory, it will be done by a small group of hobbyist scientists in one of the growing number of communal laboratories springing up around the nation as biotechnology becomes cheap enough to give rise to a do-it-yourself movement.

The project is also being financed in a D.I.Y. sort of way: It has attracted more than $250,000 in pledges from about 4,500 donors in about two weeks on the Web site Kickstarter. Continue reading →

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Commodification of Life, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Synthetic Biology

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by | January 22, 2013 · 2:17 pm

Report: The artificial intelligence of geoengineering

January 22 2013. Source: ETC Group

Photo: ETC Group

Photo: ETC Group

Gaia is complicated. From stratospheric currents to undersea rivers – and from plankton to palm tree emissions and sequestrations – quantifying, qualifying and calibrating planetary systems is at least as challenging as understanding genes or neurons. Despite decades of modeling, we are no more likely to predict next month’s best picnic day than we are to anticipate the proclivities of our DNA or to trace a memory in our cranium. Frustratingly, we have learned to map and manipulate genomes, geographies and memories, but we can’t control the consequences. Continue reading →

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Filed under Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Geoengineering, Green Economy

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by | October 24, 2012 · 12:15 pm

Video: UK and Canada win ‘Dodo’ award for blocking biodiversity talks

Note:  While the Dodo Awards were given out a week ago during the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 11), we think it is important to highlight them, especially considering recent events in Canada involving a scandal that violated an international moratorium on geoengineering experimentation.  You can read more about that catastrophe here.

-The GJEP Team

By Ed King, October 17, 2012.  Source: Responding to Climate Change

Canada and the UK have won the COP11 Dodo award for countries who have done most to obstruct the negotiations in Hyderabad.

Organisers the CBD Alliance said Canada was the “clear leader” for breaking UN rules on geoengineering and refusing to consider the impact of biofuels on food.

On Monday the Guardian revealed a Canadian businessman dumped 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean in July, a technique known as ocean fertilization. The Alliance say this was carried out with the knowledge of the Canadian government.

The UK is accused of blocking attempts in the EU and CBD to develop safeguards for synthetic biology, with the tacit support of the USA, who is not a signatory to the Convention.

Synthetic biology generally refers to the use of computer-assisted biological engineering to design devices and systems that do not exist in nature – and there are concerns that without regulation new organisms could contaminate the environment.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Humor, Oceans

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by | August 7, 2012 · 4:28 pm

Rules lacking for geoengineering projects for global warming

Note: Kudos to the Canadian ETC Group, as described here, one of the strongest and most effective voices against the false solution of geoengineering.

By Francie Diep, Aug 6, 2012. Source: Live Science

Diagram of geoengineering ideas
A diagram of the geoengineering projects people have proposed to combat climate change. The laws surrounding such projects are still uncertain.
CREDIT: Diagram by Kathleen Smith/LLNL


What if someone wanted to deploy a massive project to try to reverse climate change today? Perhaps some researchers wanted to spray sulfur particles into the stratosphere to reflect away some of the sun’s energy, cooling the Earth in an attempt to compensate for global warming. Or perhaps a group wanted to unload some fertilizer into the ocean, so more algae will grow and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their actions may have global consequences, but would such projects have to answer to a global governing body?

Such geoengineering projects — Earth-altering plans to combat global warming — sound pretty futuristic. Indeed, it would be decades before such projects are likely to be deployed, if they ever are, say scientists InnovationNewsDaily contacted. Yet a little bit of the future is already here, as researchers have just started to propose outdoor experiments for technologies that would apply to geoengineering projects. Previously, researchers studied the effects of geoengineering in labs or using computer programs, but now a few groups want to try experiments outside of the lab. Harvard University researchers David Keith and James Anderson recently grabbed headlines for a proposal to put small amounts of sulfur particles into the air, to study how such particles interact with the atmosphere.
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by | June 20, 2012 · 3:30 pm

Earth Audio podcasts: Achim Steiner of UNEP and Pat Mooney of the ETC Group at the Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit

Achim Steiner, head of UNEP defends his model of the Green Economy while ETC Group’s Pat Mooney looks on.

At a panel session at the Peoples’ Summit, Pat Mooney of the Canadian technology watchdog organization ETC Group challenges UN Environment Program Director Achim Steiner’s concept of the green economy. Mooney says the model would hand control of the world’s biomass over to the same corporations and financial institutions responsible for the current ecological and financial chaos. June 16, 2012.

click here to listen/download

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Filed under Earth Audio podcasts / MP3s, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Rio+20

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by | June 18, 2012 · 2:00 pm

Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit: Grassroots groups confront the mastermind of the green economy

By Christy Rodgers for Climate Connections

18 June 2012 – Rio de Janeiro. The Peoples’ Summit opened this weekend with what is likely to be the highest level UN visit all week: by Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program (UNEP). Steiner is perhaps the single person most responsible for the “green economy” model being touted as the best path to global sustainability. He was invited to speak – or rather listen – to the concerns of a broad array of social movement organizations that have been highly critical of this market-dependent strategy and what it means for the world’s people and ecosystems.

The mainstream US press, when it pays any attention at all to the official UN “Earth Summit,” seems to fret mostly about bureaucracy and obstructionism by poor countries. The concerns of hundreds, if not thousands of organizations and networks of peasant farmers, trade union workers, corporate watchdogs, indigenous peoples, and many other groups worldwide are quite different. They see the main problem is that the UN, like many member states, appears to have been functionally captured by the private sector. In the lead-up to the summit, major corporations positioning themselves to benefit from the market mechanisms being promoted have launched a greenwashing onslaught beyond anything the movement groups have seen before—which is considerable.
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Filed under Greenwashing, Rio+20, The Greed Economy and the Future of Forests

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by | December 15, 2011 · 12:30 pm

Who Will Control the Green Economy? New report on Corporate Concentration in the Life Industries

www.etcgroup.org

From the UN Rio+20 preparatory meetings in New York, ETC Group today launches Who Will Control the Green Economy? The 60-page report connects the dots between the climate and oil crises, new technologies and corporate power. The report warns that the world’s largest companies are riding the coattails of the “Green Economy” while gearing up for their boldest coup to-date – not just by making strategic acquisitions and tapping new markets, but also by penetrating new industrial sectors.

DuPont, for example, already the world’s second largest seed company and sixth largest company in both pesticides and chemicals, is now a powerhouse in plant-based materials, energy and food ingredients. DuPont’s business plan is not unique. Other major players in seeds, pesticides, chemicals and food – including Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Unilever – are also making strategic investments in risky technologies and forming R&D collaborations in hopes of turning plant biomass into all kinds of high value products – and profit.

Since the turn of the millennium, the vision of a bio-based economy has been taking shape; with its promise to solve the problems of Peak Oil and climate change and to usher in an era of sustainable development, it quickly acquired a patina of ‘green.’ New technologies, primarily synthetic biology or extreme genetic engineering, enabled by advanced bioinformatics and genomics, are the bioeconomy’s engine while agricultural feedstock is its fuel.

While seductive, the new green techno-fixes are dangerous because they will spur even greater convergence and concentration of corporate power and unleash privately owned technologies into communities that have not been consulted about – or prepared for – their impacts. If the “Green Economy” is imposed without full intergovernmental debate and extensive involvement from peoples’ organizations and civil society, the Earth Summit to take place in Rio de Janeiro 20-22 June 2012 risks becoming the biggest Earth Grab in more than 500 years.

ETC Group’s Kathy Jo Wetter explains: “The goal is not to reject the green economy or technologies, but these are tools that must be guided by strong social policies.  Agenda 21 called for technology assessment back in 1992 and the need for such a precautionary tool, that includes strict oversight of corporate concentration, is now more urgent than ever before.”

Alberto Gomez, of La Via Campesina, adds: “Corporate control over our food system threatens peasant farmers around the world.  We already produce 70% of the world’s food, but our ability to do so in an agro-ecological way is being undermined by the kind of corporate control this report documents.”

Who Will Control the Green Economy? will be launched at the Rio+20 Intersessional meeting taking place in New York on December 15-16.  Kathy Jo Wetter, one of the report’s researchers, will present the findings on Thursday, 15 December 2012, at 7 pm at a side-event on Agriculture at Rio+20, in Conference Room 6, North Lawn Building at the UN Headquarters.  Alberto Gomez will also speak at this event.

Who will control the Green Economy? is available in English (http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5296), Spanish (http://www.etcgroup.org/es/node/5298) and will soon be available in French.

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Durban/COP-17, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Land Grabs, Politics, UNFCCC

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by | October 28, 2011 · 10:33 am

FALSE CLIMATE SOLUTIONS EXPOSED

Earth Grab

Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes

Diana Bronson, Hope Shand, Jim Thomas, Kathy Jo Wetter

Preparations for the Rio+20 meeting that could decide whether humans survive or not are hotting up. 1 November 2011 is the deadline for official contributions to its Zero Draft document but over the next seven months decision-makers and campaigners will need all the facts they can lay their hands on.

‘Earth Grab - Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes‘ - essential, cutting-edge climate science in everyday language – is published this week (27 October 2011). The authors reveal information that the large corporations who profit from climate change do not want the public to know.

‘Earth Grab’  analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering ‘quick fixes’. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a ‘greener’ economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy.

The authors expose some truths behind the exploitation of biomass, which is far from the solution to environmental problems that many have claimed it to be. A biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The book shows how the worlds largest agribusiness companies are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be ‘climate-ready crops’. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world – something peasant farmers already know how to manage – these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. They are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the corporate shareholders’ profits.

Eminent environmentalist Vandana Shiva, founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, writes in her foreword that this research ‘pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead’.

The book has already captured the attention of writer Naomi Klein, who writes that this ‘crucial book reveals … Indispensable research for those with their eyes wide open’. Campaigner George Monbiot adds that its exploration of  ’three crucial issues which will come to dominate environmental and human rights debates in the coming years make it an essential resource for anyone trying to keep up with the times’.

‘Earth Grab - Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes‘ is written by ETC Group, renowned for its research into biotechnologies, plant genetics and biological diversity, and for its analysis of the consequences of new technolgies for corporations and humans.

Published by Pambazuka Press, it is available from www.pambazukapress.org and all good bookshops.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Geoengineering, Green Economy, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20

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by | September 30, 2011 · 12:26 pm

Victory: “Hold Your Hoses!” – Kink in UK’s ‘Trojan Hose’ geoengineering experiment, as European Parliament signals its opposition to planet-tinkering

 

Note: From our allies at the ETC Group:
Every so often we get some good news friends — but obviously the fight on this one is not over yet.  However, we have reliable information that the test has been postponed and every reason to think our actions had alot to do with it.  Thank you everyone for your involvement and support.

 

Cheers,

 

Diana Bronson, ETC Group

 

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5286

“Hold Your Hoses!” – Kink in UK’s ‘Trojan Hose’ geoengineering experiment, as European Parliament signals its opposition to planet-tinkering

Opponents of proposals to “geoengineer” the planet have two reasons to celebrate this week.

Firstly, ETC Group has learned that UK scientists, in the midst of controversy, are on the cusp of postponing an imminent test of an experimental hose (dubbed the “Trojan Hose” by opponents) designed to deliver sulphur dioxide to the stratosphere as a way to engineer a cooler planet. The test had been scheduled for October; on Monday, 60 groups from around the globe sent an open letter to the UK government and the research councils involved expressing their opposition to the experiment. No public announcement of the decision has been made and details must be clarified, but an undeniable lack of prior stakeholder engagement is the likely reason for the delay.

Secondly, the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday adopted a resolution expressing “opposition to proposals for large scale geoengineering” – the first time the European legislature has commented on the matter. The resolution aims at developing a common EU position ahead of next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The resolution also called for the establishment of “capacity within the UN system to monitor, evaluate and provide information about new technologies.” The Parliament’s call echoes recent calls from civil society, which stress the crucial need for strong participation in technology evaluation from social movements and civil society, especially those people potentially affected.

ETC Group, which spearheaded the international campaign against the ‘Trojan Hose’ test, cautiously welcomed the decision. ETC Group’s Diana Bronson warns, “We are glad to see the geoengineers coming off their high hoses, recognizing that genuine consultation is needed. However, we must be clear about what constitutes stakeholder engagement when it comes to re-jigging the planet: All people and all governments have a stake in this decision, and the only legitimate forum for decision-making is the United Nations.”

Commenting on the European Parliament resolution, ETC Group’s Executive Director Pat Mooney, added, “We are pleased that Members of the European Parliament have put geoengineering forward as an issue for the Rio+20 Summit to take on. No geoengineering experiments should go ahead before a global debate takes place.”

Note to editors: The statement on geoengineering in the European Parliament resolution of 29 September 2011 on developing a common EU position ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) is found in paragraph 90; the statement on building capacity within the UN for technology evaluation is in paragraph 93. The resolution is available here:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=//EP//TEXT+TA+20110929+TOC+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN


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by | October 25, 2010 · 9:32 am

Surge in Corporate Patents on “Climate-Ready” Crops Threatens Biodiversity and Signals Grab on Land and Biomass

From the ETC Group

Nagoya, Japan –25 October 2010–Under the guise of developing “climate-ready” crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are filing hundreds of sweeping, multi-genome patents in a bid to control the world’s plant biomass, according to a report released by ETC Group today.

A handful of multinational corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in history, warns the group at the United Nations’ Convention on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan (18-29 October 2010).

“The Gene Giants are stockpiling patents that threaten to put a choke-hold on the world’s biomass and our future food supply,” warns Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. “The breadth of many patent claims on climate ready crop genes is staggering. In many cases, a single patent or patent application claims ownership of engineered gene sequences that could be deployed in virtually all major crops – as well as the processed food and feed products derived from them,” explains Ribeiro.

ETC Group identifies over 262 patent families, subsuming 1663 patent documents published worldwide (both applications and issued patents) that make specific claims on environmental stress tolerance in plants (such as drought, heat, flood, cold, salt tolerance). DuPont, Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and their biotech partners account for three-quarters (77%) of the patent families identified. Just three companies – DuPont, BASF, Monsanto – account for over two-thirds of the total. Public sector researchers hold only 10%.

“In a desperate bid for moral legitimacy and to try to ease public acceptance of genetically modified crops, the Gene Giants have donated a few proprietary crop genes to poor farmers in Africa,” explains Ribeiro.

“The quid pro quo is that South governments must facilitate market access for genetically modified crops and embrace biotech-friendly patent laws. It’s an unacceptable trade-off.  In exchange for untested technologies, South governments are being pressured to surrender national sovereignty over intellectual property, biomass, and food,” she warned.

“These patents are the latest form of biopiracy,” notes Vandana Shiva, Director of India’s Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. “Farmers have bred seeds for drought, flood and salt tolerance over millennia. Climate resilience ultimately depends on farmers’ innovation, biodiversity and agro-ecological processes staying in the hands of farming communities,” said Shiva.

“Governments meeting at the UN Biodiversity Convention in Nagoya, Japan must put a stop to the patent grab, yet another false solution to climate change. They should instruct their patent offices to reject or rescind all of these patents,” said ETC Group’s Neth Daño, who is attending the meeting. “A fundamental review of all intellectual property claims in agriculture should be jointly undertaken by the CBD and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These patents also clearly violate the FAO Seed Treaty and its governing body must investigate and take action.”

ETC Group’s report Gene Giants Stockpile Patents on “Climate-Ready” Crops in Bid to Become Biomassters

was released at a side event in Nagoya, Japan on 25 October.

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