- Argentina: Carbon Credits for Genetically Modified Soy
- Chile: In Defense of Seeds
- Paraguay: “Responsible” Soy Will Not Give Up
- The Struggle Against Tree Plantations Heats Up
1. Argentina: Carbon Credits for Genetically Modified Soy
Soy monoculture, which has been bly criticized due to its negative impacts on rural communities, biodiversity, and human health, will obtain new legitimacy through the Kyoto Protocol, warns the Rural Reflection Group (GRR, Grupo de Reflexión Rural) of Argentina.
The Protocol, an international agreement to combat climate change that went into effect in 2005, includes a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) through which industrialized countries may acquire permits (carbon credits) that allow them to emit greenhouse gases in exchange for financing endeavors in the global South that supposedly capture or reduce emissions. These endeavors may include agro-industrial monocultures, including soy plantations in South America, according to the GRR in a report published in August.
The GRR reports that at least since 2005 the Argentine government has begun meeting with major soy producers to promote soy monoculture as a qualified activity in the carbon credit trade. As a result the soy industry in the country will be able to profit greatly from the growing “carbon market” and obtain legitimacy as an ally in the fight against global climate change. It is expected that the Argentine delegation to the next climate change summit, to be held this December in Denmark, will lobby hard in favor of the inclusion of monocultures, especially soy, in the CDM.
“Through carbon credits and the recently approved clean development mechanisms, direct seeding chemical agriculture could begin a ‘genetically modified green revolution’ in Africa and other parts of the world where agribusiness has yet to become hegemonic,” the GRR states. “As a result, and against all logic within the climate change discourse, the United Nations is facilitating an unprecedented advancement in the global food and agriculture market while legitimizing overwhelming concentrations of food-based agricultural chains that allow for huge corporate conglomerates.”
Source:
Grupo de Reflexión Rural. “Bonos de carbono: Para la siembra directa y sojización”
http://www.alainet.org/active/32363&lang=es
For more information (in Spanish):
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/Argentina
2. Chile: In Defense of Seeds
 |
| The Plant Breeders’ Rights law would foments the loss of seed varieties and the dependence on foreign companies. Photo: www.webislam.com. |
Several Chilean and international organizations including the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI, Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Rurales e Indígenas), the Association of Organic Agriculturalists of Chiloé (Asociación de Agricultores Orgánicos de Chiloé), CET-SUR, and GRAIN, are launching an opposition campaign against the proposed law for the Plant Breeders’ Rights that the Chilean legislature is currently considering.
The organizations circulating an international petition against the proposed law are denouncing the favoritism for genetically modified agriculture implied in the initiative and the proposed seed patents that are an affront to local farmers’ millennial practice of local agriculturalists of seed saving and sharing.
The petition states that, “The initiative seriously debilitates our food sovereignty, foments the loss of seed varieties, and the dependence on foreign companies that hold the rights of plant breeders and control the marketing, importing, and exporting of seeds, plant cuttings, and fruits.”
“We are defending … the ancestral rights of campesinos to their native seeds and harvests. We are against the deregulation of genetically modified products and in support of organic agriculture … and its healthy products. We reject the privatization of knowledge and our patrimony for the benefit of transnational corporations.”
Source:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/noprivaticenlassemillas
For more information (in Spanish):
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/Chile
3. Paraguay: “Responsible” Soy Will Not Give Up
The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) has been repeatedly denounced by the Soy Kills (La Soja Mata) campaign and numerous rural and civil society organizations as a crude attempt at “green washing” the image of soy monocultures in South America. But the “responsible” soy will not give up. Since May, the Round Table has been formulating criteria for the certification of soy as a “responsible” crop for use as a biofuel in Europe.
The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) took the initiative to investigate just how “responsible” soy really is. The report that came out of CEO’s research exposed the activities of Grupo DAP in Paraguay. The company holds some 30,000 hectares of cultivated land, including soy and corn, in the department of San Pedro. Grupo DAP claims to be a leader in social responsibility and sustainability and in addition, one of the company’s managers is the vice president of the RTRS.
According to CEO, “This article shows how this new labeling scheme supports further soy expansion, wider use of pesticides by small farmers provoking further conflicts within communities, and the displacement of cattle ranching into the Chaco.”
Source:
http://archive.corporateeurope.org/docs/soygreenwash.pdf
For more information (in Spanish):
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/Soja%20Responsable
4. The Struggle Against Tree Plantations Heats Up
 |
| Members of RECOMA and organizations across the globe took part in the actions organized for the International Day Against Tree Monocultures on Sept 21. Photo: www.elpueblosoberano.net. |
Member organizations of the Latin America Network against Tree Plantations (RECOMA, Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de Árboles) met in August in Villa Serrana, Uruguay to analyze the runaway expansion of tree plantations that are used for logging as well as carbon cellulose and biofuel (agro-diesel and ethanol derived from wood) production.
The meeting was attended by activists from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, who exchanged information and shared their experiences in different plantation cases including eucalyptus, pine, African palm, teak, and melina trees.
“This process is becoming more consolidated and is expanding further hand in hand with false solutions to climate change such as agrofuel and the wrongly called “carbon sinks” that are simply new sources of business for transnational companies,” states the RECOMA declaration that resulted from the meeting on August 1. “Communities, movements, and social organizations resisting this uncontrolled advance of monoculture plantations are undergoing persecution, harassment, criminalization, and plundering of their means of living.”
The RECOMA members and other organizations with similar objectives from around the world took part in the International Day Against Tree Monocultures held on September 21. Activities were planned all around the world in opposition to the plantations. In support of the planned activities, well-known activists and researchers from Costa Rica, Uruguay, Germany, and Indonesia, among other countries, have written a declaration calling for an end to tree plantation expansion that was distributed on September 21 by national and international organizations.
“Throughout the world, millions of hectares of productive land are rapidly being converted into green deserts presented under the guise of ‘forests.’ Local communities are displaced to give way to endless rows of identical trees—eucalyptus, pine, oil palm, rubber, jatropha, and other species—that displace most other forms of life from the area. Farmland, which is crucial for the food sovereignty of local communities, is converted to monoculture tree plantations producing raw materials for export. Water resources become depleted and polluted by the plantations while soils become degraded. Human rights violations are rife, ranging from the loss of livelihoods and displacement to repression and even cases of torture and death. While communities suffer as a whole, plantations result in differentiated gender impacts, where women are the most affected.”
The document concludes on an optimistic note, “However, corporate plans are facing increased opposition. In country after country, people are standing up to oppose the expansion of tree plantations and a worldwide movement has been growing over the years, bringing together the numerous local struggles and helping to raise the voices of those who suffer from plantations.”
Sources:
Declaration by the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RECOMA/Declaration.html
World Rainforest Movement “International Declaration: Stop the expansion of monoculture tree plantations!”
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/21_set/2009/declaration.htm
For more information (in Spanish):
