So today is the day that Terminator is expected to come up in the Working Group and expectation and rumour is running high. Over 150 people are wandering around the conference room wearing distinctive white T-shirts which declare that suicide seeds are homicide seeds , there are posters and stickers, flags and placards - the [...]
As buses of delegates arrived this morning for day 2 of COP8 they were met by hundreds of protesting (and dancing) farmers, peasants, Indigenous People’s and NGO’s twirling flags, giving speeches, chanting and rallying against Terminator Technology - many of them organised through Via Campesina - the global movement of peasants. Banners with images of [...]
The Eighth Conference Of the Parties (COP8) to the Convention on Biological Diversity opened today, here in Curitiba Brazil, with an indigenous ceremony to Mother Earth, tupthumping speeches and around 3000 delegates frenetically pacing the corridors jostling and negotiating. Last night, on the eve of the COP, those same 3000 delegates were treated to a [...]
Yesterday the Ban Terminator Campaign announced that over 300 organisations have so far signed up calling for a ban on the sterile seed technology known as Terminator and that Monsanto seemed to be wriggling out of its 1999 pledge to abandon the technology.
Two of us from ETC are in Granada, Spain following the Working Group on 8j – the CBD body that has the mandate to recognize and protect the traditional knowledge, innovation and practices of indigenous peoples. By the end of the week, the Working Group on 8(j) will make recommendations to COP8 (Curitiba, Brazil, March) on the social and economic impacts of Terminator. Here’s a brief round-up of government interventions (just the highlights) in yesterday’s working group.
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