GMW: Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks/Guardian on Tewold

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GMW: Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks/Guardian on

Tewold

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 25 May 2005 11:37:24 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Guardian on Tewolde

2.Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

 

French speakers may also want to check out the following article, 'Les

refus de visas canadiens s'amoncellent' by Jooneed Khan in La Presse

which points out that as well as obstructing Tewolde, others including

from India and Togo, have been denied a visa.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/article/article_complet.php?path=/actualite\

s/article/24/1,63,0,052005,1043771.php & skip_inter=1

 

By the way, hope it's a joke about John Gummer (second bit in item 1

below) - he's pro-GM!

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1.Eco sounding

John Vidal and Paul Brown

The Guardian, Wednesday May 25, 2005

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1491028,00.html

 

Spoil sport

 

Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher is an extraordinary Ethiopian diplomat,

scientist and politician, who, as de facto environment minister, was

the official spokesman for Africa at the negotiations of the Biosafety

Protocol at the Johannesburg earth summit in 2001. While there, he made a

famous impassioned speech that led most of the world's environment

ministers to reject US plans to grant the World Trade Organisation powers

over international treaties. The Americans were furious, and now their

longtime diplomatic chums, the Canadians, seem to have taken their

revenge. Last month, Tewolde applied for a diplomatic visa to visit

Montreal

to tie up the loose ends of the treaty. He was turned down - he doesn't

know why but is suspicious of the motive. " Refusing an entry visa has

become a neat instrument of

interfering with negotiations to which you are not a party, " Tewolde

says. " But now that I have been prevented from [going] to Montreal, who

knows which ones of you will be prevented next time? "

 

Ruling the Earth

 

Friends of the Earth is looking for a new chairman of the board. As

always, the campaign group is promising little money (around GBP6,000 a

year), far too much work, and stormy times. Eco Sounding's odds: 5-1

Michael Meacher; 7-1 John Gummer; 10-1 Sir Crispin Tickell; 20-1 Tom

Burke;

100-1 Jonathan Porritt; and 500-1 Swampy.

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2.Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

 

Belated Visa for Africa's Top Diplomat leaves UN's Montreal Biosafety

negotiations in suspense

 

http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=506

ETC Group, News Release, May 24, 2005

 

Ottawa - Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher of Ethiopia, Africa's chief

scientist and negotiator for the Cartagena (biosafety) Protocol,

received his Canadian visa late Tuesday evening Ethiopian time. Dr.

Tewolde,

who is scheduled to be in the crop biotech liability negotiations

tomorrow morning, May 25, in Montreal, has his bags packed

and is awaiting a revised plane ticket that - even under ideal

circumstances - could only get him to Montreal in time for the final

day of the

controversial set of UN negotiations (May 27). After extended

discussions over Canada's Victoria Day holiday on Monday, a visa

arrived in

Ethiopia from the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi Tuesday.

 

Dr. Tewolde's delay at the hands of the Canadian government is

particularly troubling because the scientist was a key figure in forcing

industrialized countries and biotech corporations to agree to discuss

liability and redress issues. The unintended spread of genetically

modified

DNA from biotech crops has caused unwanted genetic

contamination in other countries, and is now a major problem for

countries like Canada who are being called on to take responsibility for

contamination. Canada is the world's third largest producer of GM crops,

after the US and Argentina. Not surprisingly, Canada was among the

governments opposed to liability negotiations. The issue became a major

stumbling block to achieving the biosafety protocol in 2000. Only when

Canada and other major biotech countries agreed to Dr. Tewolde's demand

that a special meeting on liability be convened soon after the coming

into

force of the protocol (in late 2003), did governments in developing

countries accept the protocol. That meeting on liability, brokered by

the

Ethiopian scientist, is the one that he will miss two days of this

week.

 

Dr. Tewolde, the Ethiopian government's chief scientist and its

representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological

Diversity

(CBD) requested a visa from Canada on May 5th and only

received it late Tuesday in Addis Ababa. In response to the delay, the

Canadian Government has been flooded with protest phone calls and

letters from around the world - a reaction similar to that provoked in

February when the government tried to promote Terminator technology

(sterile

seeds) at meetings in Bangkok.

 

Dr. Tewolde's case is not unique. Late last year a colleague of his at

the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia, Mr. Dereje

Agonafir, was refused a Canadian visa to participate in a meeting of a

CBD

Expert Group relating to the Biodiversity of Water, Marine and Coastal

Ecosystems. In a telephone conversation earlier today, Dr. Tewolde

suggested that the future of Montreal as host to the Secretariat of

the CBD

should be tied to the Canadian government's ability to provide other

government delegates with visas. Civil society

from developing countries have also been denied visas for this week's

meetings, including Professor Kavulakunpla Ramanna Chowdry and Kaka

Ramakrishna, two farmers from India.

 

For more information: Pat Mooney, ETC Group - Ottawa, Canada phone:

1-613-241-2267 mobile: 1-613-261-0688 etc; Ban Terminator

Campaign - Lucy Sharratt, Ottawa, Canada phone: 1-613-241-2267 mobile:

1-613-222-6214

 

 

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