The Institute of Science in Society
Science Society Sustainability
http://www.i-sis.org.uk
ISIS Press Release 08/08/05
Sustainable World Coming
Independent scientists, economists, politicians, and activists met to
share knowledge and ideas for sustainable food systems as the
industrial model is close to collapse. <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Rhea
Gala reports on the Sustainable World First International Conference
Independent scientists join forces with global civil society
Independent scientists from four continents joined national
politicians and many interested individuals and groups to discuss
strategies for changing agriculture worldwide to a diversity of
locally-based sustainable systems that can provide food sovereignty
and security to all and protect the earth from the ravages of global
warming. This was the occasion of the Sustainable World Global
Initiative's first International Conference, organised by ISIS, which
took place 14-15 July, starting in the UK Parliament in Westminster,
London, to a near-capacity audience that includes people who have
come from Scotland, Wales and Ireland, Belgium, Australia and South
Africa.
The need to move away from large-scale high input industrial
monocultures has long been accepted by many people as being essential
for providing livelihoods to the many millions of small farmers in
the South and the relatively few farmers remaining in the North, who
are also responsible for conserving our plant and animal genetic
diversity that have been decimated by decades of industrial
monocultures. There is now an added sense of urgency as the
industrial model is showing all the signs of failing under global
warming, and water and oil, on which industrial monocultures are
heavily dependent are both rapidly depleting.
Policies that promote food export and contravene human rights in the
South also exacerbate global warming by adding food miles, or worse,
encouraging "food swaps" - shipment of the same food commodities such
as milk and meat - across the globe. World cereal yields from
conventional industrial agriculture have been decreasing for four
years in a row; so it was highly significant that speakers shared
their experience of sustainable agriculture systems from around the
world, which outperform the industrial model in productivity while
restoring autonomy and responsibility to farmers, and result in
greater social participation within the local community.
But what policy and structural changes are needed to implement truly
sustainable food systems?
The big picture
Dr Mae-Wan Ho, director of ISIS and member of the Independent Science
Panel opened the proceedings by introducing the Sustainable World
Global Initiative. She berated governments and political leaders for
their overwhelming commitment to the prevailing neo-liberal economic
model that underlies social inequity, environmental destruction and
global warming and emphasised that there is a wealth of existing
knowledge that can both provide sufficient food for everyone and
ameliorate climate change.
Chairperson Peter Ainsworth MP introduced Alan Simpson MP who
declared that irreverence, heresy, and the breaking of rules were
necessary to raise awareness in the face of deepening water, energy
and food insecurity. He warned that by 2025, 6bn people will suffer
water stress, causing 'water wars'; yet decades of overproduction by
agribusiness is a major cause of water depletion.
He advocated the removal of patenting and intellectual property
rights and, instead, to reinstate the public ownership of useful
technologies that save resources. Woking, an English town with a
population of around 100 000, for example, currently controls and
produces 135% of its energy from renewable sources. Alan warned
strongly against the nuclear option. He said that there are
dissenters in all parties who believe in the return and development
of diverse and sustainable food production and the right of all
countries to meet their own food security needs without external
interference. He spoke in favour of localised sustainable systems
that are connected and informed internationally.
Sue Edwards apologised for Dr Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher's
absence and presented his paper that posed the question 'What does
the word 'sustainable' mean in the context of food for everyone?' It
means that food must be available to the very poorest person now, and
into the indefinite future. There is currently both plenty of food
that is overeaten by some, and plenty of hunger, even where food is
present.
If people were to become the sole inheritors of the Earth, which is
threatened by mass extinctions caused by
capitalization/commercialization of all our resources, then we shall
all be dead, he said. Therefore a more equitable system is urgently
needed that is committed to reducing or at least maintaining
populations at a sustainable level; and at the same time, the
devolution of power back to local communities from which it was
usurped. All people need to have the land to grow the food of their
choice . Tewolde warned against GM crops that represent a further
decrease in diversity and an increase in the privatisation of nature.
Dr Mae-Wan Ho stressed the enormous scope for mitigating global
warming by making our food system sustainable, by halting
deforestation, replanting forests for agroforestry, and harvesting
biogas from agricultural and food wastes that at the same time
conserve nutrients for crops and livestock. She presented a model of
sustainable development - illustrated by a "dream farm" - that
depends on maximizing internal inputs to increase productivity and
hence carbon stocks and sinks, which, she believes, should replace
the dominant model of infinite, unsustainable growth
She showed how the carrying capacity of a piece of land is far from
constant, but depends on the way the land is used. Thus, by
maximising internal input to support diverse productive activities,
it increases the wealth of the local economy and hence the number of
people that can actually be supported .
Michael Meacher MP spoke of the five factors that would force
government to change their policies sooner or probably, much later,
unless we put informed and relentless pressure on them. The factors
are: the dependence of current systems on oil for which demand is
exploding; population movement due to water stress because we have
squandered and polluted our water; the intensity of climate change
that will affect us in many ways, the decrease in biodiversity that
undermines our future, and escalating food miles that will cause
gridlock.
Meacher advised the promotion of low input mixed organic agriculture
that saves ten times the energy of industrial holdings, while
factoring in all the external costs of industrially produced food,
thus exposing the lie in the UK government's 'cheap food' policy. The
development of a sustainable food policy would inform governments
while reminding them of better policies that they pay lip service to
but neglect. A new approach to environmental and social accounting
would highlight problems of overexploitation of people and nature and
offer alternatives that would bring the public on board.
The Common Agricultural Policy
A lively conference dinner was followed by a stimulating discussion
about the Common Agricultural Policy led by Caroline Lucas MEP and
Martin Khor, Director of the Third World Network. It was generally
agreed that the Common Agricultural Policy and the Agreement on
Agriculture at the World Trade Organisation have similar effects on
family farmers in both North and South, but Martin stressed that in
the South, farmers are likely to actually die from losing farming
livelihoods, there being no social welfare payments to fall back on .
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho raised the question of why trade when people's
livelihoods are not assured? Why produce for export before a country
is self-sufficient in food as many Third World countries could be?
Isn't this concentration on trade a case of the tail wagging the dog?
There was general agreement to make policies as fair as possible for
small farmers in the South while working to curb the powers of
transnational agribusiness.
Knowledge-based actions for sustainable food systems
Friday brought a crowded agenda: a host of speakers with interesting
experiences to relate.
Peter Bunyard of the Ecologist magazine gave a telling account of how
the destruction of the Amazon rainforest affects global weather. The
Amazon plays a crucial role in regulating and stabilizing world
climate, which is thrown of balance when vast areas of rainforest are
cleared to produce soya for animal feed, from which Brazil earns $8bn
annually.
The Sahara and Amazon Basins are connected by weather systems that
are the inverse of each other and the circulation is recharged by the
Amazon, which is now failing, turning it into a carbon source instead
of a sink. The oceans are losing the ability to regulate terrestrial
temperature, and that too, will affect climate irreversibly.
Sustainable forest use, which clears only small areas of forest that
can renew themselves over 40 years, also avoids throwing the forest
ecosystem out of balance. Can we return to these ways, perhaps by
compensating Brazil and other countries such as Argentina for lost
revenue, or cancelling their national debt to begin with?
Sue Edwards spoke about sustainable agriculture in Tigray Ethiopia.
She and Tewolde have been working with local communities to build
their knowledge, confidence and independence, in creating local
infrastructures that support food security. They found that compost
applied on crops such as faba bean, finger millet, maize, teff, wheat
and barley, resulted in an increase in yield over chemically
fertilized crops. This occurred from the first season, and also in
subsequent seasons when no compost was added, through soil
improvements by previous composting. Ponds and gullies were made to
conserve water, and grass crops for animal food and thatching proved
very successful. This ecological agriculture adds to local
sustainability through decreasing or eliminating external inputs
particularly fertiliser, and increasing animal, crop and soil
biodiversity, water resources, and social and economic equity.
Erkki Lähde, professor of silviculture from Finland showed how an
industrial forestry model has proved to be counterproductive for over
a century. In this model a forest is clear-cut and a monoculture
replanted, with all economic gain coming at the point of clearance.
But his research shows that natural forest, with many species in a
special "all sizes" distribution, are the most valuable both in
biodiversity and economic terms. Sustainable systems all contain many
species of many young plants with fewer and fewer older individuals.
In the case of trees, standing and fallen dead trees also add to
local biodiversity while the living forest continues to evolve.
Individual trees are selected for cutting in line with a social model
that supports multiple use, more jobs, and which accords with public
opinion and mitigates global warming. This model is diametrically
opposed to the current dominant model that offers low diversity and
the easy technical option of the clear-cut.
Caroline Lucas is concerned that past gains of the EU on
environmental issues could easily be lost due to the pressures of an
enlarged EU. This includes the sliding away of the EU's sustainable
development strategy, and failure to resurrect this strategy at the
centre of a new EU agenda. Industry is pushing for less environmental
regulation and for voluntary agreements only in the new joining
countries .
While the EU was set up to help keep peace in Europe, now it is
simply about trade and being the most competitive economy in the
world. In the recent referenda on the EU Constitution, people voted
against it because they are not served by the EU in meaningful ways,
they feel the EU is remote and self-serving. The EU could have seized
the moment to put sustainable development as the new big idea, with
economic models that protect the environment, regulating
multinationals and advocating protective tariffs for poor countries.
Europeans would have loved it and other countries would have followed
suit.
Hywel Davies MD of Weston A Price Foundation from Switzerland gave an
account of the relationship between early coronary artery disease and
the lack of nutrient dense food in the western diet. Autopsies on
children who died of accidents showed thickening of tissue inside
arterial muscle laminae due to multiplication of cells and large
deposits of calcium phosphate. These, he said, derived from an excess
of vitamin D and other additives present in large quantities in
babies' feeding formula and many common foods. They contain
supplements to compensate for nutrition removed by food processing,
but cause problems that can only be remedied by understanding the
importance of natural nutrients to our health and well being. For
this reason, we must grow the food that meets these requirements.
David Woodward of the New Economics Foundation described a starting
point for addressing the economic inequalities of our current
agricultural or other neo-liberal trade systems. It showed how people
and the planet can be factored into economics, taking a global view
while narrowing the gap between producer and consumer prices. The
effects of the new economics aim to increase the sustainability of
production while reducing environmental damage.
Jakob von Uexkull president of the World Future Council initiative
described how those in power have lost their way, treating people as
consumers but not as citizens. In the face of corruption, inertia and
cowardice we need an alternative voice to get things changed and
implemented in the interests of a sustainable world.
The World Future Council will work closely with national legislators
from all over the world to develop step-by-step reforms and
legislation to overcome the current "implementation gap".
Pietro Perrino director of the former Gene Bank of Bari, Italy, one
of the worlds largest, described a forced merger with much smaller
institutions engaged in genetic modification of crops plants. He told
a disturbing tale of how his large germplasm collection is endangered
by the merger. He suspects that with the rise of DNA libraries and a
research agenda that prioritises GM crops, plant genetic resources
that cannot be patented may be an impediment to corporate control;
but in any case they are not valued. He asks whether this 'problem'
has ocurred at other genebanks around the world, and who should look
after these priceless resources.
Joe Cummins, professor of genetics from Canada said that his country
would be the first where farmers legally lose control of their seed.
Terminator technology provides the ultimate control of seeds
production by multinational corporations. Seed with terminator
technology was developed and owned by Monsanto, but that technology
(which involved preventing the embryo in the seed from growing) faced
worldwide criticism and it was withdrawn by Monsanto. .
Now a new generation of GM crops that are based on control of
morphogenesis have spawned a new crop of patents for multinationals,
those GM constructions employ toxins including diptheria toxin or
even ricin to prevent viable seeds from being formed. The genetic
modifications are very likely to persist and spread to crops in the
wider environment. Whereas sterile seed guarantees sales to
companies; sterile crops have no utility to the farmer, the consumer
or the environment.
Dr. Lilian Joensen from Argentina described how corporations in Latin
America have coopted 'sustainable agriculture' using a façade of
involvement in social programmes. NGOs have collaborated with them,
and propaganda extolling the benefits of free trade have enabled
massive destruction of virgin ecosystems and their conversion to soya
production. Monsanto's Roundup Ready soya is grown on this land, as
well as conventional and certfied organic soya, mainly to feed
livestock in Europe and China.
Soya is the main agricultural source of greenhouse gas. In Paraguay,
peasants are being killed to clear their land for more soya. Latin
American Indgenous and peasant movements are seen as a threat to US
corporate interests. Brazilian Amaggi, the world's main soya
producer, says that small holdings don't have economic viability and
industrial holdings are needed for competition on world markets.
Dr. Julia Wright of the Henry Doubleday Research Association spoke
about Cuba's experience when support from the Soviet Bloc collapsed
in the 1990s and most of its fossil fuel resources were lost. The
resulting non- industrial production promoted self sufficiency, human
scale plantations, ecological techniques, and urban rural migration.
By 2000 yield had doubled, wages trebled and calories increased by
25%!
A policy of non-foreign land ownership and a non-wasteful culture
helped the transition from fossil fuel dependency. Julia explained
that if the government had been committed to organic agriculture, the
gains especially in food quality would have been much greater.
Ingrid Hartman from Humboldt University, Germany, spoke about the
status of soils and their temporal, spatial and social dimensions.
She described how little we know about soil because their cycles of
development can last from millions of years to only a few months. And
that what we destroy in them through pesticide and fertiliser use
causes a deficit of services in the present, but especially in the
future.
Soils have a cultural and historical significance that contribute to
human rights and are vital for our survival, therefore we should
protect them and at least do them the service of making compost to
aid renewal.
Hannu Hyvönen, a freelance journalist from northern Finland showed a
fascinating video illustrating how increasing the fruit species grown
in his locality has countered the genetic erosion caused by fifty
years of industrial agriculture and promoted a resurgence of zeal and
community spirit.
First the old fruit varieties, mostly apple, had to be sought from
near and far before they died out, and grafted to a modern variety.
Local people then participated in selecting the tastiest ones as they
have for centuries, and these were planted from seed in their
thousands for future selection. Old varieties of plum and cherry that
thrive near the Arctic Circle are also being rediscovered and saved.
Lim Li Ching, researcher for the Third World Network, previously with
ISIS, spoke for Elenita Neth Dano who was unable to attend. Lim
described a project for conserving agricultural biodiversity through
participatory plant breeding in the Philippines. In this scheme
schools are conducted within a community near areas of industrial
production to reclaim plant varieties with traits suited to local
needs and conditions.
This farmer-led initiative has trained over 1 148 farmers, given them
control over their crops, restored traditional varieties to the farm,
and increased local awareness of environmental issues. Lim also
described a very successful biodynamic system in Mindanao that treats
the farm as a living organism.
Martin Khor of the Third World Network then congratulated ISIS for
bringing the conference to reality against a tide of mainstream
thought that gives credence only to more competition. As it is
obvious that independent farmers can create and develop as many
viable and interesting farming practices as there are independent
farms, we must at all times stress the services that these farmers
offer to the environment as well as the good food that they produce.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho closed the conference by thanking everyone and quoting
Schwartzenegger, governor of California: "We know the science, we see
the threat, and we know that the time for action is now."
Schwartzenegger set tough targets for reducing California's emissions
of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020,
and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. More than 100 mayors in the
United States have also pledged to decrease greenhouse gas emissions,
despite President George W. Bush's continued refusal to sign up to
the Kyoto Protocol.
All in all, an extremely lively conference with plenty of audience
participation. The breaks were invariably buzzing with activity and
energy.
Thanks to conference sponsors: Fondation pour une Terre Humaine,
Third World Network, Green People, Ecological Society of the
Philippines, International Institute for Sustainable Development,
Alara Organic, Josephine Sikabonyi, Alan Simpson MP, Michael Meacher
MP, Caroline Lucas MEP, Weston A Price Foundation, HDRA organics and
the New Economics Foundation. See list of sponsors of the Sustainable
World Global Initiative here:
http: //www.indsp.org/reg/ISPRegWhoHasSigned.php
Available conference papers and power points can be viewed at:
http://www.indsp.org/ISPSustainableWorld.php
This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldComing.php
_______________________________________________
Biofuel mailing list
Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages):
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/