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The UNDP Exploits the Poor and Hungry to Push Genetic Engineering
by Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP)
(July 26, 2001 – CropChoice opinion) -- The Human Development Report 2001, "Making Technologies Work For Human
Development," commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), reads like a PR dossier full of pro-corporate technology propaganda,
gift wrapped in the guise of helping the developing world 'harness the
tremendous potential' of information technology and biotechnology.
The Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP) objects to the
exploitation by the UNDP of the image of the poor and hungry as a public
relations strategy to push biotechnology and the use of genetically
engineered (GE) crops.
"Genetic engineering is unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, of no benefit
socio-economically to small-marginalised farmers and it will not feed the
world", asserts Sarojeni V. Rengam, PAN AP Executive Director.
People in developing countries don't want genetic engineering
The UNDP report ignores the concern and opposition to genetic engineering by
farmers, agricultural workers, consumers groups, and concerned fisherfolk,
scientists, and indigenous people's in both developing and developed
counties.
Kilusang Magbubukid Ng Pilipinas (KMP), the Peasant Movement of the
Philippines, with a membership of 800,000 landless peasants, small farmers,
agricultural workers, fisherfolk, rural youth and peasant women, have been
actively protesting the development of GE rice by the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI) and are against the field-testing of other GE
crops in the country.
Some 800 farmers and other anti-GE advocates from all over Indonesia rallied
on the International Day of Farmer's Struggles Against GMOs on April 17,
2001, in front of Monsanto and the Ministry of Agriculture in Jakarta. The
farmers called for the destruction of Indonesia's first GMO field trial of
Monsanto's Bt cotton and other GE products in the country, no further
releases of Bt cotton seeds by the government, and the eviction of Monsanto
from the country.
Thousands of farmers and other anti-GE advocates participated in the Long
March for Biodiversity, principally against GE rice, which travelled across
Thailand for 11 days during September 2000. Farmers in the Thung Kula
Ronghai area, well known for the cultivation of jasmine rice, said they were
very worried that the introduction of GE crops into the country would have a
serious impact on the poor rural majority.
In 1998 Monsanto and the State Government of Karnataka, India, carried out
experiments in farmer's fields of GE crops without the knowledge of the
majority of farmers. On November 28 thousands of farmers occupied three
fields and burnt the illegal crops. This action marked the beginning of a
campaign of civil disobedience called Operation 'Cremate Monsanto' in
Karnataka and other Indian States.
How can the UNDP not listen to the voices of farmers, agricultural workers
and fisherfolks in the developing world?
The UNDP report also conveniently ignores actions taken against genetic
engineering by some developing world governments. This includes governments
in Asia that have developed or are developing regulations to stop the
importation of GE seeds and foods across their borders. Others have taken
positions on labelling, traceability and producer liability.
The recent ban against the importation of GE food by the Sri Lankan
government has been described as one of the toughest restrictions against GE
food in the world.
What happened to the right to safe food?
The UNDP report asserts that undernourished poor people can not afford to
indulge in the unrealistic notion of health concerns - people need food no
matter what the cost!
Everyone has a right to safe food whether they are from developing or
developed countries. The UNDP has no right to push an unproven and unsafe
technology on the developing world.
Dr. Arpad Pusztai, one of the world's foremost expert's on nutritional
studies with 12 scientific books and close to 300 primary peer-reviewed
scientific papers published, says there has been little scientific study
into the health risks associated with GE foods. He argues the safety testing
of GE foods is inadequate to assess potential harm, that GE foods can carry
unpredictable toxins and that they may increase the risk of allergenic
reactions.
A worst case scenario of what can possibly go wrong with GE food has already
been indicated in the US and Europe in 1999 when a batch of the amino-acid
food supplement L-typtophan manufactured using GE microbes entered the
market. It killed 37 people and permanently crippled some 1,500 others with
a new nervous system disorder-eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS).
Moreover, the UNDP report perpetuates the myth that technological fixes such
as genetic engineering will alleviate poverty and feed the world.
Unfortunately, the solution to world hunger is not so simple.
In many developing countries there is in fact an over supply of food, which
is not readily accessible to the poor - they simply can't afford it. In a
country like India, that fully embraced the 'miracle' of Green Revolution
farming, some 320 million people go hungry when 60 million tonnes of grain
lie idle in grain stockpiles.
The problem of poverty and hunger is not technological in nature, but is
rooted in basic socio-economic and political realities, including inadequate
food distribution, the lack of resources to grow food, the lack of farmers
rights and land rights, and political will.
Genetically Engineered crops offer no benefits to farmers
Contradictory to the UNDP report that farmers may need to use less chemical
inputs, the reality is that the use of herbicide tolerant and insect
resistant crops will create more dependence on expensive chemicals and will
increase the chemical poisoning of our bodies, food and the environment.
In 1996, nearly half of about two million acres of Bt cotton planted in the
United States became heavily infested. Farmers were advised to salvage the
crop with emergency spraying. A legal firm representing 17 of the farmers
claimed Monsanto misrepresented the product.
Biotechnology expert Dr. Charles Benbrook (of the US Northwest Science and
Environmental Policy Centre), in a recent report on Roundup Ready soybeans,
not only reaffirms previous studies that weeds are growing resistant to
Roundup, but that farmers are using considerably more herbicide than farmers
cultivating non-GE varieties. Benbrook's study also found that Roundup Ready
soybeans produce less of a yield (5-10 per cent) than conventional soybeans.
In the article "Transgenic Insecticidal Corn: Beyond Insecticidal Toxicity
to Ecological Complexity," published in the May 2001 edition of the journal
BioScience, it is reported that several studies show that the use of Bt corn
in the United States has not significantly reduced insecticide use or
increased yields.
In India a study by the New Delhi based Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) estimates that farmers' expenses would
increase by as much as nine times if they switched from traditional seeds to
GE cotton seeds. Bt cotton is currently under field trial in India. An
application by Mahyco/ Monsanto for the commercialisation of it's Bt cotton
was recently rejected by the Indian government based on insufficient data as
to the agronomic advantage of the commercialisation of the Bt cotton and
insufficient environmental safety and socio-economic studies.
In Indonesia Monagro/ Monsanto's Bt cotton field trials failed to
out-perform the indigenous variety in all but one of nine districts in South
Sulawesi. The Bt cotton also succumbed to drought and pest infestations.
Indonesian farmers have protested against the Bt cotton and the NGO
Coalition for Biosafety and Food Safety representing 72 NGOs has taken legal
action against a government decree allowing the limited release of the Bt
cotton seed in South Sulawesi.
While herbicide tolerant and insect resistant crops exacerbate the
continuation of the pesticide-treadmill, the genetic engineering industry is
also working on the development of GE seeds that render crops sterile
('terminator technology') and/ or control their growth and development via
chemicals ('traitor technology'). Sterile, chemically dependent crops trap
farmers into an expensive seed and chemical package with no alternatives.
Sterile seeds will deny farmers the right to save seeds for replanting -
crucial for the food security of communities. Approximately 1.4 billion
farmers rely on saved seeds.
Another GE product enthusiastically promoted in the UNDP report, as helping
to alleviate malnutrition, is 'golden rice.' The development of this is far
off in the future with many doubts as to if it really offers any significant
solutions to nutritional problems. Many believe this is simply another PR
strategy by a morally bankrupt genetic engineering industry.
The reality is that the genetic engineering industry has funnelled the vast
majority of its investment into the development and commercialisation of a
limited range of products, which are of little relevance to the needs of the
world's poor and hungry. One hundred per cent of the area planted to GE
crops in 2000 were dominated by herbicide tolerant (73 percent) and insect
resistant crops (22 per cent) or the two traits combined into the one crop
(5 per cent).
"Instead of looking to as yet unproven as well as non-existent biotechnology
breakthroughs, the UNDP should be looking into the many proven examples of
ecological agriculture in developing countries based on pro-people
technologies that work for resource poor communities and not against them,"
maintains Rengam.
It is all too evident that genetic engineering and GE foods and crops serve
the short-term capital interests of a multi-billion dollar industry at the
expense of our health and the environment. Corporations basically have only
a financial motive in developing genetic engineering - to create a new round
of capital accumulation. It is deeply disturbing that the UNDP has become a
conduit for this motive. The needs and wants of the poor and hungry have
been ignored yet again.
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