Times of India interview - Green Guards laugh at lobbyists
FOCUS ON ASIA
http://www.gmwatch.org/asia.asp

"Whenever we consider a technological advancement, with potentially serious irreversible threats, then we must err on the side of caution. This does not hamper progress but encourages innovation and research for alternatives. The companies are attempting to thrust a completely untested, unreliable technology onto unsuspecting farmers.
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TODAY'S INTERVIEW
Green Guards
Times of India, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2004
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/861383.cms

*Greenpeace carried out an unusual protest in New Delhi recently ”” young activists were laughing loudly at a FICCI conference.

GP: We have a history of lodging creative protests to raise complex issues in a manner that intrigues people. The protest was intended to reveal how this exclusive conference, a thinly-disguised attempt to promote flawed and unpredictable technology like genetic engineering, was attempting to label it as a solution to the current crisis in Indian agriculture.

*Your activists are normally associated with acts of bravery on the high seas.

GP: Our activists have also bravely blocked consignments of grain contaminated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and ensured that unwanted GMOs are kept out of markets where monopolistic corporations hoped to dump them.

*Is not Greenpeace's opposition to GE crops anti-technology, anti-development?

GP: Whenever we consider a technological advancement, with potentially serious irreversible threats, then we must err on the side of caution. This does not hamper progress but encourages innovation and research for alternatives. The companies are attempting to thrust a completely untested, unreliable technology onto unsuspecting farmers.

*But these companies insist that GE technology is a progressive solution to India's agriculture crisis.

GP: At the conference, the only voices to be heard were those of multinational companies promoting GE for their profits, scientists who defend their own research and innovations, and industrial representatives who focus only on bottomlines. These are the same people who introduced chemical-input based agriculture, with much the same motive. Their present ideas can only land our agriculture in a state of further crisis, with devastating environmental impacts, unknown health impacts and farmers impoverished further.

*What is the alternative?

GP: The real alternatives exist not in some remote labs, but in indigenous knowledge. There are examples of farmers successfully adopting integrated pest management or non-pesticides based management of crops. There is no need to succumb to corporate pressure and turn our fields into laboratories for dangerous GE experiments.

*What are your other campaigns in India?

GP: We are campaigning for corporate accountability and elimination of hazardous chemicals and to see that companies substitute them with safer alternatives. Bhopal serves as the most poignant reminder of the havoc caused by chemicals and the community is still paying a high price for development. We are campaigning to clean up the 1,000 Bhopals across India, where the same forces and processes that created the Bhopal disaster, force communities to live in toxic environments.

*What is the progress in the ship-breaking campaign in Alang?

GP: Our campaign against toxic chemicals in our ship-breaking campaign has met with considerable success, and favourable responses from governments and international bodies like the IMO. Some shipping companies have acknowledged our demands that ships must be decontaminated before they are sent to ship-breaking yards. In October 2003, the Supreme Court issued directives, putting the onus of decontaminating ships on their owners, sending out a clear signal to the global shipping industry that they can no longer escape their liabilities.

*Has there been any real change on the ground?

GP: The Gujarat Pollution Control Board directed the Gujarat Maritime Board to remove asbestos and other hazardous waste on board the British ship, "Genova Bridge". For the first time, they acknowledged that hazardous wastes are inherent in ships' structures, and not just in their cargo. Alang is one of the 1,000 Bhopals I mentioned earlier. The main problem of toxics is still looming large. None of the ships arriving are decontaminated, and most do not have the required inventory of toxic materials or valid documents certifying the ship as gas-free for hot works.

*Greenpeace was demanding the closure of a DDT factory in Kerala. Now that the Supreme Court has ordered closure, what are your future plans?

GP: The closure notice issued to the Hindustan Insecticide Limited's DDT factory is a significant victory for the Eloor people and for us. We will continue to expose violations of existing environmental laws; demand that India upholds the various international agreements we are party to (like the Stockholm Convention) and that zero discharge and clean production measures are put in place. Soon we will be launching the solar generation campaign to inspire youth to think beyond energy generated from fossil fuels. In April, members from Europe installed a solar generator to power a Tibetan school in Dharamsala. It will demonstrate that renewable energy is no longer a pipe dream!