FOCUS ON AFRICA

1.TANZANIA: Involve other stakeholders in GMO plan, government urged
2.Biowatch in appeal bid against hefty Monsanto court costs
3.How US ag policies are devastating Africa

EXCERPTS
"Blind adoption of the technology will bring a lot of problems to farmers as it will lead to dependency, loss of natural biodiversity, promotion of inappropriate farming systems and denial of farmers' right to save, share and choose seeds to plant" (item 1)

The court found that Biowatch had a constitutional right to the information, that access to this information was in the public interest, that Biowatch had been forced to go to court to get the information and that granting such access was a necessary part of the correct administration of the Genetically Modified Act.

"However, instead of applying the general principle in litigation that successful litigants normally have their costs paid, acting Judge Eric Dunn ordered Biowatch SA to pay the costs of Monsanto." (item 2)

"major non-subsidising exporters... face a terrible threat, and are bound to be severely affected by the US farm subsidies. The story is not much different for African exporters. World Bank reports indicate, for example, that cotton exporters in West Africa were already losing US$250 million a year as a direct consequence of the US subsidies. The same gloomy picture is painted for the East African countries which have cotton as one of their main export crops. The US subsidies spell even more disaster for impoverished African cotton-growing countries such as Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali where the crop accounts for more than one third of their export earnings. In those countries, the huge losses caused by American subsidies are equal to about three times the savings made through debt relief under the HIPCs initiative. Here, you have a clear case of a trade policy of a big nation undermining and inhibiting the efforts of a small and poor country to combat rural poverty!" (item 3)
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1.TANZANIA: Involve other stakeholders in GMO plan, government urged
IRIN news, 21 March 2005

DAR ES SALAAM, 21 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - A network of about 40 civil society organisations working with smallholder farmers in Tanzania has cautioned the government against its plans to introduce genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country, saying stakeholders in the agricultural sector must be involved in approving the move.

"GM crops and foods have a potential negative impact on the environment, economy, culture and health," the network said in a statement on Friday.

The network comprises PELUM, an umbrella body for 30 civil society organisations that work with farmers in 14 regions of the country, and then MVIWATA, a network of farmers' groups in 17 regions of the country.

"Even GM [genetically modified] crop-producing countries in the north have been unable to ensure the safety of GM crops," the organisations said.

They said GMOs reduced small-scale farmers into "slaves" for big companies in the rich countries, which have a monopoly of the technology, setting the stage for diminished food production.

"Blind adoption of the technology will bring a lot of problems to farmers as it will lead to dependency, loss of natural biodiversity, promotion of inappropriate farming systems and denial of farmers' right to save, share and choose seeds to plant," the network said.

The network was reacting to a decision by the government to form a team that would look at the feasibility of introducing GMOs in the country and to prepare relevant rules to govern imports.

Another environmental organisation, the National Environmental Management Commission (NEMC) said the threat of GMOs at global and domestic levels were real, particularly the impact on natural biodiversity.

"We may, for example, lose natural strains of maize after bringing in GMO maize seeds," Magnus Ngoile, the NEMC director-general, told IRIN on Monday. "Likewise, GMO animals could wipe out the indigenous species if the imported ones have problems that could lead to disasters."

However, he said because of globalisation, it was impossible to avoid the importation of GMOs, therefore, strong monitoring and control mechanisms must be put in place.

Ngoile said GMO seeds were normally patented and care should be taken to ensure the indigenous strains were not lost; otherwise the country would remain dependent on foreign firms forever.

"We must build up the capacity to control the imported stuff," he said, "and where possible, we can allow the importation of maize flour instead of seeds."
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2.Biowatch in appeal bid against hefty court costs
CAPE TIMES, March 22, 2005
By Melanie Gosling
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=271&fArticleId=2455129

When environmental lobby group Biowatch SA won a court case against the government and international seed company Monsanto over access to information on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the court took the unusual step of ordering Biowatch to pay Monsanto's costs.

Now Biowatch, a non-profit organisation, has applied for leave to appeal against the costs order handed down in the Pretoria High Court last month.

The costs are understood to run into hundreds of thousands of rand. Biowatch maintains that having to foot the bill for a court case it won is contrary to general legal principles.

The organisation went to court because it was unable to get access to information from the Department of Agriculture about GMOs being grown in South Africa.

In a statement yesterday Biowatch said it had acted in the public interest by taking the government to court. The court had found in their favour and ordered the government to make the information available to Biowatch.

This, Biowatch said, would "at last lift the veil of secrecy which has shrouded this industry and enable the public to know how decisions are made about the growing of GM crops in South Africa".

The court found that Biowatch had a constitutional right to the information, that access to this information was in the public interest, that Biowatch had been forced to go to court to get the information and that granting such access was a necessary part of the correct administration of the Genetically Modified Act.

"However, instead of applying the general principle in litigation that successful litigants normally have their costs paid, acting Judge Eric Dunn ordered Biowatch SA to pay the costs of Monsanto.

"His reason was that Biowatch had been too general in its request for some of the information and that this had forced Monsanto to come to court to protect its own interests," Biowatch said.

Biowatch maintains that the costs order was likely to deter future public interest litigation, as even if litigants won, they would be heavily penalised.

It said the costs order would seriously impede the organisation's capacity to analyse and disseminate to the public the very information the court had ordered it must have access to, because the money needed to do so would have to be spent on court costs.
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3.Why globalisation is devastating Africa
By Evarist Kagaruki
http://www.bcstimes.com/btimes/viewnews.php?category=8&newsID=156

OVER the last decade or so, many international conferences have been held aiming to resolve the troubling question of how the poor countries of the Third World could participate on an equal footing with the rich, industrialized countries in a system which views the world as one large market - a system called globalization.

In the continued effort to look for what seems to be an 'impossible' answer to that question, stakeholders in the world economy held an international meeting in Dar es Salaam recently under the auspices of the Helsinki Process Group to discuss ways to confront the threat of globalization.

This was yet another desperate appeal to the rich nations (for their compassion) by some progressive voices crusading for equal governance of globalization. I say 'desperate' because the response from the great economic powers that control and gauge the process of globalization is not likely to be any different from what it has been in the past.

With the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the concomitant death of communism (the ideology that sought to challenge capitalism), the general belief was that an era of peace and prosperity had set in. Peace because democracies are not supposed to wage war on one another; and prosperity, because the spread of free enterprise to the developing world and the former socialist countries would enable the evolution of a global marketplace in which rich and poor nations alike could participate and flourish.

But, the experience of the past decade has shown that the envisioned peaceful and prosperous world is still a mirage. The G-8 rich nations, led by the US - which, for more than half a century, boasted of championing democracy, open markets, social justice, equality and economic cooperation - are not showing they are prepared to uphold democratic values, and live up to the principles of equality at the global level. Indeed they are not willing to share the benefits deriving form the global market equally with the poor countries of the South.

The leadership that the world had expected would come from America to bring the nations (big and small, rich and poor) together, in a 'new world order' is missing; and economic tensions are mounting. President George W Bush, mired as he is in the war against terror that has become the thrust of US foreign policy since September 11, 2001 - and now drawn inward by domestic issues, not least the forth-coming presidential election - has failed to act responsibly in the face of the swelling heap of problems on the international economic scene.

Lack of strong and focused political and economic leadership from Washington (which could have made a difference) has caused the US, Europe and Japan to fail to work out solutions to common problems among themselves. This, in turn, has led to failure of these powers to evolve a unified and coherent plan to deal with the genuine concerns of the developing countries over the impact of globalization on their fledgling and weak economies.

The collective result is a polarized world and a stalled world economy where the main growth industry is finger-pointing and buck-passing.

Because of the unresolved trade conflicts between the US and the EU (Japan appears to be moving agreeably with America on many fundamental economic issues), and since global leadership is seriously lacking, the long-awaited international accord on Agriculture and Market-Access, as well as the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights ( TRIPS) under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is stalled.

The failed agricultural trade negotiations in Doha, Sydney, Seattle, Davos, Cancun (and I don't know where else next!) serves to underline that fact. It is clear proof of the lack of political will on the part of the powerful nations to make the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations a success.

Agriculture, which touches the heart of most Third World economies, has remained elusive at the WTO basically because both for the US and EU, the farm issue is at the centre of politics. The farm lobby in the industrialized countries is so powerful that it would be foolhardy for any politician worth his name to ignore it.

The signing, in May 2002, of a US$180 billion Farm Bill by President Bush simply proves that point. The legislation was aimed at raising US agricultural subsides by up to 80 per cent a year for a period of ten years.

The Bush Administration's move would trigger and perpetuate a cycle of over-production and export dumping, pitching the world's poorest farmers into unfair competition with the most powerful economy in the world. It will indeed have a profound effect on global markets, especially for the developing countries whose economies are fragile.

American agriculture produces far more than the needs of the domestic market. In the case of maize, wheat and cotton, for example, excess production is over 40 per cent. The country, therefore, needs foreign markets onto which to shed the big surplus. What this means in global terms is that major non-subsidising exporters like Argentina, Thailand and Vietnam (in the case of rice) face a terrible threat, and are bound to be severely affected by the US farm subsidies.

The story is not much different for African exporters. World Bank reports indicate, for example, that cotton exporters in West Africa were already losing US$250 million a year as a direct consequence of the US subsidies. The same gloomy picture is painted for the East African countries which have cotton as one of their main export crops.

The US subsidies spell even more disaster for impoverished African cotton-growing countries such as Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali where the crop accounts for more than one third of their export earnings. In those countries, the huge losses caused by American subsidies are equal to about three times the savings made through debt relief under the HIPCs initiative. Here, you have a clear case of a trade policy of a big nation undermining and inhibiting the efforts of a small and poor country to combat rural poverty!

Africa is a continent whose economies are characterized by falling commodity prices, deterioration of the terms of trade, inadequate aid (in the form of grants), scarce foreign direct investment, a debilitating debt burden, a cycle of drought and the HIV/Aids scourge.

If you add to all this the problem of trade barriers and subsidies in the industrialized countries, then surely the impact of globalization on the continent is devastating!