La Via Campesina at the CDB: “Keep biodiversity public”

La Via Campesina (LVC), the global peasants movement, have been watching the CBD discussions and in a press release asserted that “instead of protecting biodiversity, the CBD discussions are progressively degenerating to allow rapid privatization and commercialization of biodiversity. The attempt is to take biodiversity out of the hands of the farmers, fishers, indigenous people who nurture and protect it, and let it go into the hands of profiteering corporations who seek to control it for commercial ends.”

The organization warned that “CBD is also discussing risky, untested and undebated technologies such as new kinds of synthetic biology, GM crops and geoengineering.”

The real solution, says La Via, “is to keep biodiversity public, in the hands of farmers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, open for use by all people to develop and use publicly for food production and human survival. It is well known that farmers, fishers and pastoralists have developed and renewed biodiversity over the millennia, their knowledge and expertise is crucial for conserving biodiversity.”

La Via Campesina has called upon the CBD conference to take immediate action and to engage in the following measures:

 

  • 1. To ban the introduction and cultivation of GMO seeds.
  • 2. To phase out the use of chemical pesticides.
  • 3. To shift from the use of synthetic fertilizers to the use of agroecology methods by using more organic matter in the soil and increasing micro-organism population in the soil.
  • 4. To reject the Green Economy proposal of putting a price on nature and its functions.
  • 5. To affirm and maintain the moratorium on terminator technology and the moratorium on geo-engineering.
  • 6. To urgently place a moratorium on synthetic biology.

 

See the full press release of La Via Campesina at http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-

issues-mainmenu-27/biodiversity-and-genetic-resources-mainmenu-37/1308-convention-

on-biological-diversity-farmers-demand-an-end-to-the-commercialization-of-biodiveristy-

gm-seeds-and-synthetic-biology