Call for action at the UN Biodiversity Summit in Bonn, Germany - 16-30th May:

In full it is about the ‘The 4th Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP4) and the 9th Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’. The MOP (12-16 May) is about (the spread of) gene technology and the COP (19-30 May) is about virtually everything else that deals with biological diversity.

Join the protests and other events! As agro multinationals will also use the opportunity for massive lobbying.

Groups from Germany and beyond are actively working on the organisation of various actions and other happenings. The CBD will be used to show the public, media and the present delegations that a different type of agriculture and consumption are necessary to solve food related social and ecological problems. A top on biodiversity is not just about red-listed species. It is also about:
* small farmers losing their land due to the expansion of plantations and monoculture fields;
* the introduction of biodiesel at the expense of local food supply; gene technology and patents on crops, meaning that farmers and local communities lose control over their own food supply;
* nature parks as compensation for our industrial society, which again harms the original inhabitants of the place; and
* the role of multinationals in all this.

(More topics are on the agenda, but you can find a full overview yourself at the CBD website).
Enough reasons for us not to let this international top pass by unnoticed!

Planned activities:
Below you can find an overview of the planned actions in Bonn. But it is most likely that not everything is publicly announced and there will be enough space for spontaneous initiatives.

Saturday morning 17 May: Action against gene technology and patents on crops. This will be exciting, but we can not say much more on this. You can find more on this topic in the latest German newsletter Kaperbrief ;

Sunday 18 May: Agrofuel action day. That large scale cultivation of fuel crops is disastrous for food supply and the position of small farmers is obvious. But the production of it still continues, also during this UN-top. With an action in the streets we will try to reach the population of Bonn, and make them more sensible than the business world and politicians who refuse to talk about a radical reduction of energy use in ‘the West’.

Monday morning 19 May: Opening of COP9, accompanied by a demonstration of Via Campesina and their solidarity friends in front of the entrance to the conference. This must show that until now, similar conferences have not taken account of the interests of small farmers sufficiently
- link to the action call of Via Campesina:
 http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=519&Itemid=37

Monday afternoon 19 May: Presentation of the Captain Hook Award for corporations that managed to get hold of patents in the most scandalous manner, the true bio-pirates! (Only accessible for people with an accreditation to the conference).

Monday evening 19 May: Action to return the looted seeds back to farmers in the South. In the city centre of Bonn.

Friday 23 May: Action against bio-piracy in front of the conference hall. In favour of free accessible knowledge.

28-30 May: Ministers and heads of states will be flown in for the last three days of the top. This is the period during which most important decisions will be taken. Also the moment to bring possibly dangerous and anti-social developments under the attention of the media and the general public. More information will follow later and flexibility will be required.

From 12 till 16 May the alternative NGO congress Planet Diversity will take place. More on this can be found at: www.planet-diversity.org.

Sleeping places and food:
In and about Bonn several places are arranged to spend the night. Although it will be a bit of a puzzle. From Friday evening 16 May till Tuesday morning 20 May some people can put up a tent next to the farm Gut Ostler, next to Bonn. This will be the place where the international delegation of Via Campesina will reside as well. As most people will be expected to come to this weekend, some people can also be accommodated in some houses in Bonn and Koln. During the days before the action weekend it will probably not be any problem to roll out a mattress at a media activist’s house in Bonn.

Information point:
For all updates on activities, sleeping places and follow up on the political games being played inside the conference, you can visit the information point. This is situated in the Oscar Romero-house, Heerstrasse 205. You can reach this house by walking on the right side of track from Bonn Central Station, 800 meters to the North. Check: www.oscar-romero-haus.de.

Biotech.indymedia.org
Preceding and during the Biodiversity conference new announcements, action reports and articles about current affairs at the conference will be posted on: biotech.indymedia.org. Here you an also publish reports, images of actions and relevant articles yourself.

All this is the initiative of Aktionsnetzwerk globale Landwirtschaft, Via Campesina, A SEED Europe, INKOTA, BUKO Kampagne gegen Biopiraterie, Corporate Europe Observatory, Netzwerk freies Wissen, Bonner AK gegen Gentechnologie and several active individuals. Don’t feel hold back to join us. Come to Bonn.

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The following is written by the UK Food Group:
Ref:  http://www.ukfg.org.uk/docs/FoodCrisisUpdate14May2008.pdf


FOOD CRISIS UPDATE
This global food crisis has been a long time in the making. For more than 30 years hunger has been endemic among the poor, especially those living in rural areas. Farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk have been increasingly dispossessed of their livelihoods as well as their land, grazing, fishing grounds and markets; grain stocks have been run down as the globalisation agenda has been imposed by the wealthy.

Governments, including those in the global South, and intergovernmental organisations must now recognize their part in implementing policies that have undermined agricultural productivity and destroyed national food security. The emergency today has its roots in the food crisis of the 1970s when some opportunistic OECD governments, pursuing neoliberal policies, dismantled the international institutional architecture for food and agriculture.

These governments and their institutions adopted short-term political strategies that neglected food and agriculture and set the stage for the current food emergency.

For the view of farmers, see the Press Release by Via Campesina, the International Peasant Movement “Food crisis: we cannot gamble with food!” www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=529&Itemid=1

While there are food riots and extreme hardship among the poor, corporate players are profiting.
·Cargill, the major global grain trader announced increased profits for the first quarter of this year of 86% (See Claire Melamed’s article commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/claire_melamed/2008/04/feasting_on_famine.html);
·Speculators are betting on food price rises (See yesterday’s FT article Speculators accumulate as risks rise for world's poor, by Tony Jackson www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e299bd06-1fbc-11dd-9216-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 );
·International institutions are using this opportunity to press globalisation on the poor – the very same pressures are behind the crisis (See, for example, interview with Peter Mandelson 8 May www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/08/hardtalk/mandelson_08may.ram ); and
·Offers of more of the same (proprietary) technical fixes are pouring out thick and fast from the UN, world Bank, biotech industry and the new philanthro-capitalists despite the warnings from the UN/World Bank IAASTD report that a different approach is necessary (See Change in farming can feed world www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/16/food.biofuels )

There is an intense Civil Society process in Bonn for the next three weeks (in parallel with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meetings on Biosafety (MOP4) and Biodiversity (COP9)) that will express its concerns and offer solutions at the FAO High Level Food Crisis Conference in Rome (3-5 June). These will be followed up during the subsequent High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra (4 – 6 September), the MDG High Level Event on 25 September in New York and at the FAO committee on world food security in Rome in October.
Through the IPC for Food Sovereignty, the CBD Alliance, and the campaign for More and Better aid to agriculture, the UK Food Group is indirectly or directly involved in all these processes.
For the next 3 weeks, Patrick Mulvany will be in Bonn and then Rome for the UN and civil society meetings. Updates will be available online through the websites linked above and on www.ukabc.org.