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Venezuela to prohibit transgenic crops
Join the clearcut campout
What kind of voting system do you want?
Groups oppose SE 2 appeal
Alberta outpacing British Columbia in protecting
environment
Monsanto’s showcase project in Africa
fails
Venezuela to prohibit transgenic
crops
In Caracas on April 21, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced
that the cultivation of genetically modified crops will be prohibited
in his country possibly establishing the most sweeping restrictions
on transgenic crops in the Western
Hemisphere. The statement by President Chavez will lead most immediately
to the
cancellation of a contract that Venezuela had negotiated with the
US-based Monsanto Company. www.venezuelanalysis.com
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Join the clearcut campout
Western Canada Wilderness Committee will host a campout gathering
in the Manning-Skagit Park complex, just beyond Hope, on Saturday,
May 22 and Sunday, May 23 to bring attention
to the Campbell-government-approved clearcut logging of the area’s
spotted owl habitat.
At the moment Ivis Wood Products of Yarrow is clearcutting within
a spotted owl management area in the heart of the park complex.
The northern spotted owl is Canada’s most endangered bird
species with less than 25 pairs remaining. Gathering participants
will be given the chance to join in several competitive events,
according to Wilderness Committee spokesperson, Joe Foy.
“Since BC will be home to the 2010 Winter Olympics we thought
it appropriate to include some sporting events,” explained
Foy. “We’ll be having the first ever race to extinction.
Runners will have to cross the entire huge new clearcut that now
scars the centre of the park complex,” said Foy. “The
winner will get a mini-stump trophy,” he claimed.
Foy says other events will be announced closer to the gathering
date.
“I don’t know what Queen Victoria would think about
our gathering on her birthday, if she were still alive,” said
Foy. “But if I had to explain to her why people would want
to spend a long weekend racing through a clearcut I’d tell
her we are trying to embarrass the BC government so they stop logging
the owl to extinction,” said Foy.As details become available
the Wilderness Committee will post them on its website www.wildernesscommittee.org
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What kind of voting
system do you want?
The Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform wants to hear from British
Columbians. It wants to hear if they share its conviction that local
representation needs to be an important element in the province’s
electoral system. It wants to hear if they agree with it that a
more proportional system would better reflect the basic values of
our province’s population. It wants to hear what kind of choices
they would like to see at the polls. And, it is anxious to hear
what kind of electoral system fellow citizens believe can best express
our common values. The assembly welcomes feedback on these and any
other aspect of the electoral system that British Columbians feel
would contribute to our province’s democratic process. It
looks forward to hearing a full expression of public views at public
hearings to be held across the province during May and June, and
encourages formal submissions through the website or to the assembly
office. www.citizensassembly.bc.ca
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Groups oppose SE 2 appeal
Two BC environmental organizations are going to court to support
a National Energy Board ruling that blocked the construction of
a power plant near Abbotsford. The Society Promoting Environmental
Conservation and the David Suzuki Foundation will jointly oppose
Sumas Energy 2’s appeal on the grounds that the proposed power
plant poses unacceptable environmental and health risks for the
Fraser Valley. Sierra Legal Defence Fund lawyer Tim Howard is representing
the groups. www.spec.bc.ca
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Alberta outpacing British
Columbia in protecting environment
Continued cuts to the beleaguered BC Ministry of Water, Land and
Air Protection are putting the province further and further behind
in protecting the environment and human health, a new report by
West Coast Environmental Law concludes. Released last month in Vancouver,
the report details the extent of recent cuts to the ministry. In
the last three years, nearly 30 percent of full-time equivalent
positions in the ministry have been eliminated. The result? BC now
lags far behind Alberta in key areas of environmental responsibility,
including park protection and enforcement of anti-pollution laws.
Today BC has only 115 conservation officers to oversee compliance
with 20 provincial and federal environmental laws. In Alberta, there
are almost twice as many officers - 220. In Saskatchewan, a province
with less than one million residents, there are 180 conservation
officers. The report also compares staffing at a number of parks
inside and outside BC. In the most egregious case, Alberta employs
75 times more public servants in one park than a similarly sized
park in BC.
"Compared to what's happening in BC, Alberta is a knight in
shining green armor," says former BC conservation officer Barry
Klassen, one of several ex-civil servants interviewed by West Coast.
"The troubling conclusion is that a heck of a lot of valued
public servants have lost their jobs and those remaining face a
back-breaking task in protecting public health and the environment,"
says Chris Rolfe, West Coast Environmental Law's executive director.
"Equally troubling, the government is well down the road of
so-called "results-based regulation." If this stands a
chance of working, it only does so when there are adequate numbers
of public servants to vigorously enforce the rules through rigorous
monitoring and enforcement."
The report quantifies 320 full-time job losses to members of the
BC Government and Service Employees' Union and the Professional
Employees Association. Some of the steepest cuts involve scientific
technical officers, men and women who protect human health through
monitoring polluters. One former scientific technical officer interviewed
for the report said the effect of progressive cuts under both the
Liberals and the NDP, all but spells an end to surprise spot inspections
of polluting
industries. "Most dischargers know that the government doesn't
come around anymore. And if there's not someone keeping the playing
field level, there's no protection," said Al Spidel.
Copies of Please Hold, Someone Will Be With You: A Report on Diminished
Monitoring and Enforcement Capacity in the Ministry of Water, Land
and Air
Protection is available online at: www.wcel.org/wcelpub/2004/14099.pdf
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Monsanto’s showcase
project in Africa fails
A showcase project to develop a genetically modified crop for Africa
has failed.
Three years of field trials have shown that GM sweet potatoes modified
to resist a virus were no less vulnerable than ordinary varieties,
and sometimes their yield was lower, according to the Kenya Agricultural
Research Institute.
Embarrassingly, in Uganda, conventional breeding has produced a
high-yielding variety more quickly and more cheaply.
The GM project has cost Monsanto, the World Bank and the US government
an estimated $6 million over the past decade. It has been held up
worldwide as an example of how GM crops will help revolutionize
farming in Africa. One of the project members, Kenyan biotechnologist
Florence Wambugu toured the world promoting the work.
Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies at the University
of Sussex, UK, says the researchers went wrong by concentrating
on resistance to an American strain of the virus. In any case, the
virus is only a small factor limiting production in Kenya, he says.
"There was too much rhetoric and not enough good research."
Monsanto says it plans to develop further varieties. New Scientist,
Vol 181 No. 2433, February 7, 2004 www.newscientist.com
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