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EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy

Almost everything wrong with biodiversity conservation comes down to the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The EU Biodiversity Strategy is reflected in the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), which is the privatizing of life on the planet and the individual genes inside every living organism. This is the very heart of the reason why biodiversity continues to decline all over the world, an issue closely tied to climate change.

The Rush for Ex-Situ Storage, Classification and Gene-Mining

The EU has invested huge amounts of money and political capital into squirreling away all of the worlds genetic resources into storage in places like the Global Seed Vault at Svalbard. Not only are these seeds no longer available in a practical sense anymore, but this has come at the cost of destroying most other conservation efforts.

With seeds coming out of the seed vault in Svalbard being for sale, this has created a very strong business model for destroying other seed collections around the world. For example taking over the US based Seed Savers Exchange, or the bombing of the Iraq seed bank during the Golf Wars, in an apparent effort to leave Iraqi farmers dependent on other seed sources.

Initiatives like the Open Source Seed Initiative and new rules for organic certification have left the genetic conservation movements in the US and Europe in total disarray. They have imposed genetic tests and written contracts where there were none before, and created distrust between almost all parties.

If you’re going to sell biodiversity, you work with a mentality that says everything has to be identified, documented, traced and owned. If some part of it is to be sold, this has to be quantified, and the buying party needs to be able to negotiate the price and have the opportunity to choose a cheaper alternative. This is completely at odds with how conservation efforts have traditionally taken place.

This mentality creates a ‘rush’ for the magic gene that everyone wants and is willing to pay for, which has nothing to do with conservation of biodiversity. This generates a huge and unmanageable administration, and lack of clarity as to how genetic material can be traded or sold.

This way of thinking is everything the seed saving and biodiversity conservation movements stands against. Traditionally the movement of seeds has followed the movement of people around the globe. People took seeds with them when they traveled, and farmers around the globe traded seeds with one another. The CBD effectively strips the right of people and farmers to spread biodiversity in this way, leaves everyone dependent on official and documented sources of seeds, that can only be moved across borders with permission and for a cost.

Failing Genebank Maintenance and Reproduction

The cost of maintaining a genebank is very high. There are many cases in history where decisions have been made to allow genebank materials to die. This was because it was too costly to maintain, the material did not represent a profitable investment and because the material could still be used for research and a source of genes for genetic engineering. For example the IRRI has allowed many of it’s rice accessions to die. Another example is the small number of bean accessions in genebanks worldwide, because in the 1970s beans were determined to not be profitable enough to maintain so many varieties, so a large number of stored varieties were destroyed to save money.

Even though the seed vault in Svalbard has been presented to the world as a safe place for our world’s biodiversity, there are signs some of the material is dying, and it’s probably a logical conclusion that this was planned from the very beginning.

There are recent reports from users of genebank materials that they are not being reproduced correctly. Very cheap and low quality methods are being used to propagate samples, that are not true reproductions of the original materials. In addition, since the materials are not being maintained in their natural environments, they are not being kept up to date for diseases and changes in climate.

Many of these problems had been avoided in the past with many independent genebanks maintaining duplicated materials. If independent genebanks have different conservation methods, the chances of important materials being lost to a single failure is much less.

Undemocratic Playground for the World’s Wealthy Families

The names of wealthy American families appear all over issues of biodiversity. Rockefeller, Goldman-Sax, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, just to name a few. In Europe members of royal families are often involved in biodiversity issues.

Many of these wealthy families and individuals put themselves in the media spotlight, for example with pictures taken with attractive and genetically diverse melons, and other fruits and vegetables. The Bill and Melinda foundation isn’t shy with their gene drive technologies, abusing their relationship with the CBD, and trying to push through approval for environmental deployment of this.

Not just the big names, but the presence of money is undeniable. Well funded university programs, well known and funded charities like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are heavily involved. Well funded lobby organizations are active in Brussels and elsewhere. All of these organizations represent their big donors, and are completely unresponsive to civil society. There is virtually no civil society representation when CBD issues are dealt with.

Fake News and Misleading Claims

Almost everything in the current EU biodiversity strategy is based on either fake news or misleading assertions that somehow privatization is going to solve problems that it can’t. For example, even though we live in a world that produces twice as many calories as it needs to feed itself, there’s the suggestion that we need to grow ever more increasing amounts of food, because not only is the world’s population increasing but it’s demanding more meat. More recently, the suggestion that because people are more healthy and sometimes overweight, more calories will be needed to provide healthy diets for them.

There is also the suggestion that somehow creating a seed vault like the one created by the Global Crop Diversity Trust in Svalbard, privately owned, is somehow a benefit to mankind. This is a business venture, designed to make the world dependent on the genes owned by the Crop Diversity Trust, and has nothing to do with biodiversity.

Before this vault was created, the sharing of biodiversity worked on the principle that biodiversity was a commons. The maintenance of collections had to be paid for by the agricultural companies that profited from it and with public funds, but everyone had access to the materials because it was a public commons. This wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was something everyone could agree on and generally worked. It only became a problem when those behind the current EU Biodiversity strategy decided it was a problem, and saw the opportunity for a more profitable arrangement.

There are many more claims like these. There is simply no good science behind any of them. They are simply fake news with a lot of money behind them to promote them.

Patents on Life

The CBD makes patents on life possible. An unintended consequence of this are patents on conventionally bred seeds. According to the supporters of the CBD, patents on conventional seeds are the only problem, but this is not true.

The EU implementation on patents covering life is very undemocratic and causes problems for everything from medicine to agriculture. By design it’s ‘immune to political interference’, with the EU patent office even existing outside the physical control of the EU.

There needs to be an end to all patents on all forms of life, not just for conventionally bred seeds. The issue of patents and the systems behind them need to be addressed in a more democratic way.

Protocols Behind the CBD

Beyond the treaty itself there are also some very important protocols, the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols.

The Cartagena protocol deals with biosafety and for example the release of microorganisms into the environment. This has been in the news recently because the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is basically using this protocol to justify the public acceptance of it’s gene drive technology. Obviously the world needs something to regulate this sort of thing, but it needs to be done in a more democratic way and not just to push through and justify public acceptance of unwanted technologies.

The Nagoya protocol deals with the transfer and sale of genetic material. This protocol is currently causing a crisis in everything from agricultural biodiversity to natural science museum collections to health care and vaccine research. It creates a system to transfer genetic material that’s so complicated that not even experienced lawyers can sort out the contracts. Violating this protocol is potentially a crime punishable by incarceration, and the solution for these problems as presented by the backers of this protocol is to trick people into signing a contract promising to share the materials with others regardless of the consequences. This protocol is currently the biggest threat to biodiversity.

Biodiversity Movement Restrictions

While most common plant seeds represent very little disease threat, there are restrictions on the movement of all plant material in the process of being imposed internationally. These restrictions require unreasonable administration, and effectively prohibit the international transfer of plant materials for people and small businesses.

These restrictions have the mentality that a disease exists independently, is bad, and must be identified then quarantined or destroyed with chemicals. This mentality is only compatible with conventional industrial agriculture and will wreak havoc with initiatives relating to organic agriculture or biodiversity.

Interestingly, there is one major exception. Travelers can carry anything in hand baggage. This exception makes a mockery of the whole meaning of these restrictions.

These measures effectively prevent gardeners and others working with biodiversity from ordering any materials online or trading over the Internet. This is critical to be able to do in the modern world, and in order to work with biodiversity.

Our House is on Fire!

The EU biodiversity strategy and the Convention on Biological Diversity have nice names, but are directly responsibility for destroying a great deal of the world’s biodiversity. As a matter of urgency, major changes are needed. There are a lot of people currently working hard on these issue with good intentions, but major structural changes and a general change of direction are needed.

It’s time for politicians to take the matter as seriously as climate change. It’s time to stop denying the battle to save biodiversity is being quickly lost, and that a different approach is badly needed.

The EU should abandon the CBD, with the possible exception of provisions prohibiting the release of potentially dangerous organisms into the environment (i.e. Cartagena protocol), but then this has to be made more democratic.

The pretense that in order to save biodiversity you have to privatize and monetize it is seriously flawed, and has caused serious damage to existing conservation networks around the world.

Major investment into biodiversity is needed, but not to squirrel it away into centralized collections with conditions for use that make it inaccessible to most people. Before any investment can make an impact on biodiversity conservation, the basic principles of the CBD must first be abandoned.

Compensation should be made available for those whose work has been disrupted or destroyed by EU Biodiversity policy.

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The Netherlands as a River Delta

The Netherlands Goes Brackish

This is a poor translation of the title of a symposium I attended in Leeuwarden in The Netherlands. The real title in Dutch ‘Nederland Verbrakt’ is a play on words and has two meanings. Verbrakt can mean break, but can also mean brackish as in water. If you understand Dutch or want to try your hand with Google Translate, the symposium website is here.

The definition of a river delta is where a river flows into an estuary where salt and fresh water mix, then out to sea. In reality the situation is not normally so straight-forward, as rivers normally have forks or flow together. A river delta is normally therefore considered as the collective area where related rivers flow to sea.

The Netherlands has a number of related rivers flowing through it, including the Meuse, Rhine, Waal, Scheldt, IJssel and others. At one point the Emse flows out in the northeast of the country along the German border, and the confluence of the Scheldt, Rhine and Meuse flows out in the southwest along the Belgian border. Water is also pumped out from the IJssel river via the IJssel lake, through the afsluitdijk, in the middle of the country. Historically water flowed through the country in almost all directions. This means technically the entire Netherlands is a single river delta system.

The Netherlands has a long history of floods. In addition, as a river delta it’s also one of the most fertile areas in the world for agriculture, and this agriculture has been expanded by the reclaiming of land from the sea. Land reclamation and flood defenses means the country has been nearly completely enclosed in dikes, and a system of canals ensure excess water is drained from the land and pumped out to sea. This is the so-called water management that the Netherlands is very well known for.

The country has paid a very high price for this water management. The water management along with ground water consumption is causing the country to sink, together with rising sea levels this means higher dikes are needed and more surface water needs to be drained and pumped to sea, which in turns makes the country sink even more. Because the coastline is protected by dikes, the inland water has become ‘sweet’ or free from salt and reduced or eliminated storm surges. This has caused massive changes in ecosystems, generally causing them to become seriously degraded.

Historically many dikes were built and land reclaimed in very random ways, without a lot of thought to what they were doing. In some cases it was done for nationalistic reasons, with one group of people trying to punish another. Nearly everyone accepts there’s no going back to the way things were before water management. In recent times however there have been efforts to fix some of the worst mistakes, modernize water management, making it as environmentally friendly and as sustainable as possible.

For example in recent decades they have been reflooding reclaimed land that was too far below sea level, and thus requiring too many resources to maintain.

In the latest phase of modernizing water management, many areas are going brackish. Others are changing with more of an environmental focus.

North Coast

Along the north coast of the country they are rebuilding the large dike called the afsluitdijk. Sea level rises mean the dike has to be built higher. At the same time they are changing the design, including the addition of a fish migration river. In the future they will try to let water drain more often by opening the dike, rather than mostly pumping like they do now. They will also open the dike to let in sea water when they can.

Holwerd aan Zee

In the village of Holwerd, they are transitioning to ‘Holwerd aan Zee’. They are creating a breach in the nearby dike, and letting sea water flow in. With this they intend to create an estuary and a new nature area.

In the Lauwersmeer, which I wrote about before, there are plans to first develop the local economy, but also necessarily enhance the nature of the area. As part of enhancing the nature, they also plan to allow salt water to enter through the dike. It remains to be seen how long this takes or if it really happens, but this would be a very good thing, and a very long time coming.

Southern Delta Area

In Grevelingen and Haringvliet (two areas of this part of the delta), which have been closed with dikes, they are already letting in sea water from time to time, and also taking other steps to enhance the nature there.

River Deltas in Crisis

Many river deltas around the world are in crisis. For example the Mississippi river delta near New Orleans and the Mekong delta in Vietnam. The situation the The Netherlands is not terribly different from these areas. Letting salt water into parts of the country will help some, but a lot more is going to need to be done in the long run.

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Changes Underway with Dutch Farming

There have been some announcements over the last few months regarding changes to Dutch agriculture. These are not only important to people living in the Netherlands, but all over the world, since The Netherlands is the second largest agricultural exporter by value in the world, after the United States.

The goals of these changes have partly been to transition for agriculture based on as high production as possible, to more sustainable methods with fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less impact on the environment. The need to increase farmers’ income is also being addressed.

The politics of these types of changes is they often start in The Netherlands, then get adapted into EU legislation. After this, they often require countries exporting to the EU to comply with the same regulations, so the changes propagate around the world via EU trade agreements. On the surface these changes seem very positive, so this might be a very good thing.

Environmental Changes

Money is being made available to farmers who work in sensitive areas to take care of their own environments. Money is also being made available to experiment with more sustainable methods. In addition, the number of pigs in the country is being reduced.

More Money for Farmers

Of course the emphasis on farmers earning more money is being placed on consumers being willing to pay more. This is of course true, but there are many other aspects. In addition to possible higher prices for consumers:

  • There should be reasonable direct subsidies available to farmers paid for by higher taxes on wealthy individuals.
  • Subsidies for wealthier farmers should be capped.
  • There should be fewer taxes on the consumer.
  • Farmers should have complete sovereignty over their seeds. They should have no administrative burden. They should be free to choose any seeds they want. Unless they purchase commercial seeds and come to an agreement with the breeder or seller, there should be no royalty payments or restriction on their use, including saving, breeding and regrowing the seed.
  • Farmers should be free from unreasonable regulations and inspections.
  • Farmers should provide more quality, artisan made products, with a high regard for nature and biodiversity.
  • There should be more opportunities for the consumer to purchase directly from the farmer, or through less formal channels like street markets.
  • There should be more emphasis on local, regional and seasonal products.

If we have these things, I think many consumers would consider paying more for what they buy.

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Gene Drives

I think it almost went unnoticed, but a few weeks ago a decision was sort of made on gene drives. A gene drive means the releasing of a genetically modified organism into the environment with the intention of these genes spreading through the entire population. At issue are tests in an effort to introduce a fatal gene into wild populations of mosquitoes that carry malaria.

While it sounds wonderful, the idea of ridding the world of a horrible disease like malaria, this isn’t likely to happen. It’s just not logical to think evolution in mosquitoes can be simply stopped in this way, without some potentially very dangerous adaptation on the part of the mosquitoes themselves or other organisms in their natural environment. There is really no scientific justification for attempting to do this. It’s also outrageous to play with people’s sense of using technology to help people, when there’s no proof or even a reasonable suggestion this technology could really benefit anyone in the long run.

The reality is, backed by money from wealthy families, there is an effort to create an ever expanding technology of fixing nature with genetic engineering. Once the malaria mosquitoes are gone, and some other problem emerges, a new technology will be introduced to deal with this new threat, and so on and so on.

This is the same logic, and even the same people, responsible for the cycles of destruction in commercial agriculture. This is where a pest appears, and a chemical is developed to combat it. A new pest takes the place of the old one, and a stronger chemical is developed to deal with this new pest. Then genetic engineering is used instead of chemicals, and the pests evolve to over come this. It’s a losing battle, and it threatens the extinction of life on earth.

Interestingly enough, the gene drive technology is regulated by the Cartagena Protocol, which is part of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which includes the Nagoya Protocol, which is where all the problems of OSSI are from. Okay, got that?

The Decision

Just what was the decision on gene drives? Here is an excerpt from a convention document marked ‘Draft‘:

9. Calls upon Parties and other Governments, taking into account the current uncertainties regarding engineered gene drives, to apply a precautionary approach, in accordance with the objectives of the Convention, and also calls upon Parties and other Governments to only consider introducing organisms containing engineered gene drives into the environment, including for experimental releases and research and development purposes, when:

(a) Scientifically sound case-by-case risk assessments have been carried out;

(b) Risk management measures are in place to avoid or minimize potential adverse effects, as appropriate;

(c) Where appropriate, the “prior and informed consent”, the “free, prior and informed consent” or “approval and involvement” of potentially affected indigenous peoples and local communities is sought or obtained, where applicable in accordance with national circumstances and legislation

Draft
decision
submitted by the Chair
of Working Group
II

Just to give you an idea of how opaque the whole process is, I couldn’t find this document in the list of official documents on the CBD website, but rather it showed up in Google. There’s no apparent way to confirm if this text was actually adopted, or further modified before being adopted.

Looking at the text, does it support the use of gene drives or restrict it? There is some further documentation on the CBD website on what gaining consent of indigenous people really means, but it really seems there are a lot of excuses not to do this, for example according to local legislation or circumstances. It would appear to authorize gene drives if the other criteria of risk assessment and risk management are met.

This resolution is being hailed by a number of environmental and farmers groups as a significant step forward, but I’m aware of many of these groups receiving funding from the same sources as OSSI is funded and generally have very undemocratic internal structures which suppress the opinions and freedom of expression of the members. While they’re publicly supporting a moratorium on gene drives, it’s almost certain they’re doing the opposite behind the scenes, especially as they seem to be involved in negotiating the text of the resolutions.

This is not democracy. In fact this is one of the most undemocratic mechanisms I have ever seen, and if the sole purpose of the Convention on Biological Diversity is to justify and legitimize the use of gene drives, there’s no reason for it to exist.

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Lies About Air Quality, Around the World

I’ve written before about the EU air quality directive, which is completely lacking in real science and focusing on the wrong things.  While I appreciate clean air, and dislike any sources of pollution in our environment, I also dislike lies and don’t think it’s necessary for people to have to spend extra money on useless technology.  In addition, right now carbon emissions and global warming are more important than any other type of pollution, and I dislike the way air quality is being conflated with greenhouse gases.

Rice Fields

Recently it’s been possible to see the way similar lies are being told around the world.  It’s not obvious the way agriculture, and in particular burning rice fields, impacts air quality.  Growing rice generates a great deal of straw.  There’s no question returning this straw to the ground is the healthiest solution for the environment, but it’s also the most expensive.  For a long time now various solutions have been explored, but in today’s need for the cheapest possible food, the only real practical solution has turned out to be burning the straw in place after the rice is harvested.

Rice also grows in specific areas.  It’s generally grown in flooded paddies, and it can’t tolerate northern latitudes.  It also can’t be grown too far south where the climate would be too tropical and there would be less water.  It’s usually grown in slightly mountainous areas, so the water can be captured as mountain snow melts, then released to flow downstream.  It’s a major crop in Asia, and the most populated part of Asia is in areas like this.

When Paradise Burned

I live now in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  It’s a little bit of a coincidence, but before living here I lived in Paradise, California, and before that in the nearby community of Chico, California where I was a student.  Paradise has been in the news recently because it burned down, together with the surrounding area in what is known as the Camp Fire.

Before I lived in Paradise and Chico, I lived in several parts of the Bay Area, where I moved after growing up and going to High School in the Chicago area.  I remember when I moved to the Bay Area in autumn how acrid the air seemed — like something was burning.  I had never encountered that before.  Growing up in Chicago I lived through the period pollution controls were introduced on cars and leaded fuel was phased out, and the Bay Area seemed to have a very different kind of pollution.  The Bay Area is known for it’s air pollution, and all car owners at the time had to get their cars regularly tested for emissions.

When Paradise and the surrounding area burned, the smoke caused serious pollution in the Bay Area.  I thought it was a little strange that no one seemed to question why this happened.  These two areas are about 5 hours driving distance from one another, and there are other populated areas around.  Why did the majority of the smoke seem to blow into the Bay Area?

Air Quality in Paradise and Chico

When I lived in Paradise and Chico, the air was generally clean.  The one major exception was in the autumn when they burned the rice fields.  This area is a major rice area, one of the largest in the US.  As is the case in many agricultural and rice areas, the farmers have a lot of political clout.  They were allowed to burn their fields, and everyone else had to accommodate this.  The farmers were given a schedule, to prevent air quality from getting too bad.  Other people, like gardeners who wanted to burn their garden waste, had to get special permits and weren’t allowed to have fires when there were air quality issues.

So where did all this smoke go, and isn’t it logical the air currants were similar to when the Camp Fire took place?  Isn’t it logical to think this was the acrid smell I encountered when I first moved to the Bay Area?

Another study showed about 29% of the air pollution in the Bay Area came from China. China is a major grower of rice. Even though this particular study concerned a particular lead isotope, it’s a clear indication that smoke from rice fields can travel long distances.

If pollution in the Bay Area comes from other sources, clearly doesn’t even smell like car exhaust, why all the lies? Why is it necessary to constantly blame cars, diesel engines (but ignore diesel trucks) and other obviously incorrect sources, but not talk about agriculture? Diesel especially, how can it be there are so many diesel trucks, but for some reason it’s bad to drive a diesel car? How could anyone think anything can be accomplished by driving an electric car?

Vacation to India

While Paradise was burning, I went on holiday to the only place in the world with worse air quality than the Bay Area.  I went to New Delhi, India.   I went expecting to find a congested and polluted city, which I did, but it wasn’t completely what I expected.

Air pollution has been a problem there for a long time.  In addition, Indians have something of a culture of believing what others tell them.  For example the problem of farmer suicides is well known, and at least part of this is Monsanto selling them seeds promising huge harvests and big profits, which turn out not to be true.  Recently in the news has also been lies spread on social media resulting in mass violence.

In Delhi it’s clear all the advice has been taken on how to solve the problem of air pollution.  Except for a few old timer cars, nearly all the vehicles on the road are reasonably new with modern pollution control systems.  Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is very popular there.  Except for a few old 2-stroke models, nearly all the tuk-tuks are electric.  One old smoky diesel truck passed me while I was there, otherwise none of these were visible.  Even many of the streetlights were LED.  We arrived just after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and there were signs this had been enthousiasticly celebrated at least in part with low energy light bulbs.  There didn’t seem like there was very much left for the people of Delhi to buy. 

On the sides of the streets, no pollution from cars was obvious.  The air was very polluted, and in particular there was lots of dust everywhere, but little if any pollution from cars.

If you ask almost anyone in Delhi they will tell you the air pollution comes from the nearby rice fields being burned by the farmers.  If you take a train in almost any direction from Delhi, you will travel through the burned out landscapes or see the clouds of smoke hanging over the fields.

If you read the newspapers you will read about all the solutions from the politicians.  No round the clock construction, only dawn to dusk, in order to minimize dust.  Plans for the introduction of odd-even days for driving according to your car license plates, with exceptions for CNG and lady drivers, because walking in some areas can be dangerous for women.  There’s really a major disconnect between the politicians and reality.

Many Other Problems with Burning Rice Fields

Air quality is only one of many problems that go along with burning rice fields, and only one reason it’s not a sustainable practice.

Desertification is a major problem all over the world in agricultural areas.  It’s what happens when the ground is overused and basically turns to dust.  This dust by itself is probably a significant contributor to Delhi air pollution.  If rice straw is returned to the ground, either by composting and spreading or just turning it under the ground, it will build up the soil and add humus, which will counter desertification.

Rice straw, as with almost any agricultural product burned in the fields, is very high in volume and almost pure carbon.  When it’s burned it releases very large amounts of both air pollution with many particulants, and greenhouse gases.  These greenhouse gases would be sequestered if incorporated into otherwise healthy ground.

Rice straw being high in carbon is also needed to bind with sources of nitrogen pollution, like animal manure, in order to prevent this from polluting the environment.

Conclusions

Of course we can’t stop growing rice tomorrow, but there are a lot of possibilities for doing it more sustainably.  We need to stop entertaining lies about air pollution and global warming, and get serious about the underlying reasons and solutions to problems.