Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Fake News: CRISPR-Cas9

Here in Europe attempts are being made to get around GMO legislation by redefining what genetic engineering is.  In particular, even after the EU Court of Justice ruled that such attempts are illegal, the same arguments are being tried here in the Netherlands.

GMO ‘light’

It’s completely absurd to say this is somehow a different kind of genetic engineering.  The only ‘light’ thing about this technique is the cost and simplicity.  It used to be there was considerable cost and research behind each new genetically engineered variety, but this method can cost as little as US$75 and is much faster and easier to execute.  That means more corporate profits, but all of the other issues surrounding GMOs remain.

It’s absolutely silly to say that since this method only ‘turns off’ small parts of the genome, that this is somehow fundamentally different.

‘The question is: do you want potatoes that need to be sprayed 15 times or do you want potatoes that can do without this amount of spraying because of this technology?’

This is a ridiculous question, completely rhetorical and grounded in fake news.

For one thing, in Europe the chemicals you might spray a potato with are being phased out.  There isn’t a question of spraying a potato 15 times anymore.

There are also traditional breeding efforts underway, including F1 hybrids and organic breeding, which all show promise.

While it might seem very exciting to use genetic engineering to modify potatoes to resist blight, this has also been described as ‘gene mining’.  That is you take all the currently known genes that resist blight and put them into a single potato, something that would be very difficult with traditional breeding.  The problem with this is you can also overlook other gene ‘markers’ (combinations of genes that also resist blight), and once blight has evolved it will overcome even this resistance.  This is the same mentality behind spraying crops with chemicals, thinking even after the chemicals stop working, it will always be possible to develop new and stronger chemicals.

In fact with all GMO varieties to date promising to resist diseases or pests and reduce the need for chemicals, they have all failed in their promises.  The diseases or pests simply develop resistance, and the need for chemicals returns.  There’s no reason to think GMO potatoes will be any different.  In the case of for example bt based GMOs, these crops have seriously interfered with organic efforts.  There’s no reason to think GM potatoes won’t also interfere with organic efforts in a similar way.

A better approach is a combination of stopping with the use of chemicals, traditional breeding, permaculture techniques and improving the environment through reducing greenhouse gases and other environmental pollutants.  This will reduce the disease pressure in agriculture, and allow the potato genome to evolve and create it’s own resistance to potato blight.  In the longer term this will be a sustainable process.

Competing with Centuries of Evolution

All GMO techniques are competing with centuries of evolution.  While you might be able to find some short term quick fixes with GMOs, there’s not likely to be any major breakthroughs with genetic engineering.  It’s not likely to speed evolution.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are Too Strong

Especially over the last few decades, IPR have become too strong.  These have mostly been implemented in undemocratic ways, with very unpopular trade agreements or rules put into place by international institutions inaccessible through democratic principles.

There are direct rights like patents, and indirect rights like what the Convention on Biological Diversity convey.

The economic driving power behind GMOs is too strong, and severely limits any sort of reasonable public debate.

Everyone would benefit if this sort of science existed in the public domain, and independent (amateur) scientists also had an opportunity to demonstrate what they can offer.

Nothing for the Consumer

Things like improving yields, or resistance to pests, are fine for farmers and corporate interests.  No agricultural GMO has ever been marketed according to consumer demand.  Nothing.  If science has nothing but fake news to address consumer demand with, they should accept there is nothing to put on the market.

Lack of Functioning Democracy

I guess there are problems with democracy almost everywhere, but since this post was specifically intended to address the situation in The Netherlands, let me say something about democracy here.

There is a serious deficiency of free expression here.  I understand this is a problem for many people, but it’s particularly acute for people with a foreign background or those unable to communicate fully and fluently in Dutch.  While there have been some very public examples of this recently, there’s very little acceptance this is a common problem, also in smaller less dramatic ways.

A government can simply not say there is a public consultation on an issue like this, if there is no truly democratic forum in which to express and freely discuss opinions.

Posted on

Bayer Needs an Aspirin

Bayer 1-year share price
One year share price of Bayer

Bayer seems to be wrapping up their purchase of Monsanto, but investors are not impressed.

$289 Million Verdict

The first in a series of lawsuits over Monsanto’s glyphosate based weedkiller Round Up has resulted in an award of $289 million for the plaintiff.  Like Bayer is quick to point out this is only one jury and one verdict, which is subject to review and appeal.  There are many reasons to believe this amount could be reduced or eliminated altogether.  It’s clearly enough to make investors nervous, but might not be a serious issue for Bayer in the long run.  We’ll have to wait and see how this develops.

Divestment of Assets to BASF

Bayer themselves identify the unexpectedly large sale of $9 billion in assets to BASF as one of the reasons for falling earnings.   In part this probably comes out of their ‘fake news’ Glyphosate ECI here in Europe.

In the lead up to Monsanto-Bayer merger, a suspiciously funded European Citizens’ Initiative was launched to remove glyphosate as an unpatented product from the EU market.  Through the ways I describe in the link above, I was able to see it was completely staged.

The issue was Bayer had a competing patented product called glufosinate, marketed under the name Liberty or Basta.  Bayer was trying to remove glyphosate because it was cheap and generic formulations were available.

I wrote some letters to Dutch and EU politicians, alerting them to these things.  After I wrote these letters, the EU launched an investigation into the then pending merger between Monsanto and Bayer.  As a result of this investigation, it emerged Bayer had an entire agricultural chemicals unit dedicated to making chemical analogues of glyphosate, and glufosinate was one of these.  Bayer was clearly planning to combine Round Up Ready technologies of Monsanto with their own chemical variations of Round Up, and create even more herbicides and herbicide resistant crops.

The EU then required Bayer to sell it’s entire agricultural chemical unit to BASF, as a condition of the merger between Monsanto and Bayer.  The US justice department later required even more assets be sold to BASF.

The announcement that glyphosate was to be removed from the EU market was also pretty sudden, and farmers did not have enough time to plan for this.  This would have created an unusually high demand for Bayer’s alternative patented herbicide products.  It was agreed to extend the licensing of glyphosate for a few more years, in order to reduce the impact on farmers and allow competing organic products to be developed.

This is really how politics is supposed to work.  It’s an example of politicians being responsive to citizens, and doing what they can within the rule of law to make things better.  It’s the kind of thing that happens behind the scenes, that we don’t always hear about.  We should all be very happy with the way this turned out.

Bayer’s Shareholders

What reason do the Bayer shareholders give for loss of confidence in the company?  Some are pointing to a lack of direction in the company.  Bayer has been unable to give a clear statement on the way forward, and what their new products will be.  It seems at least in the short term their business model has been disrupted.

Other Comments

EU Parliamentary elections are around the corner.  Everything that transpired above was with ‘normal’ politicians.  If I had to deal with politicians from populist parties, it would have probably all been a lot harder.  I think mainstream politicians in Europe have learned a hard lesson from the last parliamentary elections, Brexit and the populist parties that are coming into power around Europe.  I think they are trying harder now.

I want to work constructively with whomever comes to power, and never choose one party over another.  I hope however that when readers of this blog vote, they choose candidates with a constructive agenda.

Posted on

The War on Seeds

Nagoya Protocol Article 15.1:

“Each Party shall take appropriate, effective and proportionate legislative, administrative or policy measures to provide that genetic resources utilized within its jurisdiction have been accessed in accordance with…”

The world hasn’t faced something like this since the War on Drugs.

In other words, if you live in one of the more than 100 countries that have implemented the Nagoya Protocol as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), you are subject to potentially unlimited penalties for misuse of genetic resources.  Use of genetic resources can include seed saving or amateur plant breeding.  Misuse can include improper administration of the ownership of the seeds, if you are following the appropriate terms and conditions of use, and if you have paid the appropriate royalties.

It’s also widely accepted that the administration that goes along with maintaining or transferring seeds and other genetic resources between two parties is so legally complex, it’s often beyond the capabilities of an average person.  I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to Wikipedia, but in their explanation of the Nagoya Protocol (text subject to change), as a criticism, they mention:

Criticism

Many scientists have voiced concern over the protocol, fearing the increased red tape will hamper disease prevention and conservation efforts, and that the threat of possible imprisonment of scientists will have a chilling effect on research. Non-commercial biodiversity researchers and institutions such as natural history museums fear maintaining biological reference collections and exchanging material between institutions will become difficult.

In other words, even natural history museums aren’t completely sure how to exchange material with one another anymore, and this uncertainty is backed up with possible imprisonment for getting it wrong.  This is likely to impact a large number of scientific disciplines.

In addition, every time genetic resources change hands a new set of administration is generated, and in the case of breeding work involving crosses the administration of the parent lines is passed on to the progeny.  Restrictions, terms and conditions get passed on in their entirety, and royalties are divided proportionally according to the percentage of genes in the resulting crosses and their respective ownership.

In order to continue to work with biodiversity, seed saving, plant breeding and so on, for most people, it will be necessary to do it as part of a larger organization or cooperative that can manage the administration and commercial negotiations surrounding it.

If anyone does continue working on their own, the most likely scenario is that they will not want to trade seeds with others.  This means they will not be able to use material like OSSI seeds, because legally these must be shared with others on request.

Winners and Losers

The profit potential is clear.  If you own genetic material, you own the building blocks for agriculture.  It’s like owning real estate, everyone needs a place to live, and there’s lots of profit to be had in speculating and being a landlord.  Those who are successful stand to make a lot of money.

The devastation is also clear.  We saw what happened to the US Seed Savers Exchange.  Some scientists are also stopping or changing their areas of work.  With respect to this blog, I can also see a sharp decrease in interest in biodiversity and seed saving over that last several years, especially in Europe.  A lot of people are simply moving on to doing other things.

Scenario One:  The implementation of the CBD and Nagoya Protocol is successful.

In this case, if seed saving is going to survive in the countries covered by these treaties, it’s going to have to evolve and become more business oriented.  Everything is going to surround private collections of genetic resources and coalitions of collections.  It’s likely a group or groups of seed savers will come together and try to organize an alternative to what’s been collected in Svalbard and genebanks worldwide.

There are countries who are members or non-members of the different treaties.  For example the US is a member of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), but not CBD.  Mexico is a member of CBD but not ITPGRFA.  The link above shows what countries are a member of the Nagoya protocol.  Over time it will be possible to work out the different combinations of membership, the consequences and possibly some loopholes.  There will also be court cases, and the treaties themselves may change.

There is a lot of work here for those who are inclined to do this.  Be sure to read what I wrote a few days ago over this.

Scenario Two:  These treaties fail or partly fail.

Many things are not going well for those trying to implement CBD and Nagoya.  There is a shortage of funding and a lot of opposition.  The CBD was conceived about 30 years ago, and the world has changed a lot in the meantime.  I think there is a real possibility of everything falling apart.

There are some pretty serious consequences that go along with this scenario too.  Svalbard and the global network of genebanks is already having funding issues, and has not been generating as much income as expected.  If these treaties actually fail, there’s no obvious alternative funding.  The worldwide seed movement is really going to have to pick up the pieces and start from the beginning.  Not just seed saving, but all disciplines impacted by the CBD.

This could be made a lot worse, if there was a long period of uncertainty or a prolonged failure.

What You Can do to Help

It’s bad timing that we seem to be having a lull in interest in biodiversity and seed saving.  Regardless of which of these two scenarios we have to deal with, we all need to mobilize in the right way as quickly as possible.  It’s important we stay motivated, and keep doing whatever it is we are doing.

Whatever you can do to stimulate interest in biodiversity would be a good thing.  If you have a blog, write about it on the Internet.  If you have a garden, then grow, save and share heirloom seeds.  If you want to learn something, then teach yourself or find someone who can help you.

Even if you’re just a consumer or another unrelated professional, just talking about biodiversity and spreading the word can really help a lot.