Archived press release

Wto rules set to devastate biodiversity

4 September 2003

As hundreds of small farmers, indigenous people's groups and landless peasants start preparations to descend on Cancun in then next few days, Friends of the Earth added its voice to the groups protesting against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its new rules that promise a devastating impact on the world's biological and cultural diversity.

The WTO's draft agreements on agriculture, services and intellectual property rights will lead to increased deforestation and the replacement of traditional agricultural crops, seeds and livestock by large-scale monocultures, including those based on genetically modified (GM) crops, Friends of the Earth said today [1].

The most devastating impacts would come from agricultural trade agreements, especially if they are based upon the recent US- European Union joint proposal for the modalities of agricultural negotiations. This proposal sets the scene for drastic market liberalisation for agricultural products, but leaves virtually untouched the massive direct and indirect subsidies these trading blocks provide for their own export-oriented farmers (except for a limited category of direct export subsidies).

The result will be devastating for small farmers in developing countries, who will be unable to compete with subsidised large-scale producers in industrialised countries. These small farmers are the main custodians of the world's agrobiodiversity, which consists of thousands of plant and animal varieties and related traditional knowledge. When these farmers disappear, this wealth of biological and cultural diversity disappears too.

Friends of the Earth International campaigner Simone Lovera said:

"The large-scale, export-oriented agriculture that is promoted in current WTO proposals is also the main cause of deforestation, especially in tropical areas.

"It is now widely recognized that the recent increase of deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is mainly caused by the rapid expansion of soy bean production for the - mainly European - export market."

The traditional knowledge of small farmers and indigenous peoples relating to the use and conservation of biodiversity is also being threatened by the growing practice of so-called "biopiracy", the practice where Northern biotechnology industries to patent seeds, traditional knowledge and other elements of biological and cultural diversity of the South.

Developing countries have demanded a review of the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement to protect themselves against such biopiracy. As part of these negotiations, African countries have called for a prohibition of patenting of life forms.

Friends of the Earth international calls upon all countries to put a halt to such forms of privatisation and the commercialisation of biological diversity. We call upon WTO members to protect small farmers and their agrobiodiversity against the devastating impacts of trade liberalization and prohibit the patenting of life forms and other forms of biopiracy.

For more information see www.foei.org/cancun

Notes

[1] See Friends of the Earth International's report `Trade and people's food sovereignty' at
www.foei.org/publications/trade/newfinallowres.pdf (PDF†)

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust