Dear Friends,
Navdanya with Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and Diverse Women for Diversity would like to invite you to a major International Conference on 1st and 2nd October, 2008 on the theme “The Future of Food : Climate Change, GMO's and Food Security” in New Delhi.
Climate Chaos and food crisis compel us to revisit the dominant paradigm of food and agriculture. Industrial, globalised agriculture has contributed to climate change as well as to the current food crisis and food insecurity. More than 40 countries have had food riots. Rising oil prices and food prices are being defined as a security issue. However at the high level UN meeting at FAO in June 2008 on the food crisis and climate change, the World Bank and global corporations promoted the disease as the solution. They called for higher levels of chemical fertilizer use even though the cost of fossil fuel based fertilizers has tripled with the rise in oil prices and synthetic fertilizers are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions leading to climate change.
The FAO Summit was also used by the biotechnology industry to renew the push for GM seeds and crops, even though GMOs do not increase yields. In India GM Bt. Cotton engineered for “resistance” to the bollworm is vulnerable to new pests, leading to higher pesticide use and more debts and more suicides. The 2007-2008 crop has been devastated by the “mealy bug”. Yet the myth continues to be spread that Bt. Cotton reduces pesticide use and has been a miracle for Indian farmers.
The biotech industry is also using the climate crisis to promote GE seeds. As the recent ETC report shows, the gene giants have already taken more than 500 patents on climate triats. The agribusiness as well as the biotech industry is promoting industrial biofuels as a false solution to climate change. This in turn is aggravating the food crisis.
We feel it is important and urgent to address these interlinked issues of climate, food and GMO's and defend the rights of all people to safe healthy and nutritious food and the rights of farmers to secure and sustainable livelihoods, and to seed sovereignty and seed freedom.
These issues are particularly important in India's context because India's food sovereignty and biosafety is severely threatened. The biotech industry is very aggressive in trying to dismantle our biosafety and food safety regulations. The U.S – India Agriculture Knowledge Agreement, which has Monsanto on its Board, has the introduction of GE crops and biosafety deregulation as its major priorities. There is an attempt to dismantle India's Biosafety Regulation and replace it with a fast track, single window Biotech authority for quick approval of GMOs. Recently Navdanya successfully prevented the exclusion of GM foods from Biosafety regulation through its Supreme Court case. While GMO threats grow, the alternatives promoting biodiverse ecological farming are also spreading, creating hope in the midst of hopelessness and food security in the midst of food insecurity. Navdanya has started a “Seeds of Hope” campaign in the suicide belt of Vidharbha to create GMO free, suicide free villages. We have created new community seed banks of climate resilient seeds to keep them in the commons and in the public domain.
We hope you can join us to shape a future of food based on diversity and democracy, resilience and security instead of a future based on monocultures and monopolies, vulnerability and insecurity. Invited speakers include – Dr. Arpad Pusztai, World renowned scientist, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, World renowned Geneticist and Biophysicist and Director of ISIS, Dr. Terje Traavik, Professor at Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology, Norway, Patrick Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group, Canada, Dr. Tewolde Egziabher, Right Livelihood Award Winner and Director of Ethiopia's Environment Protection Agency, Percy Schmeiser, Canadian Farmers from Saskatchewan, Canada and Dr. Shiv Chopra, renowned Microbiologist and Human Rights Activist.
We would also like you to join us at Bija Vidyapeeth on our farm in Doon Valley for a training program on the same theme from 3 – 7 October, 2008.
Navdanya will also be happy to facilitate post conference tours to visit –
a) The Bt. Cotton, suicide region and Navdanya's “Seeds of Hope” villages in Vidharbha
b) Climate change Seed Bank in Coastal India
c) Biodiverse organic farms in the Himalaya.
We look forward to your confirmation.
Warm regards,
Vandana Shiva
