Action against Patenting
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| Write to TRIPS negotiators In 2001 Action Aid ran a campaign "Crops and Robbers" which highlighted how patents jeopardise global food security.To illustrate the injustice of patenting it applied for a patent on its own "salted chip"and the outcome is still awaited! Action Aid has now launched a campaign to pressurise key negotiators at the WTO TRIPS Council in Geneva to ensure Farmers' Rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds. It is hoping to influence the next TRIPS council meeting on 25 November. The target negotiators are from the US, Canada, EU and Japan. Groups are encouraged to write to one of these negotiatiors on a specially designed "SeedRights" headed notepaper to make the point to them that global patenting rules threaten the livelihoods of 1.4 billion farmers by taking away their rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm saved seed. Notepaper and the "seed jacket" that it comes in are available from http://www.actionaid.org or by calling Alex Wijeratna at the London office on 020 7561 7613. |
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| Contact your own MP Twelve thousand members of the Trade Justice Movement lobbied their MPs at Westminster on 19 June 2002. A key point was a call for the UK government to support a ban on patents on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It was pointed out that these rights should not be undermined by the TRIPS agreement of the WTO. Global laws to regulate the activities of international corporations were also urged. Since then, on 12 September, the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, set up by the UK Government, acknowledged in a report that the international rules governing the protection of patents, copyrights and trademarks (contained in the TRIPS Agreement) have a detrimental effect on poor countries. Ask your MP to call on the UK government to act on the recommendations in the report - see www.actionaid.org. [Copies of the full Commission Report and a Summary of it are available from http://www.iprcommission.org or 020 7023 0000] |
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| Write to new WTO Director Welcome the new director general of the World Trade Organisation - Thailand's Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi - and call on him to stop the bullying of poor countries at the WTO. There is a specific demand for an end to "green room" meetings where decisions are made without the participation of developing countries' delegates. Sample letters on www.wdm.org.uk. and http://www.tradejusticemovement.org.uk. |
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| AS YOU LOBBY ABOUT TRADE RULES, FIND
OUT MORE ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL RULES: The Convention on Biological Diversity and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety As part of the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity a working group on biosafety was set up to draft the protocol, which was adopted on 29 January 2000. In a departure from the WTO's regulations on trade which "must be based on sound scientific knowledge," the Cartagena Protocol incorporates the Precautionary Principle of the 1992 Earth Summit Declaration which allows parties to take precautions, even when there is scientific uncertainty concerning risks, to avoid potential risks.The U.S. has signed the Convention but not ratified; it has not even signed the Protocol. The UK has signed both but not ratified the Protocol. See http://www.biodiv.org/ |
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Prayers Lord God, make us ready to learn from the wisdom
of people in time past as well as from those of today; that we may
be able to take from our planet what is needed to sustain life and
still respect the way it works, care for it as well as ourselves,
learning how to leave it as an unspoiled birthright for our children's
children - as Jesus taught us to learn from flowers and ravens (Luke
12:27-31). Amen. LIFESTYLE and PRAYER Consider
L ... Locally produced O .. Organically grown A ... Animal friendly F ... Fairly traded
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