Together we can achieve more: More posters and more flyers.
7 Nov 2011 · invasive alien species, pets, SBSTTA

Monday's side event at the SBSTTA meeting of the CBD by the pet industry gave an impressive insight how to deal with pets and ornamental plants becoming invasive: Simply tell consumers not to release them.
Or even better: put up posters in shops and print a line on the bag in which you buy your fish or pond plants and all will be solved.
Don't bother involving academics or even the governments - retailers are the best people to talk to consumers, and they are already used to put up posters and hand out flyers.
Don't confuse anybody with science. Because in the end the real problem of pets and ornamental plants becoming invasive alien species are the uneducated pet-owners and individual gardeners

While three representatives of the pet industry in the US, Canada and Europe were happily showing off their colourful flyers for nearly an hour, they did not give any numbers or any statistic data that would support their claims that this approach is or would be an effective strategy.
The only figures they gave were about the amount of tax revenue produced by the pet industry, and the great coincidence the tax revenue generated in Europe in the last years (of about 12 billion) is the same amount as the damage caused by invasive species. So that would even each other out - Problem solved.

Repeatedly they stated that when it comes to invasive species, the pet industry is not part of the problem, but part of the solution.
But then again, when you spend so much time and effort to re-define the problem to blame the consumers who don't know what to do with unwanted aquarium fish, then you can forget about all the other ways in which pets and plants can escape and continue making money in the pet industry.

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Behind us is infinite power.
2 Jul 2011 · Aarhus

Behind us is infinite power.
Before us is endless possibility.
Around us is boundless opportunity.
Why should we fear?

Unfortunately that is not the closing statement of the Meeting of the Aarhus Convention. It's an advertisement poster of Chisinau Airport, showing seven children in the departure lounge, ready to travel the world - Except that they probably aren't.

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Documentation: Ecoropa's GMO Intervention
30 Jun 2011 · Aarhus, Almaty, GMOs

"The de facto exclusion of GMOs from the Aarhus Convention was not due to scientific certainty or lack of public interest but was due to a very unfortunate constellation of lack of political will at a certain historical moment."

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Enter the Aarhus stage: The Biotech Industry
29 Jun 2011 · Aarhus, GMOs, industry

Today "Business and Industry" entered the stage. Again compared to the CBD negotiations I'm used to there is little industry present: so far there are only four them, which makes their background even more remarkable.
Out of the four: three directly represent the biotech industry: EuropaBio (represented by a fromer Monsanto employee), CropLife and European Crop Protection Association (biotech looby organisations in the EU). The fourth one comes from the International Chamber of Commerce, an organisation that repeatedly works to make sure that biotech companies are not hindered by national or international legislations.
What are they doing here? Some countries, esp. some of the EU states have regional and national regulation that forces companies to be open about field trials with genetically modified crops, about GMOs in food and feed, about locations of trials and what they are planning to do to restrict the spreading of GMOs into the environment. Again and again there are attempts to reduce such information, again and again vital information is simply declared as "confidential business information" and kept secret.
In this climate, the Parties to the Aarhus Convention managed to approve the Almanty GMO amendment in 2005 - an amendment to the original protocol that explicitely spells out obligations for access to information for GMOs. This amendment will come into force once 27 countries have ratified it. This number has now stagnated at 26.

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Open Compliance under Aarhus
28 Jun 2011 · Aarhus, Compliance

My first impression travelling from Berlin's hippest street to Moldova's capital Chisinau with its crumbling sowjet-area buildings are two worlds apart.
This appeared to be even more the case when the preparation meetings to the Aarhus Convention MOP4 started - but suddenly it was the other way round.
The day started with a meeting of the Compliance Comittee - the body that decides whether Parties breaches the conditions, either in general or specific cases.
Coming from the negotiations of the CBD and its Protocols I'm used to Industry and some Parties arguing that Compliance should be only ever be assessed based on some legally non-biding guidelines, without consequences and of course behind closed doors. This meeting was different and from what I can see one of the best examples of implementing Principle 10 of the Rio Convention.

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I write reports on GMOs, agriculture and related issues. And I make websites for small environmental organisations.

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