ETC Group: Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

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Tue, 24 May 2005 14:02:00 -0400

ETC Group: Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

 

ETC Group

News Release

May 24, 2005

www.etcgroup.org

 

Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

Belated Visa for Africa's Top Diplomat leaves UN's Montreal

Biosafety negotiations in suspense

 

Ottawa - Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher of Ethiopia, Africa's

chief scientist and negotiator for the Cartagena (biosafety) Protocol,

received his Canadian visa late Tuesday evening Ethiopian time. Dr.

Tewolde, who is scheduled to be in the crop biotech liability

negotiations tomorrow morning, May 25 in Montreal, has his bags packed

and is awaiting a revised plane ticket that -- even under ideal

circumstances -- could only get him to Montreal in time for the final

day of the controversial set of UN negotiations (May 27). After

extended discussions over Canada's Victoria Day holiday on Monday, a

visa arrived in Ethiopia from the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi

Tuesday.

 

Dr. Tewolde's delay at the hands of the Canadian government is

particularly troubling because the scientist was a key figure in

forcing industrialized countries and biotech corporations to agree to

discuss liability and redress issues. The unintended spread of

genetically modified DNA from biotech crops has

caused unwanted genetic contamination in other countries, and is now a

major problem for countries like Canada who are being called on to take

responsibility for contamination. Canada is the world's third largest

producer of GM crops, after the US and Argentina. Not surprisingly,

Canada was among the governments opposed to liability negotiations. The

issue became a major stumbling block to achieving the biosafety

protocol in 2000. Only when Canada and other major biotech countries

agreed to Dr. Tewolde's demand that a special meeting on liability be

convened soon after the coming into force of the protocol (in late

2003), did governments in developing countries accept the protocol.

That meeting on liability,

brokered by the Ethiopian scientist, is the one that he will miss two

days of this week.

 

Dr. Tewolde, the Ethiopian government's chief scientist and its

representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological

Diversity (CBD) requested a visa from Canada on May 5th and only

received it late Tuesday in Addis Ababa. In response to the delay, the

Canadian Government has been flooded with protest phone calls and

letters from around the world - a reaction similar to that provoked in

February when the government tried to promote Terminator technology

(sterile seeds) at meetings in Bangkok.

 

Dr. Tewolde's case is not unique. Late last year a colleague of his at

the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia, Mr. Dereje

Agonafir, was refused a Canadian visa to participate in a meeting of a

CBD Expert Group relating to the Biodiversity of Water, Marine and

Coastal Ecosystems. In a telephone conversation earlier today, Dr.

Tewolde suggested that the future of Montreal as host to the

Secretariat of the CBD should be tied to the Canadian government's

ability to provide other government delegates with visas. Civil society

from developing countries have also been denied visas for this week's

meetings, including Professor Kavulakunpla Ramanna Chowdry and Kaka

Ramakrishna, two farmers from India.

 

For more information:

Pat Mooney, ETC Group - Ottawa,

Canada phone: 1-613-241-2267 mobile: 1-613-261-0688 etc;

Ban Terminator Campaign - Lucy Sharratt, Ottawa,

Canada phone: 1-613-241-2267 mobile: 1-613-222-6214

 

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