The illustrations on today's page come form an international children's poster competition. Many countries produced impressive contributions, more of which can be found on the official United Nations summit website.

Prize winning poster from Nagaland, India

Biotech contradictions

Thursday 29 August

Today I tried to attend the youth meeting at Nasrec but problems with buses and I only got there at 10am and had missed it. Still I got told that my job was to go to the commission on Biotechnology and GMO’s. Luckily that was the one I wanted to go to!

Before going I had a look on the Eco-Village Network stall and had a good chat with some blokes who live in eco-villages (one in LA and one in Scotland). The bloke from Scotland had heard of Woodcraft, and I said it would be good to make links to maybe organise trips to visit Eco-villages for educational purposes. (I also decided that I’m going to live in one when I grow up!)

Ok, to the biotech. Commission. On the panel was Vandana Shiva (well known activist and writer from India – advocating for non-violent protest against the monopoly of multinationals and against the biotechnology industry amongst other things! P.s. read her stuff she’s great!). Also Silvia from Mexico, a representative from an African farmers union and a Canadian farmer who had been the mayor of his town. These were all arguing against GMOs and Monsanto’s domination. For the first time I have seen in a commission the panel was geographically balanced. Then also there was a scientist from Norway who was arguing that people should be able to choose and that scientific studies need to be done on specific areas and specific GM seeds before GE is completely written off. (So the representation of viewpoints on the panel was not balanced).

I will try to get hold of the minutes (proving hard so far) but if not I will have to write up my notes because it was a very interesting discussion. The main issue that came out was that there were a considerable number of farmers whose argument was that their traditional local seed varieties did not feed them.

They are HUNGRY and if Monsanto can offer them food they must have the right to choose whether it is beneficial to them or not. They were getting really angry with the panel and other floor speakers.

For me it seemed clear that biotechnology is all about control – especially seeing as there is only 5 companies who control the entire GM food industry (Silvia –sorry didn’t get her surname!), selling seeds, seeds which only work with pesticides from this company, buying the food back from the farmers and then selling it at a price in the West which is too high for these small farmers to be able to buy back in order to feed themselves. The farmer from Canada had also had really bad experiences with Monsanto who took him to court because they found a GM variety in the ditch next to his field. (Read minutes if I get them!)

Homare Nagano - Japan

What also came out was that it is about the capacity of governments to stand up to the biotechnology companies and defend poor farmers, offer them support and independent scientific research about GM.

I put a question in writing to the panel (it didn’t get addressed) that was “Do you think the way to empower governments to stand up to MNCs is through international dialogues and legislation? Eg the UN WSSD process. If so, how can we as the Civil Sociey Forum influence the decisions and draftings at the UN summit?"

This is a theme which I have been coming across a lot, in the youth meetings, and also the forum here in NASREC as a whole is concerned about this. There was actually a meeting today about how we can influence the WSSD process as civil society but I missed it as it was during the bio-tech commission!

love Rhino

Yosr Abdel Rahman Mamood El Kararsy - aged 9 - Alexandria, Egypt

Meanwhile, at NASREC:

R

A

Zilong Liang - aged 5 - Chin

'Destiny Weights' - Melanya Hamasyan - Armenia

• Day 1
• Day2

• Wed 28 August
• Tues 27 August
• Mon 26 August
• Sun 25 August
• Sat 24 August
• Fri 23 August
• Thur 22 August
• Wed 21 August

The delegation would love to help feed your views into the Summit. The links below take you to a number of the douments which are currently being drawn up by the Youth Caucus. Please e-mail the delegation with your views on these.

• Letter from EU youth to the EU Environment minister
• Youth Statement
  part A
• Youth Statement
  part B
• Energy position statement

CLICK HERE
to visit the official United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development website

Those of us who can't be in Jo'burg can watch live coverage of events there through the UN News Service web cast.

Glossary of Summit-speak

Confused by all the strange terminology and acronyms... We hope the glossary below will help:

• WSSD - World Summit on Sustainable Development
• Rio +10 - WSSD but it refers to the fact that this summit is ten years on from the original summit in Rio.
• Agenda 21 - the environmental agenda for the Twenty First century. This was created at the Rio summit and the idea was that all aspects of society should be looked at from the perspective of Agenda 21.
• Stakeholder - anybody who has an interest in the issue that is being discussed. In the case of WSSD it is probably everyone on the planet.
• Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue (MSHD)- this is no more no less than a meeting of all people who have an interest/stake in the issue. With reference to WSSD, this has been split into nine Major Groups such as women, youth etc. and bodies have been created to represent the needs and opinions of these particular groups.
• Major Groups - the nine stakeholder groups who can make an input into the summit: Women, Youth, Farmers, Indigenous Peoples, Local Authorities, Scientists, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Trade Unions, and Business and Industry.
• Type I outcomes - agreements made at the Summit in Johannesburg which are legally binding on an international level
• Type II outcomes - promises made by governments, regions, businesses, and other organisations, maybe in partnership with others, to do things to achieve sustainable development - not enforcable though.
• CSD - Conference on Sustainable Development. This is the United Nations body which has met every year since Rio. The WSSD is its 10th annual conference but has been made into an extra specially important meeting and called a Summit.
• PrepCom - a meeting of CSD to make the arrangements and preparations for the Summit.
• International Youth Summit on Sustainable Development - a conference organised by the youth caucus which was held just before the main Summit
• Caucus - a group of people with a common interest (eg women, youth) who meet together to organise themselves and work to further that interest.
• Youth Caucus - the 'youth' Major Group - a group of youth organisations and youth representatives who we are working with in Bali and will be part of in Johannesburg.
• Global People's Forum of the WSSD - The part of the Summit which is open to participation from civil society delegates
• Civil Society - all organisations, groups and individuals who are not part of governments - not politicians or civil servants.
• NASREC is where the Global Civil Society Forum is. This is the non-governmental side of the Summit. Sandton is where the Governmental Conference is.