Plantations, Indigenous Rights, & Genetically Engineered Trees

[OneBlueSky]

Confronting corporate strategies to expand plantations
By Anne Petermann & Orin Langelle, the Global Justice Ecology Project

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_1402.cfm

(snip)

Issues, strategies, and common experiences were discussed over the four-day meeting. Our role was to share information about genetically engineered (GE) trees-the newest devastating technology that industry hopes to foist onto rural poor communities and native ecosystems. We showed a GE trees video, A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees, narrated by geneticist David Suzuki. It helped us sound the alarm to the participants about the grave threats posed by the commercialization of GE trees.

At the Vitoria meetings, we found people's perceptions of industrial monoculture tree plantations remarkably similar. In Brazil plantations are referred to as "green deserts," due to their reputation for destroying biological diversity. In South Africa they are known as "green cancer" because of the tendency of the eucalyptus in the plantations to spread wildly into other areas. In Chile plantations are called "green soldiers" because they are destructive, stand in straight lines, and steadily advance forward.

(snip)

Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina have created pollen models that show tree pollen traveling from a forest in North Carolina for over 1,000 kilometers northward into eastern Canada. A study published in the New Physiologist found pine pollen 600 kilometers from the nearest pines. Scientists researching sterility in trees have admitted that 100 percent guaranteed sterility in GE trees is impossible. This evidence implies that if GE trees are released into the environment, widespread and irreversible contamination of native forests cannot be prevented. (my emphasis)

- more . . .

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_1402.cfm

Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann are co-directors of the Global Justice Ecology Project. To view this online w/ photos:

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Mar2006/langelle0306.html#author

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Oh noes. Transgenic trees.

Figure 1: Utter devastation caused by transgenic trees: Above. a virulent grove of nasty, weedlike transgenic papaya trees, Below. A healthy, organic grove of natural papaya trees serving as habitat to the endangered papaya ringspot virus.

[imdjh]

2. you're gonna get whined at. nt