Evergreen Online

The Newsletter of Wirral Environmental Network

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Digest Edition

August / September 2003

In this month's online edition:

Starving- World Poverty Fight In Danger

GM-No

WGA becomes WEN

STARVING

World Poverty Fight "in danger"

The rich world is running dangerously short of time to redeem its promises on helping the poor, the United Nations says. Despite three years of concerted effort, some countries have recently begun to get poorer. On present trends, some African countries will not vanquish poverty until 2165, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) believes. It says poor countries must introduce reforms, while rich ones improve trade and aid.

Releasing its Human Development Report 2003, the UNDP says poverty is not inevitable. In the last 30 years, life expectancy in poor countries has risen by eight years, and illiteracy has been halved. But it says progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is patchy, with success still uncertain.

The MDGs, agreed by the UN in 2000, aim to halve world poverty by 2015. Their scope includes hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental damage, and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. The UNDP says the goals can be achieved, but "only if poor countries pursue wide-ranging reforms and wealthy ones respond with improved trade terms and increased aid".

Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP's administrator, said: "I think there's a real shot that most of the countries will have met most of the goals by 2015 - but the next couple of years will be critical. We're at a very dangerous moment. The agreement on the goals started a build-up of emphasis on global development. But against that, the old politics is reasserting itself. Italy, France, Germany, Japan - even the Netherlands, one of the most generous donors - are all making cuts in spending. You've got a real difficulty keeping people on track. Development assistance is the first to go when public spending faces cuts. There are 12 years till 2015, but the world is already into overtime on achieving the development goals."

The UNDP says its report documents "an unprecedented backslide... in some of the world's poorest nations. More than one billion people still live in extreme poverty, and for many living standards are getting steadily worse." The report identifies 59 priority countries where, it says, the MDGs will not be met without urgent action. In 31 top priority countries, progress towards the goals has stalled or even begun to reverse. Of the 59 priority nations, 24 suffer from a high incidence of HIV/AIDS and 31 have unusually high foreign debts.

The report proposes a millennium development compact, a new mechanism designed to ensure the goals are met. It would require doubling annual development aid from the rich world to $100bn (£60m), dismantling unfair trade subsidies and tariffs, writing off unsustainable debt, and creating better access to technology.

The UNDP says: "Only 10% of research and development focuses on the health problems of 90% of the world's people. Rich countries have undermined the right of poor countries to make life-saving drugs available to their people at affordable prices." Yet technology, together with better targeted aid, it says, could make a huge difference to problems like low soil fertility, isolation from trading routes, and preventable diseases. Most of the countries that were poorer in 2000 than in 1990 are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The UNDP says landlocked countries generally do worse than coastal ones, as do those which are tied to a single export commodity. Its report includes its annual human development index, measuring countries' progress on key social and economic indicators. Ranked according to their national levels of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and life expectancy, Sweden tops the list of rich countries, with the US at the bottom. Sweden, with a lower per capita income than the US, has on average more functionally literate adults and fewer people living in poverty.

GM-NO. Meacher's GM charges rejected

Claims by former minister Michael Meacher that the UK Government played down a report criticising the safety of GM food have been denied by an environment spokesman. An official at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government regarded both health and environment as "top priorities".

Mr Meacher has revealed he was sacked as environment minister - a post he had held since the 1997 election. It had been suggested that the veteran of the Wilson and Callaghan administrations had quit the government. His views on GM foods are believed to have been increasingly at odds with those of the prime minister.

In an article for the Independent on Sunday, Mr Meacher accused the government of deliberately undervaluing negative research findings on the safety of GM foods. He said scientific reports indicating possibly damaging effects on humans had been "widely rubbished in government circles". "The debate on GM foods had been deliberately stifled with pressure from bio-technology companies", he said.

But a spokesman for Defra said: "Both GM crops and foods have to undergo rigorous safety assessments before they can get approvals. These approvals require there is no risk to health or the environment." He said a public debate on the GM issue was under way, and people were welcome to contribute views. Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Andrew George said Mr Meacher's comments "blow a hole in any claims the government might make about their desire for an open debate on GM".

Anti-GM campaigners welcomed Mr Meacher's comments. Pete Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said they confirmed the fears of those who suspected the government-funded debate on the GM issue was a mere PR exercise aimed at getting the green light for GM crops to be grown in the UK.

Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association, which campaigns for organic food and farming, said: "Mr Meacher's comments are very worrying because they suggest the government has already made up its mind on GM." A farmer involved in GM crop trials claimed some of Mr Meacher's comments were "inaccurate".

Bob Fiddaman, who is also a board member of pro-GM group Scimac (Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops), said: "The GM foods that are released for human consumption have been tested and there are no known negative effects on humans."

Mr Meacher said studies on the effects of GM foods on human health had been "scientifically vacuous", and warned the government against rushing the debate. Adequate testing, sound scientific conclusions and an understanding of the effects on people were still lacking, he said. "Since the science is still clouded with such deep uncertainty, that means deferring decisions till the science is clear and reliable, not rushing to desired conclusions which cannot be scientifically supported," he said. He told the Independent on Sunday the only human GM trial commissioned by the Food Standards Agency found genetically modified DNA did transfer to bacteria in the human gut.

Many scientists had denied this was possible. "But instead of this finding being regarded as a serious discovery which should be checked and rechecked, the spin was this was nothing new and did not involve any health risk," he said.

Some GM substances had already been found to cause allergic reactions, he said. There were concerns the development of pesticide-resistant GM crops meant consumers were being exposed to increasingly toxic residues, some of which could damage embryos in the womb.

Links:

Defra: www.defra.gov.uk/

Scimac: www.ukasta.org.uk/news/scimac/

WGA becomes WEN

We no longer are Wirral Green Alliance. Members agreed on 18 June 2003 to change our name to Wirral Environmental Network. We felt that this suitably describes our work, and would help to avoid some of the problems we have encountered in recent years.

The name Wirral Green Alliance has been used since the formation of the organisation in 1985, and we have become well known, and our work well appreciated, under that banner. But in recent years, possibly because of the success of Green politics in many parts of the UK, we have been accused by some of being a political party in disguise! What nonsense! We are a registered charity, and charities cannot be political parties, they cannot put forward political candidates at elections, and they cannot pursue party-political policies. Our response to these ignorant people, who probably fear the growth of Green initiatives, has always been to say "Put up, or shut up". But there was another problem. In the eyes of many of the general public, there was considerable confusion between the various Green organisations in the area- Greenpeace, the Green Party, and Wirral Green Alliance. And of much more relevance, there was confusion with funding agencies. We felt that this confusion was holding back future progress of Wirral Green Alliance.

So, after much heart searching, and much discussion with others, we decided that it was time for a change of name. But let us be very clear – apart from the name change, our Charter, and our Aims and Objectives remain the same, as do our current projects. We are a non-profit, non-party political coalition of individuals, voluntary groups, organisations, and businesses based in Wirral and the surrounding area, working together for a sustainable future. Our charitable aim is "to advance the education of the public about the environment and about the protection of the environment". We most certainly are not a political party!

There are encouraging signs that governments throughout the developed world are slowly starting to recognise the need for change from our self-centred, greedy and unsustainable lifestyles. Organisations such as ours are helping in small ways to push this change forward. For our children’s sake, let us hope we can succeed.

Wirral Environmental Network Trustees