Activists Say to World Bank & UN--NO GE TREES

Activists Say to World Bank & UN--NO GE TREES
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FOR SPECIAL REPORTS/PHOTOS FROM THE MOBILIZATION AGAINST THE IMF/WORLD BANK ON THEIR 60TH BIRTHDAY APRIL 21 - 25 INCLUDING THE MARCH FOR WOMEN'S LIVES


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

APRIL 22, 2004

Contact: Anne Petermann, Co-Director, Global
Justice Ecology Project

Steering Committee Chair, STOP GE Trees Campaign

International Activists Denounce Genetically Engineered Trees, World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund and Call on U.N. to Reverse Pro-GE Trees Decision


WHEN: Earth Day, Thursday, April 22nd, 12 noon

WHERE: The National Press Club - 529 14th St., N.W. - 13th
Floor - Washington, DC

Ricardo Navarro Chair of Friends of the Earth International and the Director of CESTA/Friends of the Earth-El Salvador; 1995 Goldman Environmental Prize winner; Dennis Brutus Professor Emeritus Africana Studies University of Pittsburgh, a South African activist, poet and former political prisoner; and Anne Petermann, Co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Chair of the National Stop GE Trees Campaign spoke in Washington, DC during a mobilization against the 60th Anniversary of the World Bank about the Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund. The Prototype Carbon Fund is the Bank's new emissions trading fund that advances the development of forestry plantations in the Global South to offset carbon dioxide emissions from the Industrial North to supposedly address global warming.

Activists fear that the World Bank will use this Prototype Carbon Fund to promote genetically engineered trees in carbon offset plantations following the UN's December 2003 decision to allow GE trees to be used in forestry plantations developed as carbon sinks under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. Non-governmental organizations will address the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) at their May meeting in Geneva on the dangers of GE trees in an effort to convince the UN to rescind their December 2003 decision.

"Imposing destructive forestry plantations on the Global South to give Northern industries the ability to go right on polluting and claim they are fighting global warming cannot is preposterous," stated Anne Petermann. "The plantations themselves have a long record of environmental destruction and devastation of indigenous and other communities. Including genetically engineered trees, that will cause serious forest health in these plantations greatly magnifies what is already a serious problem. Additionally, The US EPA and the World Resources Institute have determined that plantations sequester only one-quarter the carbon of native forests. This means that conversion of native forests into carbon offset plantations that include GE trees, as the UN has approved, will accelerate global warming rather than mitigate it," she continued.


Global Justice Ecology Project, The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth International, Forest Stewards Guild, Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering, Forest Ethics, the Stop GE Trees Campaign, Scotland's WorldForests and the Peoples Forest Forum of Finland co-sponsored this press conference as part of a campaign to convince the United Nations to rescind their decisions to permit genetically engineered trees to be used in carbon offset forestry plantations Kyoto Protocol. Over 100 organizations throughout Europe and the world have signed on demanding the UN reverse its decision. The UN's Forum on Forests meets in early May.

On April 19, Corner House of the U.K. joined over fifty environmental and social justice organizations, NGOs and other groups in sending a letter of protest to the World Bank calling for the closure of its new emissions trading fund, The Prototype Carbon Fund. This letter was sent in response to the World Bank's 60 anniversary, in solidarity with the protests that are being held in Washington, DC, USA April 21-24.


Global Justice Ecology Project
P.O. Box 412
Hinesburg, VT 05461

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http://www.globaljusticeecology.org


Photo credit: Repost from GJEP's website