The worst nightmares of genetic-engineering opponents in India seem to be coming true.

 Asia’s burgeoning food market, and declining consumer and farmer confidence in genetically engineered products in Europe, Japan and the United States has made Asia the key target of the biotech industry, according to the international environmental group, Greenpeace. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will soon hit the urban markets in India, it warns.

Americans have been eating genetically engineered food since 1996, and if agrochemical giants like Monsanto have their way, Indian consumers may soon lose their right to choose between genetically engineered and natural produce.

Already genetic engineers have produced foods such as strawberries with fish genes, potatoes with chicken genes, and other combinations thatcould never have occurred through natural breeding. There is no evidence that these foods are safe in our diet or the environment in the long run.

Dangers to the environment, warn scientists, include the loss of biodiversity, potential dangers to human health, loss of income and opportunities for small farmers, and control of the world food supplies by a few big seed companies.

GUINEA PIGS IN A GE EXPERIMENT?

While there are serious doubts about how rigorous governments are in their testing requirements for biotechnology products, critics also argue that the safety assessment methods available today are not sufficiently reliable, especially in the case of long-term effects.

It was decades before the full dangers of pesticides such as DDT were known, or the ability of BSE (the agent that causes ‘mad cow’ disease) to also infect humans.

Environmentalists demand that the precautionary principle — that these products are presumed guilty before they are ruled innocent — be followed, especially in the case of the new, relatively untested genetic engineering technology.

Fears that GM food is a “huge experiment with the human race as guinea pigs” are not totally unjustified. Tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers are some of the products now being produced on a vast scale.

In the United States and Canada, genetically engineered potatoes and corn, which produce their own pesticide, are on the market. The long-term effects for entire populations eating foods containing the insect toxin are unknown.

A long-suppressed U.S. Government memo dating to 1993 revealed an experiment in which 4 of 20 female rodents fed the FlavrSavr (a GM tomato now owned by Monsanto) suffered gross stomach lesions.

In the US, cows were given a genetically engineered hormone, rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), to produce more milk until fears of a link with breast cancer were reported.

No other country besides the U.S. has approved rBGH for use within its borders. Despite these revelations, Indian officials had plans to introduce rBGH, or BST (bovine somatostatin), for use in India.

Eating genetically engineered food containing antibiotic resistance genes, could transfer these genes to pathogenic bacteria, that could acquire resistance to valuable antibiotics and become a health hazard.

A number of observations have indicated this might indeed occur. Totally unrelated pathogens are now showing up with identical virulence and antibiotic resistance genes.

Most GM crops contain genes from non-food organisms including viruses, bacteria, insects and exotic animals.

It is possible that in crop plants engineered with viral-resistance genes, natural genetic recombination and other biological processes, could give rise to new viruses,that could cause famine by destroying crops, or cause virulent human and animal diseases, say scientists. These fears were reinforced when fragments of viral genes inserted into foods and fed to baby mice, were detected in the mice’s brain cells.

Genes from Brazil nuts introduced into a soybean, to improve its protein content, unknowingly transferred life-threatening allergens. With 2 percent of adults and 8 percent of children allergic to common foods, consumer advocates argue that GM foods need proper labelling.

Labelling GM food as such, will allow food buyers to choose for themselves whether or not to accept this risk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require labelling, but labelling of genetically engineered foods is required throughout Europe, and in Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

Insects are also being engineered to cause fatal abnormalities in crop pests or to be flying syringes that vaccinate people with every bite. Yet once released into the environment, the unintended side effects, or “biological pollution” from GM insects could lead to even greater problems than those they are intended to resolve.

For example, the delivery of vaccines by altered insects could not be controlled, leading to harmful or even deadly adverse reactions in sensitive people. Just this month, scientists reported that when they attempted to develop a vaccine by genetic engineering, they accidentally developed a deadly bioweapon instead.

A RECIPE FOR ECOLOGICAL DISASTER

GMOs pose the greatest risks to ecosystems, since they can become dynamic living parts of them. Our current knowledge does not provide us with the means to predict the long-term ecological effects of releasing organisms into the environment. Critics who worry that seeding farmland with transgenic food crops could spread genetic pollution and damage the biosphere are right, says environmentalist and author of “Biotech Century,” Jeremy Rifkin.

According to Rifkin, the risks in releasing these GM crops are similar to those in introducing exotic organisms, which could wreak havoc, as there is always a small chance that it will run amok. It’s the equivalent of letting the genie out of the bottle. Genetic pollution is irretrievable, as GMOs once released into an ecosystem, can never be recalled.

In field tests in Europe, genetically engineered rapeseed plants caused “biological pollution” and spread their mutant DNA characteristics to neighbouring plants. A researcher found that a gene had transferred from GM rapeseed to bacteria and fungi discovered in the gut of honeybees. Industry had previously claimed such a transfer was highly unlikely or impossible.

In September 2000, a GM maize variety (”Starlink”) banned in the USA for human consumption (because of fears of allergic reactions) but permitted as a livestock feed, showed up in taco shells served at Taco Bell restaurants. The Aventis variety raised new concerns about industry’s and government’s capacity to regulate and manage GM products.

In October 2000, the Taco Bell scandal spread to Kellogg’s corn flakes as the giant cereal company closed down one plant for fear that the illicit GE StarLink maize had infected breakfast cereals.

Crops engineered to produce their own pesticide have also been found to kill beneficial insects and pollinators such as monarch butterflies, ladybugs and honeybees. The pollen of the GE corn variety known as Bt corn, has been found to be toxic to monarch butterfly caterpillars.

A genetically engineered bacterium, Klebsiella planticola, killed wheat planted in test units. Another variety reduced, by half, the amounts of beneficial fungi crucial for nitrogen fixation in the soil. If such an organism survived readily and spread widely, it would be devastating, and would require expensive measures to control.

Companies are putting human and bovine genes into salmon in an attempt to produce super salmon. If these fish were released into the ecosystem, the “genetic pollution” they would introduce could destroy the species.

SUSTAINABLE FARMING UNDER THREAT

Plants engineered for survival and propagation in arid or marginal environments, have the potential to become noxious weeds. If the flow of genes from one plant species to another, mainly through cross-pollination, passed on these “weedy” characteristics to wild relatives of crop plants, the hybrid “superweeds” would resist the herbicides that were designed to kill them — something biotech companies have ignored as a remote or non-existent possibility.

In 1996, the transfer of a gene from a transgenic crop to a wild weed was indeed observed. Another study confirmed the organic farmer’s worst nightmare, revealing that GM crops have spawned a new generation of prolific and aggressive superweeds, with inherited resistance to herbicides.

Growing herbicide-tolerant GM crops requires the use of toxic weed-killers, and could result in the increased use of these herbicides, which could be harmful in itself. Widespread introduction of these crops and use of herbicides could wipe out indigenous plants, threatening many birds and insects that depend on them for food and cover.

Hence, rather than help wean agriculture from its dependence on toxic chemicals, herbicide-tolerant crops will perpetuate and extend the chemical pesticide era and its attendant human health and environmental toll, argue critics.

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a natural soil microorganism, is the world’s most important natural pesticide, used by organic and sustainable farmers worldwide to repel plant pests such as the potato beetle, cotton bollworm, or corn borer.

By making this natural pesticide an integral part of cotton and other crops, such as soybeans and corn, Monsanto and other biotech firms have hastened the evolution of Bt-resistant insects, like the diamondback moth, which is reported to have become resistant to the Bt toxin after prolonged exposure.

Widespread resistance would affect organic and low-input farming, which rely on the Bt toxin in its naturally occurring, bacterial form, and agriculture would then lose one of its safest, most valuable bio-control agents.

Genetic engineering, with its focus on high marketable yield, represents an extension of intensive, industrial agriculture, and therefore reinforces environmentally damaging, non-sustainable farming, say critics.

In the long term, it is incompatible with low-input, sustainable farming methods (e.g. Integrated Crop Management), say environmentalists. In addition, since GM crop plants are designed to yield a uniform product (monocultures), promoting them will further aggravate the worldwide loss of agricultural biodiversity, and displace and eradicate traditional cultivated varieties with greater genetic diversity and potentially desirable traits. In India, with its great genetic and specific diversity of crop plants, all these ecological risks will be felt most poignantly.

GE V/S TRADITIONAL BREEDING

The proponents of genetic modification in agriculture, use two main arguments to justify it. Firstly, they argue, only GE crops can meet the needs of the world’s ever expanding population in a sustainable and environmentally conscientious manner.

This claim is unproven, whereas extensive studies have shown that with better management of resources and minimal chemical inputs, yields can be tripled using conventional crops.

A second, more fundamental point is that GE represents a natural extension of traditional breeding methods, only it is more precise and safer. Critics like molecular biologist Michael Antoniou, would say that this is an oversimplification of the way genes work.

Antoniou explains that genes have evolved to exist and work in families. Therefore, the claim that the reductionist approach of GE, which moves one or a few genes between unrelated organisms, is a precise technology, is highly questionable.

With traditional breeding methods, different variations of the same genes in their natural context are exchanged. This preserves tight control and complex inter- relationships between genetic and protein functions that are vital for integrity of life as a whole.

On the other hand, GE of animals and especially plants, always results in a loss of the tight genetic control and balanced functioning which is retained through conventional cross breeding. It is the imprecise way in which genes are combined and the unpredictability in how the foreign gene will behave, that results in uncertainty, he says.

REAPING A BITTER HARVEST

Agricultural biotechnology is being sold as a solution to world hunger. But the performance of GE crops has not held up to the exaggerated claims of crop companies.

Although genetic engineers like to claim that genetic engineering is an “exact science,” field results tell a different story, and GE crops have produced very variable yields. In the US as well as globally, a pattern of agricultural biotech failures have emerged.

“Data from across the world shows that small farms which base their agriculture on many different sorts of farming can be five or 10 times more productive per unit than large monocultural farms,” says Dr. Vandana Shiva.

A study of “sticky” rice varieties in China and the Philippines showed that planting a number of diverse varieties increased yields by 89 percent while reducing disease by 98 percent. Their conclusion: diversity outperforms genetically uniform GM varieties.

Greenpeace argues that in a predominantly agrarian economy like India’s, a monopolistic hold over the farmers’ seed systems could have a “devastating impact” on small farmers.

The lack of corporate liability or responsibility in the case of contamination of seeds by genetically manipulated varieties is another issue of serious concern, as it would intensify the risk of genetic pollution of India’s agro-ecosystems, critics say.

In November 2000, the first meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Ethics Panel (a group of world-renowned agronomists and ethicists) concluded that GM crops are risky, Terminator technology is immoral; and that patenting genes and other genetic material leads to crop genetic erosion and unacceptable monopoly.

BACKDOOR ENTRY FOR BIOTECH?

At the recent Bright Sparks Biotechnology tour organised by the British Council in India, several proponents of GE spoke to invited audiences of biotech professionals and scientists, often in closed sessions.

“It is alarming to see the manner in which a number of institutions and forums such as these are being indiscriminately used to promote GMO’s. Simultaneously, due to very little public awareness on the issue, there is no real debate,” said Michelle Chawla, Greenpeace’s Genetic Engineering Campaigner in India. “There is an urgent need to demystify the issue of GMO’s to enable citizens to understand and raise issues in forums like this one,” she added.

“In India, the Government has already declared biotechnology as a flagship program and is actively promoting field testing of Monsanto’s genetically modified cotton.

Despite an ongoing Supreme Court case questioning the legality of Monsanto’s initial application for field testing, the Ministry of Environment and Forests recently granted permission not only for field testing, but also for seed production.

This is in total disregard of the irreversible environmental and human health risks and despite the glaring absence of the capacity to respond adequately to genetic pollution,” says a press release from Greenpeace.

The influential Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) recently recommended that India’s Supreme Court decide the issue of applying products of genetic engineering, in the wake of the uprooting of Monsanto-Mahyco’s cotton plants from a farmer’s plot in Karnataka.

India is yet to have laws requiring that GE products are suitably labelled to warn an unsuspecting public, as in many other countries. Like many developing countries, we lack the technical, financial, and institutional capacity to address biosafety issues.

The possible dangers of genetic engineering are too real to ignore. Its time we as consumers took measures to learn about them, and to demand our right to the kind of choices that will best protect our health and preserve bio-resources for future generations.

The idea was to learn the special technology & to renew the bhonga building — which has proved to be the most suitable to this area. This report is a first-hand account of their experience.

When thousands of cement and bricks building collapsed, the bhongas stayed solid in the earthquake of 26 January this year. The first cement building in the village was a temple, built eight years before, in 1993, after long exertions of the village elders and a few rituals to satisfy the village goddess.

The seeds of project took root when we read the book “Mud, Mirror and Thread” by Judy Frater, an anthropologist who live in Kutch & documented the Rabaris’ life for years. 10 years ago Judy started a trust called “KalaRaksha” which helps to preserve the traditional art and craft of villages in the area.

Those activities made us think “if you can preserve arts like embroidery or leather work why can’t you preserve the art of bhonga building or mud furniture building which are so special to this area and were forgotten for eight years.”

Tal decorates the mud furniture 

In 22 days, with the guidance of Rajabahi, Lachiben, their family and friends, and of course, the contacts and translation of Judy Frater, we had a bhonga built the same way it was built hundreds of years ago.

In the next bhonga, we practiced the decoration of the famous rabari furniture made out of mud and donkey dung and decorated with reliefs of village life, geometric shapes and mirrors like in their well-known embroideries.
 
The entire process was documented by photographer’s stills and video, the result is a research contains 4000 slides, 28 video hours and dozens of drafts, text pages and pictures documenting the process of the bhonga and furniture building. 

Village children and us in guests’ Bhonga

Lachiben & Walluben in the Bhonga 

The building starts with the breaking of a coconut and drinking its milk as a good luck blessing.

Then we draw a 5.20 m diameter circle on the ground (the nail that used for the center is used later as a mark for the center pole) then we start building layers of wet black mud brought from the creek nearby to make the building easier and quicker.

Rajabahi suggested we use chunks of mud covered with mud dough, which we mixed nearby. Usually it is the woman who builds the entire structure. This time men were allowed to work, but only in certain jobs and places.
 
During the building of the walls (which were 60 cm thick) we inserted two windows (in opposite directions, one directed to the wind and the other is near the stove) one door, kitchen cabinet and cantilevered shelves. Half of the bhonga outline was built with a low mud podium for the furniture.

After building for seven days and till about 185 cm high (which were measured by holding the palm over the head and circling the bhonga ) the bhonga was ready for the special stucco made from 2/3 sand and 1/3 black mud, the process which was taught by two experts.
 

Bhonga walls before lippan (mud and sand stucco) 

Villagers working on the bhonga

 The work is done with bare hands, which create beautiful patterns on the inner and outer walls. The last layer is white mud - Caulin - brought from a distant place and mixed with water to give the bhonga a white bright look.

Building the roof started with a trip to the next town Mandvi, to purchase wood beams, central pole and about 5000 palm branches for the roof cover.

In another place, we purchased the final grass cover, which was to be the last layer of the roof.
 
On returning to the village, the carpenter (from Tunda) was waiting to place the central pole and to connect the eight circular beams to the centerpiece made by him earlier.

The next four days were the men’s days for putting the roof together, first by tying an inner and outer spiral of young palm branches and then inserting between them the other branches. The end layers are grass to prevent water from entering.

 
The last layer of palm branches

After 22 days of building and knowing the people of Kutch we left for Ahmedabad and then returned home. Nine months later we heard about the horrible disaster in Kutch. As we were trying to get information about the people and places we found out that most of the bhongas survived even when the nearby “pukka” houses collapsed.

Now a month and a half later, we believe it is time to think of the future by using more neutral, strong and flexible materials in the new houses of villages in Kutch. Perhaps a combination between traditional methods with modern knowledge and techniques will prove to be the best nature-preserving solution.

The KalaRaksha trust is putting together a project of rehabilitation of six villages of the trust artists. The project combines adoption of villages by outside groups conducting planning research and funding and work done by the villagers in building and continues with art work which will be sold in the U.S.A. and Europe by KalaRaksha to finance the entire project.

——————————————————————————–

The project was sponsored and executed by:
Lavie-Amir, Architects, Israel
Tal Bashan, Environmental designer
Rami Arnold, Photographer
Dalit Ziv, Director - Tel Aviv
Amnon Zelayet, Video photographer

The authors are a group of architects and designers from Israel involved (among other things) in projects of sustainable and traditional architecture in Israel and around the world. They have offered their expertise and cooperation to anyone who plans to rebuild villages or houses in the area. They now plan a 40 unit village in the desert of Israel. In the middle of the open area they have built a cultural & community center, constructed by the community itself from mud, wood & palm branches.

They can be contacted at Yuval@architecteam.co.il

A slide show of the actual process of building a bhonga can be viewed at their website http://www.architecteam.co.il (Click on the “Environment” link and then on “Mud hut”).

What led him to the idea was his interest in Space exploration and awareness of the March Equinox, nature’s primary day of global equilibrium.

In 1971 UN Secretary General U. Thant rang the United Nations Peace Bell on March 21, 1971. This began the annual celebration of Earth Day at the United Nations.

But whether it is celebrated on the vernal equinox or on April 22, the purpose of Earth Day is to provide an annual date on which the whole world (people of every creed and culture) rededicate themselves to the care of Earth.

Earth Magna Charta - a document which discusses the ideals behind the campaign for earth as well as the action people should take.

Read The 77 Theses - the Principles and Policies that will foster the peaceful nurture and care of the Planet Earth

Find out about the history and significance of The Earth Flag and how to order one.

Earth Day In A Box: All the information you need to organize your own event, get involved, and help combat climate change.

Have kids? Get them started with these Earth Day resources for kids.

Tips to make it Earth Day Every Day. (pdf)

What you can do about Climate Change.

Anansi the spider knew that he was not wise. He was very clever, and could outwit many different people, but he knew that he did not have very much wisdom. This bothered him a great deal, but he did not know what to do about it. Then one day he had a clever thought. “I know,” he said to no one in particular, “if I can get all of the wisdom in the village and put it in a hollow gourd, I will be very wise indeed. In fact, I would be the wisest of all!”

Mr. Biopirate, of Developed Nations Inc., runs out of ideas and research grants in his First World lab. Comes prospecting in Third World country. Sees much wisdom in the traditional knowledge of native people. Dreams of the many dollars he can make if he takes it back to his own country.

So he set out to find a suitable gourd and then began his journey to collect the village’s wisdom. He went from door to door, asking everyone to give some of their wisdom. The people chuckled at poor Anansi, for they knew that of all the creatures, it was he that needed some wisdom the most. So each put a bit in his gourd and wished him well on his search.

Mr. Biopirate gets his act together and starts documenting all the native wisdom he can find in his quest to become “the rich and famous discoverer of the cure for terrible ailments.” The villagers are very co-operative with this man from a foreign country, having no inkling of his intentions and probably a bit flattered at his interest in their native plants.

Soon Anansi’s gourd was overflowing with wisdom and he could hold no more. He now needed to find a place to store it.

Mr. Biopirate gathers up all the plant samples he can get his hands on, and prepares to take them back to his developed country. Having got what he came for, he now searches for a good genetic and tissue repository in his First World laboratories, so he can store his precious samples safely.

“I am certainly the wisest person in the world now, but if I don’t find a good hiding place for my wisdom I may surely lose it.” He looked around and spotted a tall, tall tree. “Ah,” he said to himself, “if I could hide my wisdom high in that tree, I would never have to worry about someone stealing it from me!”

Mr. Biopirate starts working on a way to keep for himself all of the wonderful discoveries he stole from the native people of the Third World country. This way even the natives will have to pay for using them, thereby acknowledging his “discovery” of what they have known all along. He has even worked out a way of making this look all nice and legal. This method is called a product patent.

So Anansi set out to climb the towering tree.” He first took a cloth band and tied it around his waist. Then he tied the heavy gourd to the front of his belly where it would be safe. As he began to climb, however, the gourd full of wisdom kept getting in the way. He tried and tried, but he could not make progress around it.

Mr. Biopirate, finds that the natives, all this while oblivious to the theft of their knowledge, have suddenly woken up to the fact that they might have to pay a price to use the plants their ancestors have been using for thousands of years. They raise a ruckus, and with the help of a few politically-correct activist organisations, start a campaign to prevent Mr. Biopirate from getting his patent.

Soon Anansi’s youngest son walked by. “What are you doing Father?” asked the little spider. “I am climbing this tree with my gourd full of wisdom,” Anansi replied. “But Father,” said the son, “wouldn’t it be much easier if you tied the gourd behind you instead of in front?” Anansi sat there quietly for a very long time before saying, “Shouldn’t you be going home now?” The son skipped down the path and when he had disappeared, Anansi moved the gourd so that it was behind him and proceeded up the tree with no problems at all.

At his wits end, Mr. Biopirate meets with his high-priced lawers who advise him to forget the product patent, that would have got him so much money and fame, and settle for a process patent instead. The campaign dies down and is forgotten. But only until another pirate lays claim to more of the Third World treasures. Then it starts all over again.

When he had reached the top, he cried out, “I walked all over and collected so much wisdom that I am the wisest person ever, but still my baby son is wiser than me. Take back your wisdom!” He lifted the gourd high over his head and spilled its contents into the wind. The wisdom blew far and wide and settled across the land. And this is how wisdom came to the world.

Unfortunately, Anansi is a folktale, while the story of biopiracy is all too real (and does not end as happily). Will the Anansis of the modern world ever realise that the benefit of knowledge is in the sharing, not in the hoarding of wisdom?

——————————————————————————–

With apologies to the African people for having plagiarised their wonderful folktale.