We live in a Poisoned Civilization. The Planet is on the sick bed. With up to one million species gone extinct and many of the remaining ones under threat, it is clear that things have gone terribly wrong. While it is known that humans are largely responsible for the harms brought on the Planet, we do not seem to care about halting the predatory relationship with other beings, simply because business as usual is so profitable to the drivers of the destruction.
Civilization ought to mean progress, sophistication, advancement and refinement but is that where we are today? If advancement means oppression, militarisation, violence, destruction and a reign of intergenerational injustices, then humans are living in a state of willing delusion. You may call it a state of willing blindness. In an age of threats of the Planet being burnt up, humans stubbornly insist on continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy. In a time when it is clear that species are being wiped out in droves, humans insist that progress means entrenching agricultural modes steeped in poison.
It appears we are stuck on the fatal track because of layers of corporate blindfolds placed over the eyes of policy makers across much of the world. The interrelatedness of lives on the Planet is not a matter for debate. When a part of the web of life is interfered with by humans, other parts get affected. The war against insects gave rise to the production of chemical insecticides. The war against unwanted plants gave rise to the production of herbicides. Profit-driven industrial agriculture continues to poison the species on the Planet and yet the push is to carpet the world with more of the toxic broths.
A recent report by the Inter Governmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that “Rapid expansion and unsustainable management of croplands and grazing lands is the most extensive global direct driver of land degradation, causing significant loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services – food security, water purification, the provision of energy and other contributions of nature essential to people. This has reached ‘critical’ levels in many parts of the world…” The IPBES report also warned that, “With negative impacts on the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, the degradation of the Earth’s land surface through human activities is pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction.”
Science decorated with corporate interests must not be allowed to trump good sense. The fear mongering by proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that we cannot feed ourselves without their dangerous products and that those opposed to their trade are anti-development, anti-science and anti -national interests must be discountenanced as blatant nonsense.
The war on insects is a war on other species. It is known, for example, that much of our food production depends on the agency of insects who facilitate production through pollination. The effect of the use of poisons in agriculture is already known to have greatly decimated the population of bees in the world. It is so bad in some places that farmers have to rent beehives in order to enjoy the services of the creatures and ensure good harvests on their farms.
Today, humans do not only dump insecticides or poisons on croplands, crops are genetically engineered to be insecticides themselves, killing intended and unintended insects. Today, crops are genetically engineered to withstand specific poisons labelled herbicides ostensibly to eliminate the drudgery of weeding on farms, reduce competition with unwanted plants and increase the harvest for farmers and investors. Humans have advanced to the point when extinction is actually being engineered in the laboratory in a technology known as gene drives. The extinction or exterminator technology, for example, aims to deliberately drive or force a genetic trait through entire species in such a way that reproduction ends up yielding off springs of a particular sex, for example and over a period of time wipes out that species. Experiments are being cooked up against mosquitoes and will be unleashed in Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire. No one loves mosquitoes, especially the malaria parasite carrying ones, but these experiments are simply a foot in the door towards teasing out the efficacy of a technology that can easily disrupt ecological balances and can rapidly be weaponized.
Let us return to the horrors of farming with deadly poisons. Landmark legal decisions are being made in the United States of America (USA) over the impact of Bayer-Monsanto’s famous herbicide, Roundup. A few days ago, a jury awarded $2 billion in damages against the company for cancer suffered by a couple who were exposed to the herbicide in that country. Court findings suggested that the presence of glyphosate, a major ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup, in food supply has a link to increased level of more severe cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the USA. In the course of the legal tussle, lawyers showed members of the jury heaps of materials said to show how the manufacturers of the herbicide are manipulating scientific literature, ghost-writing scientific review papers and getting them published and cited as authoritative by policy making agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of that country. In the midst of the legal fights, the EPA issued a new approval for the deadly herbicide.
Nigerians should be worried about the prevalence of the herbicide, Roundup, in our markets. We should also worry that approvals for field trails of crops genetically engineered to withstand this same herbicide are ongoing in our country. Monsanto-Bayer claims that the chemical is safe when applied as prescribed by them. The right way to apply the chemical includes being suited up as though you were headed for a space flight. With lax industrial practices, our farmers are not following those prescriptions. Even with the best adherence to the prescriptions in the USA, the results are now out that farmers and others that are exposed to the poison are not safe.
The war against weeds is a war that requires delicate consideration. What is termed a weed in one community may actually be food elsewhere. The same applies to pests. Where an insect is a threat to a plant, it may be food for humans and other predators.
Science decorated with corporate interests must not be allowed to trump good sense. The fear mongering by proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that we cannot feed ourselves without their dangerous products and that those opposed to their trade are anti-development, anti-science and anti -national interests must be discountenanced as blatant nonsense. The unfolding guilty verdicts in the courts of the USA should be early warning signs to us all.
We have to wake up and eliminate the poisons from our markets and farms. We must wake up and demand an end to permitting crops engineered to be cultivated with these poisons. It is time to make global peace with the Earth, recognize her rights and that of all other threatened inhabitants. The way to the future must be poison and fossil fuel free and we have to pave the pathways today.