Month: January 2020

GMOs, Herbicides – Ambush in the Night

Moi moi
Moi moi wrapped in leaves, not plastics!

The tide of GMOs and deadly herbicides creeps on unsuspected consumers as they are literally being ambushed in the night. Twenty countries, including Togo and Malawi, have placed a ban on the use of glyphosate containing herbicides based on health and environmental concerns. Togo recently joined the ranks of countries that have banned the herbicides after two years of intense debates. According to that country’s minister of Agriculture, the such herbicides already in the country must be used up or destroyed within 12 months.

While we regret that the ban ought to have meant an immediate halt to the use of the herbicides, we believe there is a lesson to be learned here by Nigerian authorities. Glyphosate, as an active ingredient in herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready which is widely used as a weed killer around the world, have been named a cancer-causing agent. Thousands of plaintiffs have sued the makers of these herbicides due to impacts suffered through exposure to them. Probably the most well-known case is that of Dewayne Johnson who was awarded US$289 million that was later reduced to US$78million for harms suffered.

In many of the cases, the key arguments include that the manufacturers of the harmful herbicides did not adequately warn consumers and users of the associated cancer risks. Concerns raised in Nigeria as NBMA opened the avalanche of GMO approvals was initially met with the explanation from Monsanto that the chemicals are safe if used according to specifications. It can readily be seen that the caveat was given with the knowledge that the average Nigerian farmer is not likely to read the fine letters on the packages or to wear space suits before spraying their farms with the poisons.

While Togo has declared a total ban of herbicides with glyphosate, such herbicides are quite commonplace in Nigeria. They are freely sold and some even have certification from NAFDAC.

Nigerians should worry because certain crops approved in Nigeria are genetically engineered for the application of the cancer-causing herbicides.

Ministers of Agriculture appear to be stepping up to the challenge concerning the threats posed by harmful chemicals and the genetically engineered crops necessitating their production. The position of the Togolese minister and the government on these glyphosate-based chemicals must be applauded. The position will not only protect farmers who are bound to be directly exposed to the chemicals but will also protect consumers who would eat crops with the residues of the chemicals.

The other minister that stepped the plate is that of Ghana. With a bold headline, “National well-being wins over foreign interests as gov’t ditches GMOs, a report announced that the government of Ghana, through the Minister of Food and Agriculture announced the terminating of imposition of GMOs on farmers in the country. The minister was paraphrased to have said that “the nation has capable scientists who could use traditional breeding methods to produce high yielding varieties and disease resistant plants for cultivation by farmers and no need for GMOs in the next 100 years in Ghana.”

The Ghanaian groups rejected the use of their people as guinea pigs in an unnecessary experimentation. Today they will probably rest easy that the Nigerian government has taken the lead in using her citizens as guinea pigs for this sad experiment.

Peasant farmers and civil society groups responded to the declaration by urging institutions, persons and groups “benefiting from proceeds from Monsanto to promote GMO in Ghana to rather join Ghanaian scientists and farmers to promote the local seed industry”

While Ghanaians celebrated the “defeat” of GMOs in their country, a major civil society group in the country, Food Sovereignty Ghana, cautioned that the battle is not yet over. They hinged this position on the fact that government is still defending the impending release of Bt cowpea, GM rice and Bt cotton in court. The next hearing on the case comes up on 30 January 2020. Food Sovereignty Ghana and others had sued the government of Ghana represented by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the National Biosafety Authority and the Attorney-General’s Department to stop the commercial release of these crops.

When the case against the release of the genetically engineered cowpea (beans) first went to court in Ghana in 2015, no country in the world had authorized the release of the variety for human consumption. The promoters of the GM beans declare that they cannot be visually distinguished from their natural counterpart and point to this as a mark of substantial equivalence. It is not rocket science to know that things may look alike without being the same. They may indeed have special genetic characteristics that makes their patentable as unique, as the situation with the GM beans is. Promises of labelling is trash when we consider our socio-cultural context, especially in terms of processing, storage, marketing and consumption of local foods. Selling the idea of labeling GM beans and other local crops can be compared to accepting to be ambushed in the night (apologies to Bob Marley).

The Ghanaian groups rejected the use of their people as guinea pigs in an unnecessary experimentation. Today they will probably rest easy that the Nigerian government has taken the lead in using her citizens as guinea pigs for this sad experiment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rebranding the Cabal

ChangeThe cabal toga is not one most people wish to wear in public. In recent months, we have seen concerted efforts to redefine the cabal as a political concept in order to give it a palatable connotation. In spirited pronouncements on popular television talk shows, we have been told that there is actually a cabal in the presidency but that it is not made up of mean people. The public has been told that ‘members of the “cabal” in the presidency are not hungry individuals and do not deserve the public criticism they get”. In other words, they are doing us a whole lot of good. The only problem is that we do not know this fact.

While stating that the cabal does not have undue influence on the president, a spokesperson decried the attitude of Nigerians to persons who have the president’s ears without occupying public offices. He said, ‘Nigerians have formed the practice of labelling people that are in some advisable positions of the president as a cabal. People (cabals) should not be labelled negatively simply because they have offered themselves to support the president of this country.’

The spin train went as far as saying that there are cabals in every government but that on other shores, they are daintily called kitchen cabinets. Hear this: ‘Elsewhere, they call it “kitchen cabinet,” but in our own country, we are being derogatory, and we term them cabals so that it will tarnish their own good standing.’

It does appear, however, that the so-called kitchen cabinets in some countries are an inner circle of staff or other officials. In other words, such kitchen cabinets are made up of officials. However, in some countries like the USA, the term is used for unofficial advisers. A dictionary defines such a kitchen cabinet as a ‘group of unofficial advisers to a political leader, especially when considered to be more influential than the official cabinet.’

When a political leader heavily relies on an unofficial circle of advisers to the detriment of the officially appointed ones, we can be certain that this has an effect on the contributions of the real cabinet to governance in any country. Citizens of such countries have every cause to worry because the official advisers and ministers are accountable to the people whereas the kitchen cabinet is not. While the official advisers would be expected to operate within the framework of the government’s agenda and within the confines of codes regulating their activities, the kitchen cabinet has no such restraints.

There have been stories of governors who have commissioners as mere sounding boards, or rather, as mere acoustic boards set up to absorb sounds. When they are assembled in executive meetings, all they have to do is to sit and endure hours of drivels by the emperors or governors. Some are said to spend hours sleeping in the hallowed executive chambers while the emperor is fiddling somewhere and while the states burn. Official advisers whose wisdom is needed by no one are as disempowered as you can imagine and are forced to continuously guard their pronouncements or steps as they could easily go on the path that the kitchen cabinet would frown at. In such situations, the states have been said to be blatantly run by cabals or delicately put, kitchen cabinets.

Cabals turn official advisers into puppets or dummies who have little or no authority. However, you can be sure that this is not what the defenders of the cabal are saying.

A look at various dictionaries consistently yield rather uncomfortable depictions of what and who the cabal is. Calling them kitchen cabinets is a huge leap in branding. One depiction is that a cabal ‘is a group of people united in some close design, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, state, or other community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those outside their group.’ There you are. A cabal promotes its private views, desires and designs. Private views. They are neither elected nor do they represent the people. By official definitions, they are said to be purveyors of intrigues. That excludes the interests of the citizenry.

The first use of the word is said to have been in the 17th Century England where it described any secret or extralegal council of the king. The Merriam-Webster dictionary captures the cabal as ‘the contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot ( as to overturn a government); also a group engaged in such schemes.’

Mnguember Vicky Sylvester portrays the cabal in her book of short stories -The Cabals and the Naked Dance- as a clique said to be running government and the country’s resources. That is a hot combination in the Nigerian context. The fictional cabal would not only be whispering into the ears of the helmsmen in power, they would also be grasping at the nation’s natural resources. When that is done without popular accountability, ecological damage of horrendous proportions must ensue.

It is indeed a tough job, branding the cabal as a kitchen cabinet. The two are best kept apart as the genetic makeup of the cabal is stronger than any hardwood that may be utilised in fabricating a kitchen cabinet.

Where a cabal thrives, mistrust spreads like a cancer. Their presence places political spokespersons in very difficult situations and can seriously hamper their performance, effectiveness and public perceptions. This situation confers sinister implication to every action or events, including for example the overturning of Imo State’s gubernatorial election result by the Supreme Court of Nigeria. A panel of seven judges made that decision, but while the nation waits to hear the reasoning behind the disruptive decision, the stories in town are that a cabal is at work, pushing an agenda that is a prelude to something more ominous. This is one reason why no one needs a cabal in the corridors of power.

Fires, Missiles and Climate Change

fires2These days no one can ignore the sad stories of Fires, Missiles and Climate Change. Watching a video of a cyclist offering water to a koala on highway in Australia, then helping it up a tree on the side of the highway was so touching. The animal turned around and waved back as the man turned to leave. Other photos of people helping scared animals have been posted on social media and they all indicate the basic human instinct of love for all species, human and non-human. There are various estimates of the number of animals that have perished in the inferno in Australia. We will never know the exact figure because some species may never have been known to humans. However, we are told that up to 500 million animals and birds may have perished. Some of the species may even be pushed to extinction.

There are loses of trees and plant varieties besides the animals and birds. We have seen posts of valiant efforts to protect gum trees by my friend Cam Walker of Friends of the Earth, Melbourne. On 4 January 2020, Walker made this Facebook post of the stress of defending the trees: “I am trying to sleep but I’m so wired. We were fighting the fire at Dinner Plain today. It was a monster. It sounded like a jet engine as it came up the hill and we were ordered to evacuate. I was gutted, more than I can say. We waited 2 hours at Mt. Hotham and were given the OK to go back in. I expected we would find the place burnt to the ground. Some of the fire was horrendously hot, but lots of old snow gums survived. And the village of Dinner Plain was completely unburnt. It felt like an absolute miracle.”

It has been tragic for so many animals. Photos of burnt sheep and other animals trapped in the raging fires are so heart wrenching. Even so, I could not but think of people setting fire on bushes in Nigeria so as to scare, kill and eat escaping rabbits, rodents and other animals. No matter what love Nigerians may have for game, it is doubtful that anyone would celebrate the sort of wildfires that have ravaged Australia in recent weeks.

In the 19th Century, some camels were introduced into Australia, from India and Afghanistan, for the purpose of using them for transportation and in construction. They were thereafter released into the wild. Today, there are 1.2 million camels in the country, and they are wreaking havoc on some communities, breaking fences and seeking water from taps, troughs and air conditioners. Reports have it that 10,000 of these camels will be shot from helicopters and the carcases may be left to dry off before they are either burned or buried. They are being slaughtered because they drink too much water.

Think of how easy leaders of nations can set these off to annihilate populations of innocent people. Think of the horrors of human suffering orchestrated by war. Then ask yourself: all that to what ends? Think about how these funds could be spent on cultural exchanges and on building solidarity across the world, sharing love and shedding less tears. Then ask yourself: why not?

Due to its rather remote location, Australia has had to import other animals into their country. Camels were imported for their utility, but rabbits were said to have been imported to bring a touch of home to the territory. We are told that Thomas Austin imported 24 rabbits from England to Victoria, Australia in the 1850s on the justification that “the introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting.” In less than one hundred years, the rabbit population had risen to an estimated 10 billion. The population was eventually reduced to 100 million by biological control through the introduction of the virus-disease, myxomatosis. That was after trapping, shooting, poisoning and fencing had failed. In fact, from 1901 a rabbit proof fence was built and by 1905 stretched 1,166 kilometres from Point Ann on the south coast through Cunderdin to stem the advancement of the spreading rabbits. There are currently about 200 million rabbits in that country, although a chunk of that must have been killed by the fires.

Some species are also exported to other countries from Australia. What readily comes to mind here is some species of the water guzzling eucalyptus trees. And you can throw in the kangaroo. Rabbits, camels and trees are all visible and efforts can be made to check their spread. When genetically modified or even gene drive organisms are released into the environment, they cannot be identified by physical observation and checking their spread is virtually impossible. This is one reason why we must not allow open, or surreptitious, introduction of those artificial varieties whose impacts on humans and on the environment are not fully understood at this time.

Fires in Australia remind us all of how catastrophic climate change can get if real action is not urgently taken. The threat of droughts and extreme heat will not disappear on its own if we keep digging and burning fossil fuels. Another lesson is that we all share Planet Earth and there is no immediate ways of escaping to another planet. Both polluting and vulnerable nations are in this boat together.

As we write this, the world is watching as threats of escalated conflict between the USA and Iran fills the air. The human cost of war cannot be computed in monetary terms. The vast expenditure on armaments is quite horrendous when climate deniers and polluting nations shrink away from financing climate action and paying for current and historically inflicted loss and damage. Think of the cost of one military drone and the accompanying missile. Think of how easy leaders of nations can set these off to annihilate populations of innocent people. Think of the horrors of human suffering orchestrated by war. Then ask yourself: all that to what ends? Think about how these funds could be spent on cultural exchanges and on building solidarity across the world, sharing love and shedding less tears. Then ask yourself: why not?

 

Climate Change Cooked Africa (in 2019)

Solitary tree, Kano
Solitary Tree @ Dawakin Tofa, Kano. photo by Babawale Obayanju (www.tellthatstory.com.ng) 

2019 was a year of extreme weather events spread across the world. Sweltering heat hit much of the world. Raging wildfires were recorded in Brazil, Bolivia, Australia and the United States of America. Massive floods ravaged even cities like Venice, famed to be able to handle floods.

Climate change was implicated in exposing over 33 million Africans (spread across Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya) to food insecurity emergencies. The food situation has been compounded by the erosion of food sovereignty due to the loss of biodiversity. Violent conflicts and poverty add another dimension to the dire situation and raises the number of the vulnerable to over 52 million.

Southern Africa warmed at two times the global rate and experienced two massive cyclones in March and April leading to a loss of over 1000 lives. Having two cyclones in one season was a record. The intensity and upward reach of the cyclones on the South Eastern coastline also broke the records. Cyclones Idai and Kenneth impacted close to 3 million persons. Some researchers tie the cyclones to the warming of the Indian Ocean. If this is true, we can expect more cyclones as well as the devastation of marine ecosystems in the region.

If parts of Africa warm at double the global average, it means that if the global 1.5 degrees Celsius target of the Paris Agreement is achieved, we can expect a 3 degrees scenario in Africa. And, if the “well below” 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase above preindustrial level is the result of lack of ambition, Africa will be cooked at over 4 degrees Celsius. We note also that the global lack of ambition or readiness to seriously tackle global warming and the aggregation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) already points at over 3 degrees Celsius temperature rise – sentencing pasts of Africa to a calamitous roasting.

Southern Africa warmed at two times the global rate and experienced two massive cyclones in March and April leading to a loss of over 1000 lives. Having two cyclones in one season was a record. The intensity and upward reach of the cyclones on the South Eastern coastline also broke the records.

Within the year, the continent experienced a high level of climate induced refugees and migrations. Some of these refugees are internally displaced while many, seeking to escape the clutches of the disaster, lost their lives in the Sahara Desert or in the Mediterranean Sea.

The shrinkage of Lake Chad and the attendant social upheavals are already very well known. From a size of over 25,000 square kilometres in the 1960s, the lake measures a mere 2,500 square kilometres today. What caught the attention of the world towards the end of 2019 is the shrinkage of Victoria Falls to mere trickles due to disastrous droughts in the region.

In addition to the floods, droughts, deforestation, food shortages, violence complicates and escalates the problems. Floods displaced hundreds of thousands in Somalia within the year. It is known that disasters happen when hazards meet vulnerability.  Things cannot get worse than when you live in an unstable society, with violence knocking on the door and then climate change steps in.

In the same year, Nigerians, though warned of impending floods, could do nothing to stem the tide when they arrived. Storms and cyclones brought deadly floods that hit Angola, Namibia, Uganda, South Africa, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville. More than half a million people were affected by floods in Ethiopia and in South Sudan. According to reports, entire communities were submerged by floods, destroying basic services, markets and farms. Floods between August and October affected more than 420,000 people in Sudan with 78 people dead and 49,500 homes destroyed.

There are genuine reasons for anger at the inability of the multilateral system to address the climate challenge in a serious manner. Things have gone so bad it has taken the rising of kids to call out dithering adults before they could even come up with fictive false solutions. Vulnerable nations, including those in Africa were forced into a deadlock over Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. That article is the sword that fossil fuel interest groups foisted on the Planet.

The Article 6 promotes approaches that will help governments to implement their NDCs through voluntary international cooperation. The Article seeks to establish a policy foundation for a carbon emissions trading system, that allows polluters to buy the license to continue polluting from less polluting nations. The fossil fuels industry and partner nations love this article because it would require nothing but a monetary exchange for their climate sins. The point is this: the polluters have the cash and the vulnerable could receive the cash, but the Planet will suffer. The first step is to halt extracting and burning new fossil fuels. Next step is a planned systemic change. The alternative will be a chaotic change for those that may survive!

Science informs that the world cannot afford to open new fossil fuel mines or fields. This sector is responsible for 80 percent of all carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Rather than halt the extraction of the climate harming fuels, the industry is set to invest US$ 1.4 trillion in new oil and gas projects between 2020 and 2024. It is estimated that this will yield 50 percent more fossil fuels by 2030 and would drive the world to a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise.

A combination of factors places African nations in a tight corner and requires critical examination of the route forward. First is the fact that while African nations have contributed little to the depletion of the carbon budget, and have been quite ambitious in the NDCs, they are trapped in the catch-up narrative where they make the futile dash to be like the rich, industrialised and polluting nations. They push is for serious climate mitigation actions while ensuring high economic growth and development. Considering that economic growth and development in the current capitalistic and neoliberal framework propel climate change, it should be obvious that that is the wrong way forward.

2020 presents us opportunity to look back, hopefully not in anger. It presents us a moment to interrogate the notion of development and growth in a finite world. It also gives us a moment to deliberate on means of halting fossil fuels proliferation and how to secure a just cooperative future for our peoples. Oilwatch International has proposed that a group of Annex 0 nations be created in the UNFCCC as a means of promoting real climate action. Countries like Belize, Costa Rica, France, New Zealand can already be grouped here as they have halted fossil fuels extraction. Ogoniland can also be recognised as a community that has taken this action within Nigeria. A fossil fuels non-proliferation treaty has been proposed for the halting of a disaster that is more likely to happen than what triggered the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

2019 was a year that sounded a loud alarm. We chose to play hard of hearing. A quarter of a million Australians called attention to the disastrous fires ravaging that nation and petitioned for a halt of the elaborate fireworks to herald 2020. Their government responded that the fireworks had already been paid for and must continue. They did. A perfect example of how we are comfortable with “the normal”, no matter the circumstances or the consequences. The alarms have gone off everywhere. 2020 is the moment for reflection and action. Shall we wake up?