[E-rundbrief] Info 754 - ETC: Who Owns Nature?

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 754 - ETC Group (CDN): Who Owns Nature? Report warns 
of corporate concentration, commodification of nature; highlights global 
resistance grounded in "Food Sovereignty".

Bad Ischl, 13.11.2008

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

Who Owns Nature?

ETC Group - News Release

November 13, 2008

www.etcgroup.org

New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of
nature; highlights global resistance grounded in "Food Sovereignty"

ETC Group today releases a 48-page report, "Who Owns Nature?" on
corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the
strategic push to commodify the planet's remaining natural resources.

In a world where market research is becoming increasingly proprietary
and pricey, ETC Group's report names names, discloses market share and
provides top 10 industry rankings up and down the corporate food
chain. Not all the corporations identified in ETC Group's new report
are household names, but collectively they control a staggering share
of the commercial products found on industrial farms, in our
refrigerators and medicine cabinets.

An international advocacy organization based in Canada, ETC Group has
been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for
the past 30 years. The report reveals that:

  From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions
three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of
global proprietary seed sales
  From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control
almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide
  From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now
account for three-quarters of industry revenues
The top 10 pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drug
market

With collapsing systems - eco, climate, food and financial - as the
backdrop, Who Owns Nature? warns that, with engineering of living
organisms at the nano-scale (a.k.a. synthetic biology), industry is
setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature.

"About one-quarter of the world's biomass has already been
commodified," explains ETC Group's Pat Mooney. "With extreme genetic
engineering, we're seeing new corporate strategies to capture and
commodify the three-quarters of the world's biomass that has, until
now, remained beyond the market economy."

Advocates of synthetic biology - the creation of designer organisms
built from synthetic DNA - are promising a post-petroleum future where
fuels, chemicals, drugs and other high-value products depend on
biological manufacturing platforms fuelled by plant sugars. In the
21st century "sugar economy," industrial production will be based on
biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues,
plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented and
converted into high-value products. Synthetic microbes will become
"living chemical factories" that require massive quantities of plant
biomass. ETC Group warns that corporations are poised to appropriate
and further commodify biological products and processes in every part
of the globe - as well as destroy biodiversity, deplete soil and water
and displace marginalized farmers.

ETC Group's report highlights similarities between the current
financial and food crises. "Corporate-controlled food systems,
suffering from decades of deregulation, have resulted in a cornucopia
of calamities making us sicker, fatter and more vulnerable," says
ETC's Research Director Hope Shand. Ongoing food contamination
scandals, the global obesity burden and ocean "dead zones" caused by
fertilizer pollution are among the food chain disasters cited in Who
Owns Nature? "Unhealthy and hazardous food products are constant
reminders of a corporate food chain broken to bits," adds Shand.

Governments are working hand-in-hand with corporations to deny the
root causes of the crises and sidestep structural reforms. "Despite
the implications for democracy and human rights, no international body
exists to monitor global corporate activity and no UN body has the
capacity to monitor and evaluate emerging technologies," says ETC
Group's Kathy Jo Wetter. "The ongoing food emergency and imploding
global economy testify to the need for monitoring and oversight of
corporations, as well as social control of powerful new technologies."

Who Owns Nature? reports on daunting  trends in corporate
concentration and technology convergence, but it also points to a very
different reality and a powerful contrast to the corporate-controlled
life sciences. Although a single company - Monsanto - accounts for
almost one-quarter of proprietary seed sales, about three-quarters of
the world's farmers routinely save seed from their harvest and grow
locally-bred varieties. Wal-Mart may be the world's largest buyer and
seller of retail food, but 85% of global food is consumed close to
where it is grown - much of it outside the formal market system.

"There is vast and growing resistance to the dislocation and
devastation caused by the agro-industrial food system," points out
Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. "In the global struggle for Food
Sovereignty, the playing field isn't level, but the scope of
resistance is massive - peasant farmers, fisher people, pastoralists
and allied civil society and social movements are fighting for locally
controlled and socially just food and health systems."


To download the full report: www.etcgroup.org
For more information, contact:
Pat Mooney, ETC Group etc at etcgroup.org, mobile: +1 613 261-0688
Hope Shand, ETC Group hope at etcgroup.org, +1 919 960-5223
Kathy Jo Wetter, ETC Group kjo at etcgroup.org, +1 919 960-5223
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group silvia at etcgroup.org, +52 55556326 64


ETC Group is an international civil society organization based in
Ottawa, Canada. We conduct research, education and advocacy on issues
related to the social and economic impacts of new technologies on
marginalized peoples - especially in the global South. We look at
issues from a human rights perspective but also address global
governance and corporate concentration. All ETC Group publications are
available free of charge on our website: www.etcgroup.org


-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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