'Nano' fears spark campaigns

There is a growing movement against the unbridled and mostly secret use of nanomaterials in products when they have not been subjected to vigorous and open scientific testing. The Soil Association and the Consumer Association have both launched initiatives aimed at alerting the public to the dangers.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials at the scale of the nanometre – or one billionth of a metre, which is the scale of atoms and molecules. The ETC Group has pioneered work on the issue, showing that at the nanoscale there may be unpredictable changes to a substance’s conductivity, elasticity, strength, colour and tolerance to temperature and pressure. Some nanoparticles, it is feared, can slip past immune systems and even cross the blood-brain barrier undetected.

Particles approved for consumer products at the micro- or macro-sale are usually not tested again when introduced into the same products at the nanoscale, so their effects on health are unknown. Already hundreds of nanoscale particles are showing up in products as diverse as car parts, sunscreens, tennis balls, eyeglasses and, of course, the iPod “nano”. over 500 manufacturer-identified consumer products that contain nanomaterials are on the market.

The Soil Association this week announced that it is has banned human-made nanomaterials from the organic cosmetics, foods and textiles that it certifies. While the ban only affects organic production for goods certified in the UK, other organic certifiers worldwide are expected to follow suit. “We welcome this sensible move by the Soil Association and encourage other certifiers, companies and governments to follow their lead,” said Jim Thomas of ETC Group. “A decade ago the Soil Association led the way in creating a safe alternative to GM crops when they declared organic production to be GM-free and now they are trailblazing again – acting to protect the public from potential risks of engineered nanoparticles.”

At the same time, the Consumer Association, which publishes Which? magazine, is launching a campaign to protect the public from risky nanomaterials in consumer products. It is following the lead of the US Consumers Union which has called for mandatory labelling, regulatory oversight and increased funding for risk-related research.


In mid-2007 over 40 groups endorsed a statement of principles calling for precautionary action, manufacturer liability and new nano-specific regulations for nano-products. To date, says ETC Group, no government has enacted legislation to assess the safety or societal impacts of nanomaterials. This is hardly surprising, considering that powerful corporate interests are at stake here. A 2007 survey by 15 governments estimates there are at least 70 nanotech food-related applications already on the market. According to forecasts, the nanotechnology market for food and food processing could reach $20.4 billion by 2010, and most major food and beverage corporations are investing in nanotech R&D.

Under these conditions, no government is going to impose a tough regulatory framework. The corporations, as usual, are driven by the need to create new markets and products to satisfy shareholders. There is an urgent need to use science and technology in a different way, where health and environmental considerations come first. That will require the development of alternative, not-for-profit forms of ownership and control of production.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Profit mono-culture food threat

Transnational corporations, seeking profitable solutions to a post-oil world, are driving a change of land use that will outstrip all previous agricultural revolutions. It will bring billions of acres of land into new mono-cultures, pushing the planet’s water and soil resources beyond their limit. If allowed to continue, it will further intensify social inequality, hunger and global warming and inevitably lead to wars over land and water. The plans made by the US, China, India and the EU to create 15% of their energy needs from bio-fuels, have created a gadarene rush for profits across the globe. Food crops such as maize, sugar cane, palm oil and oil seed rape, instead of feeding the world’s growing population, are being switched to ethanol production to run cars. US farmers expect to sell 20% of the maize crop for ethanol this year.

The Indian government plans 35m acres (140,000 sq km) of bio-fuel crops and Brazil as much as 300m acres (1.2m sq km). Indonesia plans to increase palm oil production from 16m acres (64,000 sq km) now to 65m acres (260,000 sq km) in 2025. Much of it will be grown on recently-deforested land. Nowhere is the transformation going to be greater than in Southern Africa where there is much greater political and financial support for bio-fuel production than there ever was for food for people to eat. As much as 1bn acres (4m sq km) of land could be converted to bio-fuels and China, Brazil, and EU nations are investing in irrigation, cultivation technologies and production.

All of these activities will intensify carbon emissions. Soil that is currently lying fallow, as scrub, bush or jungle, acts as a carbon sink. Bringing it into production means it will start emitting carbon dioxide instead. Irrigating the new crops will deplete water resources. Sugar cane in Brazil evaporates approximately 2200 litres for every litre of ethanol produced. The kinds of intensive growing planned can only be achieved by the application of nitrates, increasing the level of these in soil and water. African communities currently relying on lake fishing face starvation as stocks die off. Aerial spraying of weed killer will threaten an area’s existing subsistence agriculture. And yet, all of these reckless developments are likely to be listed under the Kyoto protocol’s clean development mechanism. This is currently being changed to speed up the approval process for industrialised countries to fund bio-fuel projects in Africa to offset their own emissions targets.

Already world food prices are rising steeply because of a combination of poor harvests resulting from climate change and the sale of food crops for bio-fuel. The UN World Food Programme says the price of food aid increased 20% in just a year. Food prices in India have risen 11% in a year, in South Africa by nearly 17%, and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year. In the US, where nearly 40 million people are below the official poverty line, the Department of Agriculture recently predicted a 10% rise in the price of chicken. The prices of bread, beef, eggs and milk rose 7.5 % in July, the highest monthly rise in 25 years.

Only global capitalism, with its mono-culture of profit, could create a situation where the government-sanctioned response to dealing with climate change is a series of corporate-driven measures that will actually intensify emissions and at the same time threaten millions more people with hunger. Ending the corporate control of resources worldwide has to be the priority in order to create the conditions for a sustainable future.

Penny Cole
AWTW environment editor

A business friendly climate Bill

The Climate Change Bill is, above all, business friendly. In fact, it is so weak that a Commons committee this week published a damning indictment of the Bill, criticising all of its key proposals and accusing it of incoherence. The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) points out that while the government claims to be committed to actions that will contribute to keeping global temperature rises below 2 degrees centigrade, the targets set out in the Bill – the government is aiming for a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 - cannot possibly achieve that. As Dr Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre told the EAC: “The scientific evidence is that 60% is a nice idea and helps us to sleep a little bit at night, but it has very little to do with climate change… we need to go well beyond the 60%.”

The EAC also took on board the Tyndall Centre’s point that since CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 100 years, we are paying the price now for past failures. Reduction targets, the committee argued, should be steeper in the early years of the programme, as set out in the Stern review. But the government has no intention of adopting this approach, and it is clear why. The manufacturing employers’ federation in its evidence to the EAC welcomed the fact they are going to be given plenty of time before they have to make serious reductions, and argued that any requirement for steeper cuts should be delayed. So its is not so much incoherence that is the problem as the fact that this is a Climate Change Bill for business. It puts economic competitiveness and fiscal performance ahead of scientific knowledge and ahead of the lives of people in Britain.

For example, it says that targets will not be increased between now and 2050 even if it becomes clear that the measures taken are proving ineffective. They will only be changed if some new technology emerges that will make it easy to achieve greater reductions. And the new “independent” Climate Change Committee that is to be set up to monitor targets will mainly be drawn from business rather than science. As the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds told the EAC: “We are concerned that the first set of skills and experience that are being asked for relates to understanding of pure economics or of impacts on fiscal issues and poverty.” They suggested that perhaps an understanding of environmental issues might also be useful!

Furthermore, the criteria the new committee will be allowed to take into account when they monitor the government’s progress are competitiveness, fiscal impacts, impacts on public borrowing and taxation and so on. The only thing missing from the list is the growing impact of climate change! The EAC report concludes: “It is clear to us that the government will have to introduce more radical policies into its climate change programme very soon if it is to meet even the 2020 target as currently set. Current measures, including those introduced by the recent Energy White Paper, are only projected to get us nearly to the bottom end of 2020 target range – and this at what the Office of Climate Change described to us as ‘the upper end of optimism’.” Believing that this New Labour government is going to take any action to reduce emissions beyond that dictated by the needs of big business – now that’s the upper end of optimism!

Penny Cole, environment editor

Greenwash

A report by top scientists published yesterday in the magazine Nature, confirms that extreme weather events, including floods in the northern hemisphere, will become commonplace as a result of climate change. It is possible that quite soon, parts of Britain deepest down on flood plains will become uninhabitable.

And we can see from this year’s floods how the establishment will treat populations affected. Government inaction, unpreparedness and indifference to the plight of those affected. And of course, as has been seen in Gloucester, in emergencies it is the police and military who take charge. So these events will profoundly affect how we live and how we are ruled.

And while people are queing desperately for food and bottled water, they can consider the real purpose of the claims of corporation’s like Walmart that they are now “green businesses”.

Governments have opted out – that was the message from the G8 in Germany – they are going to leave climate change entirely to the market. And from the market, what we are getting is – Greenwash. It is business as usual, but with the addition of new range of commodities, all designed to increase profits.

There are even new financial products: Goldman Sachs markets “weather derivatives,” “renewable energy credits,” and other “climate-related commodities”, as well as trading in carbon.

In 2004, Al Gore teamed up with Goldman Sachs executives to establish the London-based environment investment firm Generation Investment Management (GIM). No wonder the one thing left out of his film was the role of the corporation’s in causing climate change.

• British Airways are offsetting on average 1,600 tonnes of emissions a year - the equivalent of four return flights to New York on a Boeing 777
• BP advertised it was moving "Beyond Petroleum" but will spend $5 billion over five years for oil exploration in Alaska alone
• Shell, with its slogan "Profits or Principles", spends a tiny 0.6% of its annual investments on renewable energy
• Cargill Dow has a new wonder fabric "NatureWorks PLA" (polylactic acid), made entirely from corn. But the source material is genetically engineered corn and parent company Cargill is the world's largest producer
• Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, Novartis, Zeneca, BASF and Aventis have launched the "Council for Biotechnology Information” which is spending up to $250 million over three years to try to convince the public that GM foods are good for the planet.

The fact is that if we leave it to the market to tackle climate change, it will be much profit made and no emissions saved. The poorest in the world will bear the brunt of the impacts arising from the failure to act, and democratic rights will be under attack in an atmosphere of continuous emergency.

The challenge is to chart the way forward to a new era of human democracy, wresting control of action on climate change from the corporations and their slavish servant governments.

Penny Cole, environment editor

Bird flu: a bonanza for Big Chicken

A corporate vision of globalised, full-integrated factory farms and slaughterhouses churning out standardised birds for supermarket shelves is being drilled into decision makers using the threat of a bird flu pandemic. The corporate bonanza is destroying traditional poultry systems and poultry biodiversity that hundreds of millions of people depend on for their food security and livelihoods. In the wake of the recent bird flu outbreak at Bernard Matthews’ turkey factories in Norfolk, Big Chicken – the group of huge and powerful corporations that have grown to dominate global poultry production in recent years – are rampant. A new report shows that agribusiness, Big Pharma and international agencies are using avian influenza to maximise corporate profits and push forward even deeper changes that will further squeeze the poor. It was produced by GRAIN, an organisation that promotes sustainable management and agricultural biodiversity. The report reveals that local resistance is gradually building, producing tensions between small producers, governments and UN agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organisation where corporate lobbies are entrenched. GRAIN’s report shows that although authorities are finally acknowledging the role played by the poultry trade in spreading the virus, the message to poultry farmers is still, "Get big, really big, or get out".

In Indonesia, Russia, India and Egypt, as well as in the UK, governments and the international agencies are rushing to the industry's defence, turning the bird flu crisis into an opportunity for the larger corporations to consolidate their control. GRAIN’s report says that the company that probably first brought bird flu to Vietnam is ready to take advantage of the latest crisis. "Charoen Pokphand (CP) will succeed in turning a crisis into an opportunity of development," says Sooksunt Jiumjaiswanglerg, president of CP Vietnam Livestock. The giant Thai-based transnational corporation, which supplies fast-food chains in Asia like KFC, controls around 80% of Vietnam's industrial chicken production and anticipates its growth in the country to soar by 30% per year. "Yet in a nation where an estimated 80% of the country's poultry production was at least until recently in the hands of small scale producers and over 70% of Vietnamese households keep poultry, it is no wonder that many independent poultry raisers are simply taking their chances and going underground," GRAIN reports.

The conflict over avian flu is widening to bring some countries into confrontation with the pharmaceutical giants. Indonesia, following China, has cut the supply of local H5N1 (bird flu) virus samples to the World Health Organisation, in an attempt to prevent big pharmaceutical manufacturers accessing the information to produce proprietary drugs. As GRAIN says, the whole power imbalance cemented into this system is grotesque. Poor countries supply "raw materials", for free, to a global pharmaceutical industry that concentrates market power and reaps huge profits through monopoly privileges called patents. Meanwhile, it is the poor countries that are facing the biggest public health problems. Indonesia has been calling for the WHO and others to help them develop the capacity to produce vaccines for themselves. But pharmaceutical corporations like Syngenta, Novartis and Pfizer are fighting ferociously in India, Thailand and the Philippines to prevent compulsory licensing and generic manufacturing. Any vaccine against a bird flu pandemic and the technology to produce it, should be shared and made available for free. The patent system serves little purpose in the health field except to enrich drug companies and their shareholders and is a barrier to tackling threatened pandemics like Avian flu, which themselves have their origin in industrialised agriculture.

Gerry Gold, economics editor

Government 'greenwash' won't wash

Set targets, then rely on the market economy, an expanded nuclear industry and personal sacrifices to make them work. This is what lies at the heart of the government’s Climate Change Bill. All the evidence says this won’t wash when it comes to carbon emissions. Only recently, New Labour’s own inquiry, the Stern report, described global warming as the biggest market failure of all time. Relying on an expanded carbon trading market, which may include tradable personal "footprints", will make no serious impact on climate chaos. New Labour came to power in 1997 pledging a 20% cut in emissions by 2010. Not only has this target been missed, emissions are actually higher and continuing to rise. This is the reality of a global market economy dominated by the operations of profit-seeking transnational corporations, which nothing must be allowed to disturb. While Friends of the Earth and other lobby groups were falling over themselves in a rush to praise New Labour, others were more cautious. Edward Hanna, senior lecturer in climate change at the University of Sheffield, was unimpressed, saying: "(It) doesn't go far enough fast enough to confidently combat the significant threats posed by human-induced global warming. I fear that as we are closing the stable door, the horse has already bolted." Even Christian Aid, said the final legislation would have to be "significantly stronger".

In fact, a recent report by Christian Aid points out UK-quoted transnational corporations are responsible for far more of the world's CO2 emissions than they would like us to think. Christian Aid tried to find out whether leading companies were reporting their CO2 emissions in relation to their direct and indirect activities. It is hardly surprising that only one-sixth of bothered to disclose their direct emissions to Christian Aid. These alone amounted to 285.83 million tonnes CO2 which were emitted both in the UK and across the rest of the world. Christian Aid estimated this figure would increase to 477.35 million tonnes when the emissions from those who did not respond were included. This is equal to more than half of the UK's national emissions. The fourth annual report of the Carbon Disclosure Project found less than a quarter of the top companies were able to provide data for even direct emissions to an acceptable standard. The situation is even worse in respect to smaller companies, where only 10% were able to provide data on direct emissions! As Christian Aid, points out there is massive under-reporting of carbon emissions even in relation to companies' operations under their direct control.

But as the report discovered, the UK's global footprint extends well beyond its borders, through companies' supply chains spreading out across the rest of the world. Over a third of the top 500 companies reported their emissions were taking place in developing countries. Christian Aid estimated the extent of indirect emissions to be 911.06million tonnes. This makes the combined total for direct and indirect emissions from FTSE100 companies 1,388 million tonnes, two-and-a half times the UK national total and more than 5% of global emissions. These emissions are making a significant contribution towards global warming and climate change, with millions of the world's poor paying a heavy price. It also exposes the myth that all it will take to solve global warming is a change or shift in individual consumer choices. It is clear that capitalism's driving force, unrestrained profit growth, is responsible for the climate crisis we are facing and the globalisation of capital has intensified the problem. No amount of corporate social responsibility reports, or the provision of "transparent" emissions data, will alter the fact that we need to replace these planet destroying transnational corporations with not-for-profit companies. Only then can we evolve truly sustainable operating practices based on needs, both for people and the planet, rather than profit. In that context, New Labour’s proposals are more state "greenwash" than substance. You'd be better off reading Running a Temperature, a real action guide to the eco-crisis, which A World to Win published recently.

Stuart Barlow, environment co-editor