Submitted by ETC Staff on
Les tengo buenas y malas noticias sobre el futuro de nuestro planeta. Primero las buenas noticias. El año próximo tendrá lugar una reunión global sobre el destino de La Tierra, una cumbre de abolengo. Formalmente llamada Conferencia de Naciones Unidas sobre Desarrollo Sostenible, esta reunión se conoce como RÍO+20 porque se realizará 20 años después de la primera Cumbre de la Tierra en Río en 1992.
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The global commercial seed market in 2009 is estimated at 27,400 million.
The top 10 companies account for 73% of the global market (up from 67% in 2007).
Just 3 companies control more than half (53%) of the global commercial market for seed.
Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company and fourth largest pesticide company, now controls more than one-quarter (27%) of the commercial seed market.
Dow Agrosciences – the world’s fifth largest pesticide company – made a dramatic re-entry on the top 10 seed company list in 2009 following a seed company-buying spree that included Hyland Seeds (Canada), MTI (Austria), Pfister Seeds (USA) and Triumph Seed (USA), among others.
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Para una gran parte del mundo, la Cumbre Río+20 es la descomunal reunión que ocurre esta semana en Brasil —antes de las olimpiadas y después del jubileo de la reina Isabel. Para los miles de negociadores y observadores de la sociedad civil, incluyendo al Grupo ETC, quienes hemos seguido el proceso desde 2010, Río+20 terminó ya, antes incluso de que los “líderes” mundiales regresaran al aeropuerto internacional Galeão de Río de Janeiro. Con cinco miembros de nuestra organización y muchos aliados en el campo, el Grupo ETC ofrece un panorama que incluye algunas cosas buenas e inesperadas en esta fallida cumbre.
Submitted by ETC Staff on
It’s difficult to describe Rio+20 as anything other than a tragedy. Despite years of preparation and months of negotiations, nothing said or done in Rio can cover up not just the 20 lost years since the original 1992 Earth Summit – as seasoned delegates have quietly noted – but also the half-century of intergovernmental failures since Rachel Carson catalyzed the sequence of global environmental congresses following the publication of her book, Silent Spring, in 1962.
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La Royal Society, la plus ancienne académie des sciences du monde, s’apprête à rendre public, le 1er septembre 2009 à Londres, un rapport longtemps attendu sur la géoingénierie. On s’attend à ce que le document préparé par des experts, pour la plupart, des partisans enthousiastes de la géoingénierie, contienne des recommandations pour que les pouvoirs publics soutiennent la poursuite des recherches voire des essais grandeur nature de nouvelles technologies controversées permettant la manipulation délibérée du climat terrestre pour atténuer les effets du changement climatique.
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Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E) is a global campaign to defend our one precious home, Planet Earth, against the threat of geoengineering experiments. You can join the campaign at http://www.handsoffmotherearth.org
Submitted by ETC Staff on
While from space the planet may look green and rich with biomass, the dirty little secret of the biomass economy is that – just like fossilized carbon reserves (oil, coal, natural gas) – the living carbon reserves are not equally distributed. Worldwide, land-based vegetation stores an estimated 500 billion tonnes of carbon. However 86% of that (430 billion tonnes) is stored in the tropics and sub-tropics, while boreal and temperate eco-regions store only 34 billion tonnes and 33 billion tonnes, respectively.
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