All three international companies targeted by Greenpeace's Amazon campaign in Brazil - Malaysian based WTK/Amaplac, Eidai from Japan and French based Lapeyre - have shifted ground as a result of campaign work carried out over the last six months.
On-the-ground investigations by Greenpeace in the Brazilian Amazon have documented damning new evidence of the truth behind the glamorous image of mahogany. Two mahogany kings now largely control the illegal mahogany trade in Pará State the major point of export for mahogany in Brazil. Moisés Carvalho Pereira and Osmar Alves Ferreira are ruthless and corrupt. More than 70% of the direct exports of mahogany from Pará to the UK came through companies connected to these two kings...
Centres of diversity are places where the special interrelation between our crop plants and their wild relatives is still apparent. In such places, tens of thousands of varieties of rice, potato, maize, or other food staples are still grown and used by local people. Centres of diversity are the basis not only for food security, but also for cultural traditions.
During the lifetime of this Parliament, Tony Blair will have to decide whether to let the United States use two bases in Yorkshire as part of President Bush's controversial plan for a National Missile Defence system (NMD) or Star Wars, as it has become known.
The development of Star Wars is likely to make the world a more dangerous place. Any attempt by the US to build a missile shield is expected to spur countries such as China into an arms race to try to overcome the shield, and to jeopardise nuclear arms control agreements with Russia.
Today's agriculture industry is more like mining than farming.Its system compromises the very earth on which all our future food needs depend. Only about 16%of the world 's farmland remains free of problems such as chemical pollution.
In spring 1999, following widespread calls for a halt to the development of genetically modified (GM) crops in the UK, the Government launched a four-year programme of farm scale trials (see glossary). The trials have been designed primarily to answer criticisms from English Nature and others concerned about the environmental impact of GM crops, particularly the secondary effects on biodiversity.
Developing a new variety of rice would not tackle the key cause of vitamin A deficiency. The real causes of hunger and malnutrition are poverty, poor food distribution, lack of land and resources to grow food, and a failure of political will. Experience with 'green revolution' crop varieties suggests that their introduction often results in the use of expensive external inputs - fertilisers and chemical pesticides, without which the crops fail.
