Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on
For a decade, six multinationals have controlled 75% of the world’s high-tech seeds and pesticides businesses. Late last year, Dow and DuPont agreed to merge and now state-owned ChemChina is buying Syngenta for $43 billion. This means that Monsanto needs a merger to stay in the game. Or, is the game about to be called?
Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on
The Year that Ended Dangerously
Submitted by Joana Chelo on
Si se consolidan sus nuevas propuestas de fusiones y adquisiciones, las seis más grandes empresas de insumos agrícolas, que concentran el 75% de la investigación y desarrollo globales, podrían reducirse a tres o cuatro. Si Dow y DuPont se unen y logran burlar a los reguladores anti monopolio, la nueva empresa resultante controlará el 25% de las ventas de semillas comerciales y 16% de las ventas de plaguicidas, lo que significa que junto con Monsanto, solo dos compañías controlarían el 51 % de todas las ventas de semillas y una cuarta parte del mercado de plaguicidas.
Submitted by Joana Chelo on
The $130 billion Dow-DuPont merger announced last week has rekindled ChemChina’s $44.6 billion bid for Syngenta which, in turn, may provoke a fourth takeover try by Monsanto. If ChemChina prevails, Monsanto is likely to look for a deal with either BASF or Bayer. If they get their way, the world’s Big Six agricultural input companies controlling 75% of global agricultural R&D may be reduced to three or four.
Submitted by Veronica Villa on
París, 12 de diciembre de 2015
Aparentemente de la nada (o más bien, a partir del humo negro del proceso de la COP21 sobre Cambio Climático), algunos de los responsables históricos más importantes del cambio climático, como Estados Unidos, Canadá y la Unión Europea, han decidido respaldar “una meta muy ambiciosa”: limitar el aumento de la temperatura global a 1.5 grados centígrados. Para lograrlo se necesitaría una drástica reducción de las emisiones de gases comenzando desde ya, pero en el caso de esos países, su intención es otra.
Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on
Paris, 11 December 2015
Seemingly out of the blue (or rather, out of the black smog of the UNFCCC process), some of the largest historical culprits for climate change, countries including the United States, Canada and the European Union, have decided to back an "ambitious goal" of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. To achieve this, radical emissions cuts would be needed from now, but in the case of these countries, that's not their real intention.
Submitted by Veronica Villa on
7 de diciembre de 2015
Submitted by Veronica Villa on
Respuesta del Grupo ETC a la solicitud de información del Secretariado del Convenio de Diversidad Biológica sobre Biología Sintética
Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on
Paris, 27th November 2015 – Some of the world’s largest agro-industrial corporations will be flying the flag for ‘climate-smart agriculture’ at the upcoming Climate Summit. They will claim that hi-tech crops and intensive industrial agriculture are needed to rescue farmers (and the hungry) from a warming world – a claim widely dismissed by peasant movements and civil society groups.
Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on
Paris, 24th November 2015 - At the upcoming Climate summit in Paris, some governments and much of civil society will be pushing for an urgent transition away from the carbon-rich fossil fuels responsible for climate chaos. However, one hi-tech sector, the multi-billion dollar Synthetic Biology industry, is now actively tying its future to the very oil, coal and gas extraction it once claimed to be able to displace. That’s the conclusion of a new report released jointly today from the ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation. Titled “Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy”, the report predicts that as the extreme biotech industry and the extreme extraction industry move towards deeper collaboration, the biosafety risks and climate threats emanating from them will become ever more entangled.
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