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| Heal Toxics is a member of the International POPs Elimination Network |
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This website provides resources on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) such as pesticides, dioxins, PCBs, and wastes. Valuable examples of community monitoring of health and environmental impacts of toxic chemicals are also furnished. Further, there is an entire section devoted to chemical safety in its proper socio-political context or in relation to issues such as globalization and people's empowerment. |
| Asian
Farmers’ Declaration of Unity against Patents on Life |
| WE, small marginal and landless farmers of different countries of Asia have come together here in Hong Kong to denounce the World Trade Organization and its unjust and exploitative policies and agreements. We believe that seeds are life, that land is freedom; and that indigenous knowledge is the key to our survival and that of humankind. Agriculture is our way of life - it ensures the production and access to safe and sufficient food for our families and is the center of our societies and cultures. Our sustenance and livelihoods, and the continued existence of our generations depend on the free and unconditional access to seed and genetic resources, rooted to our traditions of sharing and exchange and ideals of food sovereignty. With WTO’s predominance in international trade, however, transnational corporations and the governments of the developed countries are treating agriculture as their profit domain, farmers as mere consumers and our countries as their mere pawns. About 70% of world’s farmers today are using their own seeds, which makes a very huge potential market for seed corporations. By privatizing information, including DNA and peoples’ knowledge on plants and animals, corporations can control the seeds, and eventually, the whole food supply. Access to affordable medicine is also restricted because of patents. Patents and plant breeders’ rights on genetic resources form the key link for transnational agrochemical corporations in intensifying creating monopoly control over food, agriculture, health, knowledge and trade. World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements such as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) only serve to justify and legalize the global intellectual property protection systems for genetic resources, and for developed countries and TNCs to control and monopolize these resources. Intellectual property rights drive us further into debt and poverty because we lose control over seeds, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge. This is robbery in broad daylight of our commons. Monocultures of so-called modern plant varieties is abolishing the diversity of crops which has provided centuries of food security for our communities as we further lose our lands and water to companies and big landlords. We are from farming communities and we assert our right to practice
our own ways of agriculture and our own ways of life. The WTO
has no right over our lives and we actively oppose the WTO and
transnational agrochemical corporations for imposing corporate
industrial agriculture on us and our communities. We will defend
and continue to fight for our rights over our seeds, our lands
and water and other resources through various ways -- conserving
and breeding plant and animal genetic resources, “seed saving”
campaigns, biodiversity fairs, people’s caravans and farmer-to-farmer
seed exchange initiatives, legislation to assert collective community
rights, GE-free zones and other bio-safety campaigns. Through
our united and militant campaigns, we are able to improve our
living conditions against the challenges we are facing.
WTO OUT OF AGRICULTURE! JUNK WTO!
AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People), Philippines
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