ECO 70(5) - Friday, 25 October

Harmful subsidies, debt and financing for biodiversity in Africa

African governments face the dual challenge of addressing environmental harm while managing immense economic pressures. Public spending in Africa often subsidises synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and hybrid seeds to drive agricultural productivity. These farm input subsidy programmes (FISPs), introduced as part of Africa’s Green Revolution, may boost short-term crop yields but come at a high environmental cost, damaging soil health, biodiversity, and water resources. At the same time, fossil fuel subsidies globally continue to undermine biodiversity goals by encouraging the overuse of natural resources and driving climate change. Reforming these subsidies is essential, but any transition must be fair and equitable, particularly for small-scale farmers and small businesses that rely on these subsidies for survival. ...

The emergency of genetically modified trees

Brazil’s approval of genetically modified (GM) eucalyptus trees for commercial production represents a serious threat to biological diversity, ecosystem function and human rights. The approval runs counter to and undermines COP decision IX/5 (2008) which reaffirms the need to take a precautionary approach to GM trees. Brazil’s decisions threaten to open the door to the large-scale release of GM eucalyptus and to the approval and use of other GM trees, such as GM pine, around the world.  ...

Gender, women defenders and coastal-marine areas of biodiversity relevance

Women human rights defenders on environmental issues are on the front line of biodiversity protection and climate action. Many of them are attacked and killed every year, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, the most dangerous region in the world in this sense. It is imperative to increase security and access to justice for people who defend the environment and the rights of their communities, especially women, whose vulnerability to threats is exacerbated by gender-based violence and, in the case of Indigenous and rural women, by the disproportionate impact they suffer from biodiversity loss and the cultural, economic and social obstacles they face in exercising their full environmental citizenship. ...