[asia-apec 1642] 6TH PRESS RELEASE - THE PEOPLE'S CARAVAN - NOV 13-30

[People's Caravan 2000]

Dear Friends

Please find below the latest press release for the People's Caravan -
"Citizens on the Move for Land and Food Without Poisons!" from November
13-30. 

Your support in the distribution of this information to your network
partners and within your own publications and information services
is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sarah Hindmarsh
Programme Assistant Genetic Engineering Campaign

for Jennifer Mourin
People's Caravan Regional Coordinator

The People's Caravan 2000 – Land and Food Without Poisons!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07 NOVEMBER, 2000

PRESS RELEASE

Asia's rural poor denounces next round of APEC meetings

A year after the intense protests mounted against the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) in Seattle, over 150 groups from 18 countries throughout
the Asia Pacific region have denounced the next round of APEC meetings as
yet another avenue by the 'advanced' countries, especially the US, to
disadvantage third world peoples through trade and investment
liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation and denationalisation. 

With close to 40% of US total trade now conducted with the East Asia and
Pacific region, the US has its corporate guns firmly aimed on the region
for further exports of pesticides and genetically engineered foods.
Smoothing the way is APEC's support to actively participate in WTO
negotiations to free up agricultural trade restrictions, which currently
help to safeguard nations and the rural poor from the operations of
powerful foreign transnational corporations (TNCs).

If not checked, the implications for Asia Pacific regional agricultural and
food production systems are profound. More landlessness; increased hunger
and malnutrition; increased chemical pollution of groundwater, crops and
ecosystems; more control by foreign agrichemical TNCs; and increased
threats to people's food security and health is the recipe that APEC would
serve up.

When is this volatile agenda being cooked up? On November 15-16, 2000 at
the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Leaders' Meeting at Bandar
Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam.  Feeding into the process is a round of
APEC Ministerial, Senior Officials and Business Advisory meetings during
the preceding week.

To highlight the concerns of numerous non-governmental organisations, small
farmers, landless peasants, farm workers, and anti-genetic engineering
campaign groups, a People's Caravan is marching its cause across the
region.

Advocating "Land and Food Without Poisons" the People's Caravan,
coordinated by the Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP),
will travel through India, Bangladesh and the Philippines from November
15-30. Simultaneous activities will be held in Japan, Korea and Indonesia.

Central to the Caravan's concerns is the environmentally and socially
unethical promotion of pesticides by the US and APEC to bolster national
agriculture towards export-crop production for the world market. 

This is an alarming trend. As far back as 1990, studies in the World Health
Statistic Quarterly, a World Health Organisation (WHO) publication, showed
that in the South alone an estimated 25 million workers and farmers
suffered from pesticide poisoning. To make matters worse, the annual and
growing agrochemical market—worth US$31 billion in 1998—fuels the
increasing environmental crisis, as well as contributing to the depletion
of oil which at current rates of consumption is set to run out within 40
years. 

Obviously, the intensive agricultural system has too many problems and
needs to be phased out. More sophisticated farming systems that work with
nature and the people are the real recipe for a sustainable future. 

As Sarojeni Rengam, Executive Director of PANAP comments: "Intensive
agriculture and the current move to genetically engineered rice and other
crops is corporate friendly, anti-people, anti-environment, and anti-long
term sustainable development, and will only serve the short-term interests
of profit and greed of an already excessively rich few. It has absolutely
no benefit to the majority or to the region. Community and environmentally
friendly agriculture has to be the only way forward".

For more information contact:

PAN AP (Pesticide Action Network Asia & the Pacific)
Jennifer Mourin, Campaigns and Media Coordinator OR Sarah Hindmarsh,
Programme Assistant Genetic Engineering Campaign. Tel: (60-4) 657-0271/
656-038. Fax: (604) 657-7445 
E-mail: panap at panap.po.my or visit the People's Caravan
Web site: www.poptel.org.uk/panap/caravan.htm
_________________________________________
People's Caravan 2000
P.O. Box 1170, 10850, Penang, Malaysia.                                    
Tel: (604) 657 0271/656 0381 Fax: (604) 657 7445
E-mail: pcaravan at tm.net.my / panap at panap.po.my
Webpage: www.poptel.org.uk/panap/caravan.htm