USA unashamedly promoting GMOs and WTO dominance.

Colin Powell was heckled, but, shaken, he continued to press the USA line on GMOs and Trade.

http://www.un.org/events/wssd/statements/

WTO won: Earth lost

ECO 8 reports that the Political Declaration is still WTO biased.

http://www.greenpeace.org/multimedia/download/1/24985/0/issue_eight_with_insert.pdf

Paragraph (18), which contains the document’s only reference to MEAs finds the UN bowing “in support of the work programme agreed through the WTO”. By agreeing to this text, Johannesburg has produced a cowardly reinforcement of the WTO’s dangerously unbalanced Doha mandate.

Remember that, in Doha, governments mandated the WTO to unilaterally clarify the relationship between trade rules and the trade measures that enforce MEAs. Negotiations are to take place under WTO auspices, with Trade, not Environment, Ministers leading negotiations, and where MEA Secretariats are given only observer” status. Doha also deemed that the outcomes “shall not add to or diminish the rights and obligations of Members under existing WTO agreements,”

Civil Society withdraws from the Summit

Daily Summit reports this morning:

"True civil society is here today," Vandana Shiva tells the Daily Summit at today's demonstration, joining with Friends of the Earth's Charles Secrett saying that if "other groups don't join us now, we're sure they will have to join us soon". According to Ms Shiva, the groups are withdrawing from the summit dominated by the WTO and corporations. Private sector involvement in the provision of water and bio-technology was "a crime against people and the earth" "When governments and companies fail to deliver," said Mr Secrett, "you have to withdraw consent from what they're doing" . Subsequently the demonstrators were moved to 'Speakers Corner" half a mile away, far from the gaze of COlin Powell as he entered the complex. However, many in the hall were still able to get their voices heard as a counter to the US presentation.

More reflections later as the day unfolds...