News Release
Coalition Against Biopiracy
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy 2008
The Coalition Against Biopiracy* exposes Hooks and celebrates Cogs
Winners announced at the UN’s Biodiversity Convention in Bonn
Today the world learned which corporations, governments,
institutions and individuals earned a spot in biopiracy’s hall of shame when
the Coalition Against Biopiracy (CAB) announced the winners of the 5th
Captain Hook Awards at a lunch-time ceremony during the Ninth Conference of the
Parties (COP9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Bonn,
Germany.
“The Maritim Hotel, where the CBD meets this week and next,
was the perfect place to dock our ship and divvy up booty between black-hearted
biopirates and hard-working cogs – those tireless biopiracy resistors working
to foil plots to monopolize genetic resources and indigenous knowledge,” said Golda
Hilario of SEARICE, who doubled as Tinkerbell at today’s award ceremony.
SEARICE, based in the Philippines, is a member of the Coalition Against
Biopiracy. [N.B. In the Middle Ages, cogs were small ships built with high
sides to make them less vulnerable to pirate attacks.]
“Climate-change profiteers commanded the stage for the first
time at the biopiracy awards,” noted Jim Thomas of Ottawa-based ETC Group,
another CAB member. Thomas donned eye-patch and cape to transform himself into
Captain Hook, Tinkerbell’s less endearing counterpart. “Climate chaos offers
biopirates unprecedented opportunities for pillaging the commons,” explained
Thomas. “On the one hand, we have Gene Giants like Monsanto and BASF
monopolizing so-called ‘climate-ready’ genes in crops; on the other hand, we
have geo-engineering companies like Planktos, Inc. and ONC trying to break into
the carbon market with reckless – and scientifically dubious – schemes to
sequester carbon in algae; and, on the…hook, we have companies pilfering high
oil-content plant varieties to grow more of their destructive agrofuel crops.”
A special crowd pleaser at today’s award ceremony was the
prize for “Best Smokescreen” won by non-profit Public Research and Regulation
Initiative, “for tirelessly advocating and defending corporate biotech
interests under the banner of publicly funded researchers.”
But biopirates have met their
match in the most resilient cogs sailing the high seas. Today’s Captain Hook
winners were forced to make room at the podium for Cogs to receive
well-deserved recognition. Verónica Villa of ETC Group points out that, “While
some are trying to profit from climate change, others are working to help the
world survive it. The Nyéléni World Forum on Food Sovereignty, involving more
than 500 people from over 80 countries, received a Cog award for advocating the
right to food sovereignty and the primacy of community-based food.” Villa
laments, however, that many Cogs honored today must spend so much of their
time, energy and talent on fighting out-of-control biopirates. “Civil society
organizations in the Philippines, for example, received a Cog award for demanding
their government to stop an Australian-based company called Ocean Nourishment
Corp. from carrying out a dangerous climate-change profiteering scheme that
involved dumping urea in the Sulu Sea.”
Hope Shand of ETC Group points out that, “Ironically, the
majority of biopirates receiving awards in Bonn today haven’t broken the law. The
problem is that intellectual property regimes and internationally trade
agreements legally condone patents and activities that are predatory on the
indigenous knowledge or sovereign genetic resources of other people. And the
CBD, thus far, has failed to provide mechanisms to effectively combat these
regimes and agreements.”
Two posters listing all the awards presented today in Bonn,
along with citations, can be downloaded from the CAB web site: www.captainhookawards.org.
** The Coalition Against
Biopiracy is a group of civil society and peoples’ organizations that first
came together at the 1995 Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological
Diversity meeting in Jakarta. CAB notes that the Awards are a collaborative
effort and acknowledges it would could not identify the most deserving Hooks
and Cogs without the vigilance and analysis of civil society and peoples’
movements from around the world. This fifth Captain Hook Awards ceremony is
preceded by ceremonies at COP8 in Curitiba, Brazil (2006), COP7 in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia (2004), COP6 in The Hague (2002) and COP5 in Nairobi (2000).
For further information about biopiracy and the Captain Hook
Awards, please contact:
Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter or Verónica Villa, ETC Group
mobile tel. in Bonn: 49 17628423278
Golda Hilario, SEARICE
Pat Mooney, ETC Group
mobile tel. in Bonn: 49 17677126044
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group
mobile tel. in Bonn:
49 17677064731
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