[원문출처]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60C21420100113

 

China-led group to meet ahead of climate deadline

Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI

Wed Jan 13, 2010 9:39am EST

Mon, Dec 21 2009

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Four of the world's largest and fastest-growing carbon emitters will meet in New Delhi this month ahead of a Jan 31 deadline for countries to submit their actions to fight climate change.

Green Business  |  COP15

The meeting, to be held either on Jan 24 or 25, would be attended by the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- the BASIC bloc of nations that helped broker a political accord at last month's Copenhagen climate summit.

The non-binding accord was described by many as a failure because it fell far short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to fight global warming by all nations.

The document set a January 31 deadline for rich nations to submit economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 and for developing countries to present voluntary carbon-curbing actions.

The Copenhagen Accord left specifics to be ironed out in 2010, angering many of the poorest nations as well as some Western countries, which had hoped for a more ambitious commitment to fight climate change.

The accord did outline climate cash for poorer nations and backed a goal to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

But the document was widely regarded as the bare minimum outcome from the final stages of the Copenhagen summit attended by more than 100 world leaders trying to find a formula to prevent more heat waves, droughts and crop failures.

"The meeting has been called to coordinate the positions of the four countries with respect to the submission of actions and future negotiations," a senior Indian environment ministry official told Reuters.

"Beyond that, the meeting is also going to discuss any problem areas that any member country raises."

The New Delhi meeting is seen as crucial because what the four countries decide could shape a legally binding climate pact the United Nations hopes to seal at the end of the year.

Countries that support the Copenhagen Accord are supposed to add their emission reduction commitments to the schedule at the end of the document. But there is concern some countries might weaken their commitments until a new deal is agreed.

China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four.

CRUCIAL MEETING

Refusal by the BASIC nations to add their commitments to the schedule would likely raise questions about the validity of the accord, which was only "noted" by the Copenhagen conference and not formally adopted after several nations objected.

"If any of the BASIC countries do not submit their actions then the blame game will again start and the whole purpose of the accord which was to put a more vigorous political process in place would be defeated," said Shirish Sinha, WWF India's top climate official.

The Copenhagen conference was originally meant to agree the outlines of a broader global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which binds nearly 40 rich nations to limit carbon emissions. The first phase of the existing protocol expires in 2012.

But developing countries, which want rich nations to be held to their Kyoto obligations and sign up to a second round of tougher commitments from 2013, complain developed nations want a single new accord obliging all nations to fight global warming.

The BASIC countries, while endorsing the Copenhagen Accord, oppose any single legally binding instrument that allows rich nations to dilute their climate commitments.

Poorer nations say developed economies have polluted most since the Industrial Revolution and should therefore shoulder most of the responsibility of fixing emission problems and paying poorer nations to green their economies.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told a conference last week that the "main challenge now is to convert an agreement supported by 29 countries into one supported by 194 countries."

Though Indian officials ruled out any revisiting of the BASIC countries' position on the accord, some clarifications could be sought on the issue of monitoring CO2 reduction actions by developing countries. The accord says their actions would be open to "consultation and analysis."

The United States has said regular reporting and analysis of CO2 curbs by poorer nations is crucial to building trust.

"Things like who will analyze and what constitutes consultation need to be sorted out. These are definitions that have to be agreed by all the countries," another negotiator said.

ECOROKO 녹색네트워크 Basic, 기후변화, 남아공, 브라질, 인도, 중국, 코펜하겐, 탄소배출

[원문출처]

http://tree-nation.com/community/econews_comments.php?news_id=609

Why are GM Foods Not Labeled?

Genetically modified food, also known as GM food or genetically engineered food, entered the food supply in the 1990s. GM foods contain small pieces of foreign DNA (from other organisms and often from another species) however SA companies are not required to label foods that use GM ingredients. The foreign DNA in GM foods is engineered into the food in hopes of producing desirable traits like resistance to herbicides and pesticides, or resistance to specific pests. Insect-resistant maize, for example, is modified by inserting a bacterium gene that produces toxins and acts as an insecticide. Others have a gene that makes them indestructible when sprayed with certain herbicides. The pro-GM faction - mainly GM seed producers such as Monsanto, Du Pont, Dow, Bayer and Syngenta - say GM increases crop yields, reduces farming costs and increases food security for developing countries. In regards to GM potatoes, the seed developers claim that they are better for our health & the environment because they reduce pesticide spraying. However GM potatoes are engineered with an inbuilt pesticide to control the tuber moth. The pesticide is now inside the plant and farmers will still use a toxic cocktail of chemicals to combat all the other 99 pests, as well as viral, fungal & bacterial diseases, and weeds that plague potato farming in South Africa. Furthermore the toxin is accumulating in the environment and throughout the food chain. The tuber moth will also quickly develop resistance to the toxin, so this is a short-term and short-sighted solution to this problem. Environmental bodies worldwide are strongly against GM food growth, agreeing that this is a dangerous experiment with health and could have a disastrous effect on the environment. They say it violates a natural organism's intrinsic value; that modified genes are being spread through pollination; and that it allows a few giant corporations to control food production worldwide, forcing farmers to buy new, expensive, patented seed from them year after year. Many countries, including most of Europe, most Australian states, Angola, Sudan, Venezuela and Zambia, have declared themselves GM-free zones, refusing to grow GM crops. So strong is the anti-GM lobby in the UK that the industry has abandoned all attempts to get GM seeds approved for growing in that country. South Africa, on the other hand, has adopted the crops wholeheartedly. Since 1997, South Africa has grown GM crops - including maize, soya beans and cotton - commercially. The Government does not require GM crops to be separated from non-GM crops during production, processing and distribution, which means there's no way of tracking GM food from farm to plate; if one strain caused adverse effects in humans or animals, it would be virtually impossible to trace the offending variety. So here, in South Africa, we have no real way of telling which of our foods contain GM ingredients. 'The Regulations Relating to the Labelling of Foodstuffs Obtained Through Certain Techniques of Genetic Modification', do not require GM foods currently imported, marketed or sold in South Africa to indicate the presence of GM ingredients on the label. Andries Pretorius, of the department of health comments that, "labelling in South Africa applies only to GM foods that are 'substantially different' from non-GM foods or contain animal or human genes, currently SA GM foodstuffs on the shelves only contain inserted bacterial genes and proteins and these foodstuffs are considered substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts and therefore do not require to be labelled. An article in the Sunday Times a few months ago reported that many South Africans are unknowingly eating genetically modified maize. The article listed the following products as testing positive for GM maize: "ProNutro original flavour (52.7 %), ProNutro Toddlers Instant apple and banana flavour (97.5%), Iwisa Maize Meal (27.2%), Tiger Brands Ace samp (53.7%) and Purity cream of maize baby soft porridge (24.9%)." Pick n Pay No Name Brand cornflakes and Kellogg's cornflakes were reported to be GM free. Personally, I'd like to be able to choose whether or not my family eats GM food. Why can't products with GM ingredients be labeled, regardless of whether they have bacterial, protein or animal genes. They are in the EU.

미 통계국에서 예측한 현재 세계 인구는 약 67억 명이다. 이 정도 규모면 하루에 소비되는 식량은 어마어마할 것이다. 인간은 먹지 않고서는 활동을 할 수가 없으므로 인구 증가와 식량 생산에 관한 두 변수의 tendency는 인류가 해결해야 할 중요한 연구 분야이기도 하다. 그렇기 때문에 폭발적인 인구 증가세를 커버할 수 있는 식량 생산 기술이 필요함은 물론이다. 그 중에 GMO(Genetically Modified Organism) 즉, 병충에 강하고 생산량을 증대시킬 수 있는 외부 DNA를 포함하고 있는 유전자변형식품은 식량난 해결책에 대한 논쟁의 핵심 속에 있다.

(사실 유전자변형식품의 GMO라는 명칭이 표준화된 것도 아니다. Gene manipulation의 의미를 가지는 유전자재조합식품이라 부르기도 한다.)

GMO는 해충제와 같은 역할을 하는 박테리아 유전자를 Organism 내에 삽입하여 병충해에 저항성을 가질 수 있도록 한다. 따로 해충제를 뿌리지 않아도 되기 때문에 생산량 증대는 물론이고 재배 비용의 절감을 가능하게 한다. 이는 식량난 해소를 위한 조건을 충족하는 셈이다.

그러나 이를 재배하는 농부들은 100% 해충 박멸을 위해 여전히 해충제를 살포하고 있으며, 해충들이 시간이 흐르면 내부 유전자에 대해서 내성을 가지게 되어 이런 유전자 삽입 또한 무용지물이 된다. 그리고 이 유전자는 먹이사슬 체계에 끊임없이 축적되기 때문에 어떠한 부정적인 영향을 끼칠지는 아무도 모르는 것이다.

광우병 파동이 기억나는가? 자연의 본성을 거스르는 행위는 파멸을 일으킨다. 과연 인위적인 유전자 조작을 통한 GMO가 인체에 무해할 것인가. 그리고 GMO의 대량 생산을 통해 입지를 다지는 글로벌 대기업들은 작물 생산량의 제어로 자원 무기화가 가능하고 약자인 농부들에게 비싼 GMO 씨앗을 강매하게 할 수 있다.

 

남아공에서는 1997년 이래로 GM 작물을 꾸준히 재배하였다. 유럽의 다른 나라들과 달리 GMO식품과 일반식품의 구분을 따로 하지 않는다. 그래서 내가 구입하는 식품이 GMO인지 아닌지 이를 추적할 방법이 없다. 남아공 당국에서는 실제 판매되는 GMO식품은 일반식품과 별 차이가 없기 때문에 구분할 수 있는 라벨을 명기할 필요성을 못 느낀다고 한다.

 

우리나라에서도 GMO 식품에 대한 라벨 명기가 제대로 이루어 지고 있을까? 최근에 헬스를 시작하여 식물성 단백질이 함유된 두유를 자주 사먹는다. 지인을 통하여 들은 얘기인데 GMO 콩을 이용하여 만든 두유가 시중에 유통되고 있다는 것이다. GMO가 인체에 무해할 수도 있지만, 최소한 유통과정이 투명하여 신뢰성을 가질 수 있는 라벨링을 하여 소비자에게 이를 선택할 권리를 주었으면 한다.

참고로 대표 두유 제조회사인 베지밀에 전화를 걸어 확인을 했더니 베지밀에서 사용되는 콩은 라벨링이 되어 GMO일 경우 따로 표기가 된다고 한단다. True or False?

ECOROKO 녹색기술 GMO, 광우병, 남아공, 두유, 베지밀, 세계인구, 식량난, 유전자변형, 유전자조작