Chinese walker

“My family was one of the first to stop using pesticides,” says Sattemma, a lively Indian woman in her mid-40s, confidently talking to a group of visiting farmers. “Three years ago, we realised we were spending over half our income on chemicals. It was too much. We were getting into debt and the pesticides were making us ill.”

Normal

0

7.8 磅

0

2

false

false

false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

/* Style Definitions */

table.MsoNormalTable

{

mso-style-parent:”";

font-size:10.0pt;”Times New Roman”;

mso-fareast-”Times New Roman”;}

Sattemma is in the village of Lakshminayak Thanda in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh state. The visitors are keen to know how she and other villagers are progressing after their decision to stop using pesticides and Bt cotton, the genetically modified variety manufactured by US biotechnology firm Monsanto.

Bt cotton was engineered to combat pests, with the introduction into the cotton seed of a gene from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis – Bt — which has a natural insect-killing poison called Bt toxin. When it was introduced into India at the turn of the twenty-first century, it was promoted as the “wonder product” that would solve the serious problem of pests, which many of India’s 17 million cotton farmers were facing.

Many of the farmers had not been growing cotton as a cash crop for very long. In the late 1980s, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), India had opened up its strongly protected economy and encouraged its farmers to switch to modern farming, with its hybrid seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. The idea was to turn India into an important exporter of commodities, including cotton.

At first, cotton farmers did well. They got high yields and enjoyed a real increase in income. But then problems arose. The hybrid cotton proved susceptible to pests and diseases, and it was not uncommon for farmers to spray their fields up to 30 times in a single season. Production costs went through the roof and farmers got trapped in debt. They became desperate for a technical fix, and Bt cotton seemed to be the answer.

In its first year of sales – 2002 – the joint venture Mahyco-Monsanto sold its entire stock of Bt cotton seed. According to the company, the area in India under Bt cotton rose from 3.1 million acres [1.25 million hectares] in 2005 to 14.4 million acres [5.6 million hectares] in 2007. Sekhar Natarajan of Monsanto India said Bt cotton yielded 700 to 900 kilogrammes per acre, compared with 300 to 400 kilogrammes an acre with conventional seeds.

However, some say that what has been happening on the ground has been very different from the official success story. Scientists Abdul Qayum and Kiran Sakhari assessed Bt cotton’s performance in the first three years and found that, despite claims by the company, farmers were not achieving big yields. This perhaps was to be expected, because Bt cotton had been engineered to reduce pesticide use, not to increase yields.

But, more surprisingly, they found that pesticide use was not falling either, because farmers were facing serious problems with secondary pests. They worked out that, on average, the income of non-Bt farmers was 60% higher than that of Bt farmers. Monsanto contests these numbers.

There have been other, more alarming problems. In her chat with the visiting farmers, Sattemma says she had seen several of her neighbour’s goats die after spending all day grazing on post-harvest Bt cotton plants. Such a story could be dismissed as anecdotal, if it were not backed up by more solid evidence. In 2006, more than 1,800 sheep died in similar circumstances in other villages in Warangal district. The symptoms and post-mortem findings suggested that they had died from severe toxicity. Hundreds of agricultural workers also had developed allergic symptoms when exposed to Bt cotton.

One might have expected such reports to have led to a thorough investigation into the safety of Bt cotton but, according to the United States-based Institute for Responsible Technology, this has never happened. Again, Monsanto contests this account. According to Natarajan, Bt cotton was exhaustively tested for six to eight years before it was authorised for release and there were no reports of adverse impacts on the health of humans or animals.

Less controversial is the financial risk that Bt cotton, along with other hybrids, brings to small farmers. Farmers have traditionally saved seeds from one harvest to another, but this is not possible with hybrids, as they lose vitality. So farmers purchase on credit from middlemen a package of hybrid seed, fertiliser and pesticide, paying back the loan once the crop is harvested. The problems start when farmers lose a crop through bad weather. Unable to repay, they can easily get caught in a debt trap. Problems were serious before Bt cotton was used but have got worse because the new cotton seed is expensive.

Despite these problems, the Indian government believes that cotton has proved a success. In 2006, India overtook the United States to become the world’s second-largest cotton producer, after China. The biotechnology industry is taking the credit, though some farmers are reporting new problems, saying Bt cotton is highly susceptible to wilt.

On one occasion a Mahyco-Monsanto representative was taken hostage by irate farmers demanding compensation. More difficulties could lie ahead: a recent study by the Nagpur-based Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) showed that the main cotton pest, the bollworm, is becoming resistant to Bt cotton.

Many farmers, like Sattemma, have not followed the debate about Bt cotton. She says it was practical considerations that led to the change in farming. “It was the 15 women in our village’s self-help group who got things going,” she says. “We were worried about the health of our children. We got the men on our side by showing them that they would save money.”

Sattemma points to a chart on the wall of a nearby house. With the help of a non-governmental organisation, the villagers have recorded side-by-side the expenses of growing cotton with and without pesticides. Non-pesticide management (NPM), as the system is called, is clearly more profitable — not because yields are higher but because expenditure is so much lower.

In Yenabavi, about 50 kilometres away, the farmers have gone further, becoming organic and declaring their village free of genetically modified organisms (GMO). Their conversion also began with dissatisfaction over pesticides, this time because they didn’t work.

“Ten years ago, this field was covered with red-headed hairy caterpillars,” says Malliah, the farmer who has led the change. “I kept applying more pesticides but I couldn’t get rid of them.” By chance, an organic agronomist was visiting. He showed Malliah how to set up solar-powered light traps and, to Malliah’s delight, they worked. Since then, he and the other farmers have developed other natural pest controls.

Other villages are following suit. Almost 2,000 in Andhra Pradesh have adopted NPM. Raghuveera Reddy, the state’s minister for agriculture, wants 2.5 million acres [more than one million hectares] under community-managed sustainable agriculture within a few years. The long-term goal is for 10 million acres [more than 4 million hectares], 45% of the state’s cultivable land.

Sustainable agriculture involves hard work and does not guarantee huge profits, but it will not harm the farmers’ health, brings personal satisfaction, and involves fewer financial risks. It is crucial to remember what is truly sustainable for small farmers.

www.guardian.co.uk/

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Homepage photo by mckaysavage

As climate change has risen up government and (some) corporate agendas, it has also percolated down into the view of the public. Indeed, public debate about climate change is remarkably intense for a global environmental issue, as these problems are commonly seen as taking place “somewhere else”. Now, as the next round of negotiations gears up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, the role of the public is seen as key, not only to pushing governments to act, but also to drive grassroots action at the doorstep level.

Yet the role of the public in climate debates is clearly not ubiquitous, especially in Asia. More often than not, the western media talk of “China and India” as if they were one and the same, using them as the beacons of the developing and emerging economies` position in debates about international emissions cuts. However, this presupposed pairing is far from a homogeneous entity, not least on the issue of public participation in the environment. In China`s one-party state the role of a voting public and civil society is starkly different from India`s vibrant-at-best and stalemated-at-worst democratic system, which gives the public, and particularly public opinion, a key role in shaping environmental policy and attitudes. While the dragon`s road to Copenhagen is predictable only so far as the government will reveal, to assess the elephant`s climate policy path we must begin to pay attention to this increasingly important factor in international climate politics: public understanding and debate.

India has an energetic civil society in which the media plays a key role in providing a forum for debate and discussion. The print media%26mdash;by far the most prolific in a country where access to electronic media is exclusive%26mdash;is largely private, owned by single families or corporations. These publishing houses have large control over the flow of information and on setting the tone of public debates, not least on climate change. A survey by the Global Nielsen Survey in 2007 suggested that 70% of literate Indians use the press as their primary source of information on climate change. The press debate and coverage influence public understanding and perception, and those reading the press influence the government through voting and wider public pressure campaigns, such as the 1,000-strong New Delhi Climate Rally in December 2007.

Over the last six years the Indian press has given increasing attention to climate change, a turnaround after a long period since the 1980s during which the issue was largely dismissed in the country. Historically, the Indian government and press had followed the line captured by Indira Gandhi`s statement in 1972 that “the environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty”. Indian delegations at summits have continually argued that, in the words of one official, “had the emissions of the developed world been that of the developing world, the world would not face the threat of climate change”.

Since 2002, however, the Indian press has begun to pay increasing attention to climate politics, with coverage increasing by 280% between 2002 and 2005. Unlike in the United States or some European countries, the coverage of climate change as a scientific phenomenon has been unanimously unquestioning. Rapid and dangerous climatic change is reported in impressive scientific detail, often quoting specific reports from academic journals to inform readers about the plight ahead. There is a close focus on the environmental threats from climate change, particularly that which may occur in India specifically: 75% of the articles on climate change between 2002 and mid-2007 suggested that India was “under threat” from climate change. Moreover, the press focus on these threats was centred on the impacts to Indian people themselves, rather than impacts on industry or absolute growth. Two-thirds of the 75% of articles were concerned with either monsoonal change, Himalayan glacial retreat or falling crop yields. There appears to be a suggestion among the newspapers that climate change will bring catastrophic environmental change to India and that the people on the ground will suffer.

This climate of fear over global warming fuels public representations of climate politics. In this context of threats and potential humanitarian disaster, discussion over what should be done about climate change is largely focused around who is responsible for it. The answer, according to the press, is found in the past. Of press articles between 2002 and June 2007, 76.3% argued that the developed world was responsible for climate change, and by extension, as defined by the press, for the threats to India. A typical article in the Times of India argued that citizens in the “north are primarily responsible%26hellip; through excessive resource consumption%26hellip; intended to support their lifestyles”. When it comes to climate policy the Indian press have a clear argument: climate change is not caused by but threatens India. Accordingly, the discussion over possible action on climate change was focused on two options: either the “north” acts to mitigate global climate change, or the “north” pays for mitigation efforts globally. Like Wheeler, Ummel and Kraft`s Another Inconvenient Truth, published in June on chinadialogue,the press argue that “developing countries cannot allow their economies to suffer on account of a problem caused by the [north]“.

The story is similar for adaptation. Almost all of the 29% of articles that suggested that the environmental threat warrants essential adaptation in India argued that that it should be bankrolled by the developed world through financial transfer mechanisms. In addition to their scepticism over international action, the press were highly critical of the lack of any major adaptation fund prior to the UN climate talks in Bali. They argued that the lack of adaptation action was evidence of how all alliances with the north only favour what is beneficial to it%26mdash;in this case, mitigation rather than adaptation.

Indeed, much of the press` discussion of climate change is conducted in starkly postcolonial terms: “north and south”, “developed and developing”, “us and them”. Like many national mass media outlets, the Indian press give a national tint to climate discussions. Toward the United States` climate position, for example, the press are overwhelmingly (82%) negative, arguing that developed states are blocking action on climate change, and, in turn, are further damaging India through a lack of action to mitigate the threats outlined by the press. Toward other developing and emerging economies, in contrast, discussion is wholly empathetic (100%). A kind of southern solidarity is created, with the climate “pit[ting] India, China and Pakistan against the developed world”. This postcolonial rhetoric reincarnates climate change as a kind of “carbon colonialism”, to use the phrase of the prominent New Delhi NGO Centre for Science and Environment. International issues like climate change are still seen very much in north-south terms, akin to those outlined by president Nehru in post-independence India. An elephant never forgets, it seems.

When we think of the Chinese response or the Indian response, then, we are thinking not only about different states but also about different concepts of society: autonomous government and dynamic civil society. And this is significant. The Indian response is that of a complex social system and public forum in which nationalistic emotions over climate change are deep-set. Climate change is seen as an extension of former north-south exploitation and, as one journalist put it, of the “north not cleaning up its mess”.

As we enter the run-up to the talks in Poznan, Poland, in December, and then to the Copenhagen negotiations, China and India will be asked again to put aside their resentment towards the west on international climate policy. While the Chinese government may be able to negotiate and deal, India does not forget easily and holds the country in a historically-focused position. What remains to be seen is whether the elephant will ever forget%26mdash;or if it should.

Simon Billett is a Masters student at the University of Oxford. This article is based around forthcoming research conducted in India in 2007. For further information please contact simon.billett@chch.oxon.org .