June, 09 2020, 12:00am EDT
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For Immediate Release
Contact:
Mute Schimpf, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe: mute.schimpf@foeeurope.org, +32 475 70 34 75
Michael Alvarez, press officer at Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung: alvarez@boell.de, +49 30 28534 202 or +49 160 365 77 22
Paul Hallows, communications officer at Friends of the Earth Europe: paul.hallows@foeeurope.org
Global Insect Collapse Driven By Industrial Farming, Says New 'Insect Atlas'
Report shows nature- friendly agriculture is necessary and possible, but farmers need support for the transition.
WASHINGTON
Insects are in decline across the world because of industrial farming and heavy pesticide use which are threatening food production, according to the Insect Atlas released today by Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung and Friends of the Earth Europe.
Insects keep the planet's ecological system running, and ensure our food supply - 75% of our most important crops depend on pollination by insects. Insects also improve soil quality and reduce plant pests by decomposing manure and dead plant matter.
The Insect Atlas shows that insect species and pollinators are in severe decline because of pesticide-dependent industrial farming. It reveals that:
- 41% of insect species are in decline, and one-third of all inspect species are threatened with extinction
- Pollinators, which contribute directly to around one-third of global food production, are under threat: at least one in ten bee and butterfly species in Europe is threatened with extinction
- Pesticide use has risen five-fold since 1950, with over 4 million tonnes sprayed on fields worldwide every year. Two-thirds of the pesticides market is dominated by four companies: BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and Corteva
- The explosion in factory farming has led to insect-dense areas of land in Argentina and Brazil being cleared for pesticide-heavy soybean plantations. Worldwide, they now cover 123 million hectares - an area 3.5 times the size of Germany
Mute Schimpf, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said: "The evidence is clear: pesticide use is wiping out insect populations and ecosystems around the world, and threatening food production. A handful of corporations control the bulk of pesticide supply, and if left unchecked will continue to use their immense political influence to lock in a system of industrial farming which will continue to wipe out nature and destroy rural communities."
Barbara Unmussig, President of Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung said: "The global loss of insects is dramatic. Industrial monocultures with energy or fodder plants for our factory farming are driving, in countries such as Brazil or Indonesia, deforestation, monotonous agricultural deserts and the unlimited application of pesticides. In Argentina alone, the use of pesticides has increased tenfold since the 1990s. Pesticides from major chemical companies such as Bayer and BASF, which have long been banned or are no longer licensed in the EU, continue to be traded globally almost without restriction. As a result, nearly 50 percent of the pesticides in Kenya and over 30 percent in Brazil are highly toxic to bees. The Mercosur agreement too negotiated a tariff reduction for chemical products, including pesticides. The goal of exporting even more pesticides to the world's most biodiverse regions mocks all national sustainability effort."
The Insect Atlas also shows how the EU can support sustainable models of farming which prevent insect collapse and guarantee food production and good livelihoods for farmers and farmworkers. These include:
- Reducing the use of synthetic pesticides by 80% in agriculture by 2030, with a just transition for farmers [2]
- Radically reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to remove harmful untargeted direct payments, setting aside at least 50% of the CAP budget for environmental, nature and climate objectives and supporting farmers in the transition to agroecology
- Phasing out farming methods which increase pesticide use, such as growing genetically modified plants
- Taking urgent actions to achieve the targets suggested in the European Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies to increase organic farming, as well as cutting pesticide and fertilizer use by 2030
- Reducing the production and consumption of factor-farmed meat and other animal products and supporting plant-based options
- Cutting the overall EU demand for agrocommodities in order to reduce global deforestation
Barbara Unmussig continued: "The Biodiversity Strategy and Food-to-Fork initiative are first steps into a sustainable transition of the European agricultural sector. But ist not sufficient - in order to protect insects we not only need good intentions, but very specific and targeted strategies. The CAP has to be reshaped to finally contribute tangibly and decisively to an insect- and climate-friendly agriculture. Just 20 percent of all producers in Europe get 80% of CAP subsidies - this can not be justified any longer. Large area subsidies from which only a few big farms benefit have to be redirected into supporting small, environmentally and socially viable farming."
In order to achieve the fundamental shift needed to save insect populations, the European Parliament and Council must drastically increase the ambition of the European Commission's Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies. [3]
Friends of the Earth Europe and Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung are calling for a new law to cut pesticide use by 80% by 2030, as well as other measures to prepare the way towards fairer and greener food systems.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
'Cowardice': Homeless Advocates Condemn Newsom Order to Remove Encampments
"The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments," an expert said.
Jul 25, 2024
Civil rights advocates and progressive commentators on Thursday condemned California Gov. Gavin Newsom after the Democrat issued an executive order to shut down homeless encampments on state property and to incentivize local authorities to do the same.
The order marks the first notable state policy shift to result from a momentous U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 28, decided 6-3 on ideological lines, that the liberal dissenting justices argued criminalized homelessness.
Eric Tars, a policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center, toldThe New York Times that the executive order effectively blamed the victims of a systemic problem.
"The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments," he said. "California has an affordable housing crisis, and unless Newsom's executive order is coming with sufficient resources to address that, this new push isn't going to work."
In a direct response to Newsom on social media, Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said that the governor hadn't provided the fundamental ingredient needed to solve the homelessness problem.
"You didn't provide the needed affordable housing," she wrote. "You're choosing political expediency over real solutions. That's not leadership, it's cowardice. This will only worsen homelessness."
Echoing the need for more housing, Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, called the Newsom decision "shameful," while Jordan Chariton, a journalist at Status Coup, a progressive media outlet, called it "disgusting," saying Newsom's solution was to "sweep them all up like it's taking out the trash."
Mel Buer, a reporter for The Real News Network, indicated on social media that the decision was in keeping with the political approach of the governor, who is widely believed to have presidential ambitions.
"Saw this one coming from a mile off," Buer wrote of Thursday's executive order. "Newsom's a fucking heartless dipshit who would rather court billionaire donors to his 2028 presidential run than be a real human being."
You didn’t provide the needed affordable housing.
You’re choosing political expediency over real solutions. That’s not leadership, it’s cowardice.
This will only worsen homelessness. https://t.co/2tHk5awTo8
— Diane Yentel (@dianeyentel) July 25, 2024
Critics of last month's Supreme Court ruling in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson argued that it would lead to a crackdown on homelessness throughout the country. The conservative justices ruled that the Oregon city could ban sleeping in public places—sidewalks, streets, parks—overturning a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the local law was unconstitutional.
The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit is one of the most liberal courts in the country and had issued a number of rulings in favor of the rights of homeless people in recent years, frustrating Republicans and some Democrats including Newsom.
California is home to roughly one-third of the nation's homeless population and the reasons for the problem are the subject of fierce ideological debate, as are the solutions. This was evident in the response to the Supreme Court ruling, which led one Republican mayor in California to declare that he was "warming up the bulldozer."
Newsom welcomed the ruling but other Democrats, such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, expressed dismay and concern.
"This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail," Bass said a statement at the time.
Newsom doesn't have the power to force local authorities such as Bass to remove homeless encampments but could wield influence at the municipal level because of his control over billions in funding to address homelessness, The New York Timesreported.
Newsom's administration has spent $24 billion in responding to the homelessness crisis since he took office in 2019, including $1 billion to help municipalities remove encampments and $3.3 billion to expand housing for homeless people, the executive order says.
Homeless people still have civil rights, advocacy groups say, warning that they will sue local governments that mistreat the unsheltered. They also point to research showing that sweeping encampments is ineffective, as it doesn't address the root problems of homelessness. A Rand Corporation survey last year showed that sweeps affect homeless populations in an area only temporarily.
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Israeli Snipers Firing at 'Anyone Who Is Moving' in Khan Younis
The southern Gaza city is the latest region where Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Jul 25, 2024
At least 129 people have been killed in the last five days of Israeli shelling and artillery fire in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week gave people "a couple of minutes only" to evacuate earlier this week, according to Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, before the bombardment began.
Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that "the vast majority of dead and injured are women and children," as Israeli snipers have also been deployed in the city and are firing at Palestinians indiscriminately.
The snipers "are shooting anyone who is moving," wrote Tareq Abu Azzoum in a dispatch, reporting that the eastern part of Khan Younis is the main target of Israel's current assault.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) noted that the latest evacuation order reduced the area that Israel has claimed is a "humanitarian zone," as the order covered about 15% of al-Mawasi, where people from cities including Rafah and Gaza City have fled in recent months as the IDF has launched assaults in those cities.
The group told Al Jazeera that "there is no more space, even for a single tent, in the so-called 'humanitarian area' of al-Mawasi because of the overwhelming number of people displaced there."
Israel's reported indiscriminate assault on the city has included medical workers, said PRCS, which posted a video on social media Thursday of an ambulance that had been hit by live bullets fired by the IDF while medics were transporting an injured person.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor noted on Monday that the true death toll in Khan Younis—as with the rest of Gaza—may not be known for months, "with many victims remaining trapped under the rubble and in the streets, where rescue workers have not been able to retrieve their bodies."
The group also said the IDF had perpetrated "a kind of deception of the residents" of Khan Younis and villages in the area, including Bali Suhaila, where soldiers entered "amid very violent bombardment, even though the Israeli army had said in its orders that the displacement was going to be temporary."
The forced evacuation, false information about the order, and shrinking of the humanitarian zone were "all part of Israel's media disinformation campaign and psychological warfare tactics, since military assaults on forcibly displaced people and their tents have occurred continually in this area for several weeks now, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries," the Euro-Med Monitor.
The reports of indiscriminate shooting by snipers also bolster an account given by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in April, to CBS News earlier this week.
"I had sniper bullets," said Perlmutter. "I have children that were shot twice... I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest... and directly on the side of the head on the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's best sniper. And they're dead-center shots."
Perlmutter is among nearly four dozen doctors and nurses who wrote to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday, describing what they saw while volunteering at hospitals across Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, including medications and medical supplies, nearly 10 months ago.
"Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict," wrote the medical workers. "However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," they added. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
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Billionaire Megadonor Draws Backlash for Urging Kamala Harris to Fire Lina Khan
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are."
Jul 25, 2024
A billionaire megadonor's call for Vice President Kamala Harris to fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan if the presumptive Democratic nominee wins in November drew swift backlash from progressives on Thursday, with Sen. Bernie Sanders citing the demand as yet another example of "why we have to overturn Citizens United and end big money in politics."
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and a major Democratic benefactor, told CNN that he believes Khan is "waging war on American business" and expressed hope that a President Harris would replace the FTC chair, who has used her position to aggressively fight corporate concentration that harms consumers and small businesses.
Watch Hoffman's interview:
Billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave $7 million to the Harris campaign.
Then he went on TV demanding she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who leads the Biden admin in suing companies like Amazon, stopping megamergers, and protecting workers.
Harris must reject his demand. pic.twitter.com/gcw8bMA9us
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 25, 2024
Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders (I-Vt.) and founder of the progressive media outlet More Perfect Union, accused Hoffman of "purposefully trying to fracture and divide the Kamala Harris coalition that's needed to win."
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are," Shakir wrote on social media. "But it is where the billionaire class is."
Nidhi Hegde of the American Economic Liberties Project added that Hoffman "clearly does not understand how Khan's work has been pro-worker and pro-business."
"The Biden-Harris record on competition speaks for itself," Hegde wrote. "Also, that's real arrogant to go on national TV and just tell a presidential nominee what to do. That's not how democracy works."
Hoffman had already given more than $8.6 million to organizations supporting President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race over the weekend and endorsed Harris, who has swiftly taken over the campaign apparatus and consolidated support among Democratic lawmakers and donors as she prepares for a matchup against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Trump is also backed by tech billionaires, including the richest man in the world.
Hoffman told CNN that he intends to continue injecting money into the presidential race in support of Harris, who is reportedly planning a "Silicon Valley fundraising swing" with the LinkedIn founder.
According toThe Information, Hoffman convinced Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to donate $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris. CNBCreported Wednesday that efforts by Hoffman and other Silicon Valley moguls "are on track to raise over $100 million from major tech industry donors."
Progressives have raised concern about Harris' ties to and views about Big Tech. As The Financial Timesnoted Wednesday: "Harris has not yet articulated her antitrust policy. But in 2010, when Big Tech was not facing as fierce a pushback from Washington and the public over its alleged market abuses, she said: 'We cannot be shortsighted... We have to allow these [tech] businesses to develop and grow because that's where the models will be created."
Citing an unnamed "donor who has spoken privately" with Harris, The New York Timesreported Wednesday that the vice president has "expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan's expansive view of antitrust powers."
Harris counts among her advisers attorney Karen Dunn, who helped defend Google earlier this year against an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and a number of states—including Harris' home state of California.
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