Pesticide Corporations to Appear in Court for Human Rights Violations

Pesticide Action Network
Citing widespread and egregious violations of basic human rights, a network of scientists, doctors, lawyers and human rights organizations issued a summons Nov. 17 to the world’s six largest pesticide corporations to appear in court. The summons initiates a trial slated to begin in early December, on the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.
“The pesticide industry has committed brazen violations of human rights,” said Kathryn Gilje, co-director of Pesticide Action Network North America, who will be reporting from the trial. “We need a justice system that upholds the human rights to health, livelihood and life and ensures corporate accountability.”
Prosecutors cite the six largest pesticide companies—Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and Dupont—or “Big 6”, for their crimes against humanity, including basic rights to life, livelihood and health. The agrochemical industry is valued at over $42 billion and operates with impunity while more than 355,000 people die as a direct result of pesticide poisoning every year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill. In addition, pesticide corporations have put livelihoods and jobs in jeopardy, including farmers, beekeepers and lobstermen.
“Unchecked pesticide corporations have undermined the fundamental right to health,” said Pamela Miller, biologist and director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. “The Big 6 have put mothers and their children in harm’s way when they opened the Pandora’s box of chemicals on global communities. Alaskan peoples’ have suffered under this load of chemicals, including cancers, birth defects and miscarriages.”
Attorneys, witnesses and jurors from across the globe head to Bangalore, India to begin an intensive three-day trial, starting Dec. 3. The trial commences on the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, where more than 20,000 people have died, after an explosion at a Dow Chemical facility. The trial is hosted by the Pesticide Action Network International, a network of more than 600 participating nongovernmental organizations, institutions and individuals in more than 90 countries working to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives.
The Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) officially facilitates the trial, lacking any set of binding national laws. Founded in Italy in 1979, the PPT was founded to elevate massive human rights violations in the absence of another international justice system. It draws on conventional court format, and is rooted in existing international frameworks, including the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights.
A summary of the trial, including summaries of cases against the Big 6, can be found here. Ongoing coverage, including YouTube videos with witness testimony will be provided through the Pesticide Action Network website.
For more information, click here.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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