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FAO BiotechNews Update | ||
| Number 45 | |||
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The FAO e-mail conference entitled "Gene flow from GM to non-GM populations in the crop, forestry, animal and fishery sectors" ran for 5 weeks and finished on 5 July 2002. Almost 400 people subscribed to this moderated conference and 118 messages were posted, focusing primarily on the crop sector, by 61 different people from 25 countries. The messages came from participants in North America (41% of the total), Europe (21%), Asia (18%), Africa (12%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%) and Oceania (4%). 32 % of messages were sent by participants in developing countries. The greatest proportion of messages came from people working in universities (32%), research centres (24%), NGOs (17%) and private companies (13%). The messages are available by subject and date at http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c7logs.htm or can be requested as a single e-mail message (217 KB) from biotech-admin@fao.org.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has just released the first "Africa Environment Outlook" report. It provides a comprehensive and integrated analysis of Africa's environment, including i) an overview of developments in Africa, particularly over the three decades up to 2002; ii) a description of the current state of the environment in Africa (outlining its physical attributes in terms of the atmosphere; land; biodiversity; forests; freshwater, marine and coastal areas; and the urban environment) and iii) a set of scenarios for Africa's future over the next 30 years. The report concludes in Chapter 5 with a list of 31 recommendations for specific actions by policy makers. This list includes "Urge developed countries to remove agricultural subsidies and apply the precautionary principle to genetically modified organisms" and "Assist African countries in their efforts to gain access to new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies and create conditions for the development of indigenous technologies to enhance economic development". See http://www.grida.no/aeo or http://www.unep.org/aeo or contact nick.nuttall@unep.org for more information.
The report of the 3rd meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (ICCP), held on 22-26 April 2002, The Hague, Netherlands, is now available. It is document number 18 at http://www.biodiv.org/doc/meeting.asp?wg=ICCP-03 (in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). For further information, contact secretariat@biodiv.org.
A new version of the Decision Support System for Safety Assessment of Genetically Modified Crop Plants (DTREE) has been released by the Biosafety Information Network and Advisory Service (BINAS) of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). See http://binas.unido.org/dtree or contact webmaster@binas.unido.org for further information.
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Next: Topical Review: Interaction of Breeding and Nutrition