A veridct of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on th 6th of March could make an end to the approx. 200 trade deals which include investor state dispute settlements. The veridct says that investor state dispute settlement courts are incompatible with EU law and applies to an investor protection treaty between the Netherlands and Slovakia. It will decide on CETA whether the judgment holds in practice. Fortunately the parliaments of the EU member states are currently not allowed to ratify CETA because of the veridct.
According to business-humanrights.org 129 human rights defenders were assassinated in 2017 because of business interest, 88 in 2016 and 84 in 2015. However other sources like the “Waldportal” (see message from 2016-06-20; go to 'update') indicate a far higher number of killings like 185 environmental and land defenders in 2015. The most dangerous countries were Brazil with 94 killings, the Philippines (43 killings), Colombia (37), Honduras (22), Guatemala (19), Peru (19) and Mexico (14) in the years from 2015 throughout 2017. 20% of the murders have hit indigenous leaders in 2017, 40% in 2016 and 33% in 2015.
The planned Mercosur free trade agreement between the EU, Brazil and Argentinia would open the door for cheap hormone beef and would force many farmers in the EU to give up. Deforestation would increase. If the deforestation of the Amazon transgresses 40% the Amazon will die off and turn into a dry steppe according to a scientific article published in Science Advances. About half of the precipitation in the Amazon comes from the evaporation of the Amazon rainforest itself.
A merger between Bayer and Monsanto would give the resulting company unprecedented control over our food supply. It would obtain a near monopoly on the broccoli, carrot and onion seed markets and would be the largest cotton seed producer. The merger not only threatens to significantly reduce farmer choice and quality of seeds and increase their prices but as manufacturer and seller of herbicides as well as the world’s largest owner of the intellectual property and patents for genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant seed traits it will further propagate an unsustainable farming model dousing our food in toxic chemicals like Glyphosat without any choice left to farmers and consumers.
If you have seen Werner Boote´s new environmental film 'The Green Lie' you will ask yourself what consumer logos you can still trust in. Greenpeace has published a consumer guide to answer exactly this question. Unfortunately we have not found an English tranlation for it. However you may still see which consumer logos are good by the green or even better by the black color. Logos annotated with a red circle are not trustworthy at all.
