KENYA's
FORESTS SECRETLY CONTAMINATED WITH GE-TREES
How it goes and how it is operated !
Will
the bad spirit of corruption and deceit ever let Kenya out of its
grip?
Nairobi / Johannesburg 25. 07. 2004 - WTN
In autumn 1999,
a larger meeting was held in Nairobi / Kenya in preparation of a
programme termed "My Millennium Tree", which envisaged
that every Kenyan would at least plant one tree for each member
of the family at the dawn of the new millennium. The privately funded
programme became a huge success and is still running as a network
of tree-planting activities and groups - planting natural and indigenous
trees.
However, at that
meeting, where many NGOs, the United Nations Environment Programme
and many engaged citizens participated, suddenly an uninvited woman
rose during the discussion and offered all the necessary tree-seedlings
for this programme free of charge. This woman was Florence Wambugu.*
Many at that meeting
showed relieve, because the financing of the huge task had been
a serious concern, but then some people did remember the old Kenyan
saying: "If the deal is too good - think twice!", and
started to ask the woman: "How comes?"
The questioning
dug deep and deeper until finally Mrs. Wambugu** **had to admit
that she wanted to bring genetically engineered trees from South
Africa, which her sponsors would give her free of charge as a kind
of spearhead operation for Kenya. Immediately, all the participants
openly opposed such and Florence Wambugu - obviously very angry
for not having achieved her goal - left the meeting immediately.*
Today, nearly four
years later, Wambugu is back (see below the release by her new company)
and actually nearly again thrives to succeed with her hidden agenda,
which would make "The Great Gatsby" turn in his grave
and Kenya's natural forests turn into GE-woods, where biodiversity
down-climaxes to near zero and neither traditional medicines nor
all the other forest values can any longer be found.
Having failed with
her GM-sweet-potato project, her advantage in the forestry sector
is that she seems not only to have unlimited funding at her fingertips
for such deeds, but also that people usually don't eat wood and
therefore are less informed than in the agricultural sector and
therefore even less concerned. Her biggest advantage, whatsoever,
is actually that Kenya still does not have a Biosafety Bill. Like
in the health sector, where many scandals have been uncovered using
innocent people as guinea pigs by foreign-sponsored trials, Kenya
still offers a free playing field to every genetic engineer or GM
propagator as long as s/he brings along enough money for those who
have to close their eyes. Already the other global player of the
corporate club line up to help spreading the horror trees. Have
Kenyan's, whose greatest water-body, Lake Victoria, is choked by
the alien water hyacinth, not even learned from the "Prosopis
Menace", where the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),
a UN agency, had to be summoned to answer charges of introducing
a noxious tree-shrub, prosopis juliflora, into the country? These
two plants though alien are at least natural and have some value
in the ecosystems of their home country. But what does the Kenyan
Government believe GE-trees of non-indigenous species, for which
absolutely no evidence can be provided that their impact and side-effects
will be not be horrible, will do?*
BUT, fact is also
that the Environment Minister of Kenya Kulundu), who gave Florence
Wambugu - as claimed by her statement below - the go-ahead has been
changed by the government just recently and that Kenyans never have
been asked or agreed to have their forests replenished or enlarged
by artificially engineered trees - neither in parliament nor in
public. Are Wambugu and her foreign string-holders above the Kenya
Government and above the Kenyan people?
Florence Wambugu
still believes that it is so easy to gang up many of the impoverished
local groups and NGOs to plant her vicious seedlings, if the drive
is only accompanied by the usual public relation stunts, which are
so common in Kenya to blurr the vision.
BUT, awareness
and resistance among Kenyan people, who - though the new Forestry
Bill also has been delayed - will in future have more say concerning
their forests of their communities, is growing day by day and already
the first GE-FREE FORESTS have been declared by local communities.
The opposition in defence of their natural forests is rising again
and is not set back by the many dead bodies this resistance already
had to mourn in the past, including a foreign forest expert, who
had implemented in Kenya the finest tree-seed bank safeguarding
the natural tree heritage. He was assassinated by still unknown
professional killers.
Florence Wambugu,
however, already brought GE-trees from South Africa into the lands
of Kenya, which shows that the "safe" greenhouse for "safe"
GE-trials, recently inaugurated with state-pomp, is just a farce.
The task by the
GE players, using the window of lawlessness, is to contaminate the
country with GE-food-plants and GE-trees so that at a later stage,
when maybe a tough Biosafety bill would be in place, no GE-free
area would be present any more and therefore many of the safety-regulations
in place in other countries would be rendered obsolete for Kenya.It
goes so far that insiders describe the present food crisis in Kenya,
officially declared as a National Disaster and waiving the 25% import
tax for maize, as a mere stage to allow unhindered influx of GM-maize.
There is outrageous poverty in the country, but those people shown
now starving on national TV have been poor and mal-nourished for
many decades already.
The new Kenya Government
of the National Rainbow coalition (NARC) started with serious investigations
into the major corruption and fraud cases of the past decades, but
already has own corruption scandals piled up to its neck, while
people like Florence Wambugu - laden with infiltration money from
the corporate western world - just continue to do whatever they
want.
While Kenyans are
quick to point fingers at criminals from other countries, they often
detect the enemy from within much too late for any prevention.
But it is not too
late for Kenyan Forests and their forest communities yet, if such
activities like those of Wambugu and others - all fronting for alien
interests - are stopped in their track and local communities are
given a chance to plant their forests with indigenous natural trees
as they want it.
Or are the next
steps already on the drawing board like : Kenya's still world-famous
beaches under plastic-palms, Mount Kenya full of outdoor advertisement
and the forest and fields just producing weird GE-biomass for junk
food and GM-pulp-toilet-paper? No Kenyan and no traveler to Kenya
would like such - and therefore the resistance is growing and will
succeed.
Florence Wambugu,
however, should listen more to Bob Marley, who sung: "You can
fool somebody sometimes, but not everybody all the time."
ECOTERRA Intl.
AfricaNode
-------------------
Reference:
Kenya
embraces "biotech trees" from South Africa
A Harvest.net,
July 22, 2004
Under severe pressure
to increase its forest cover from less than 2% of total land area
to the internationally accepted canopy minimum of 10%, Kenya has
embraced "clonal trees" first introduced in the country
from South Africa.
Africa Harvest
CEO, Dr. Florence Wambugu, who brokered the technology, says "the
current forest cover officially confirms the country to be a desert".
She says the country
"must develop a clear strategy of how to reclaim its forests,
which are important in attracting rain".
The Minister for
Environmental, Natural Resources and Wildlife, Dr Newton Kulundu,
recently told over 60 biotechnology stakeholders that the government
supports the adoption of new forest technologies to enhance regeneration
of forests to meet the demand for trees and tree products. The Minister
said the government was already dealing with the issues of illegal
forest encroachment, excision, charcoal burning, illegal cultivation,
overgrazing, unsustainable exploitation poaching and frequent fires.
The Minister thanked
ISAAA AfriCenter, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation of the United
Kingdom, and Mondi Forest of South Africa, for their commitment
and determination to ensure that Tree Biotechnology Project succeeds
in the region. (The Project was started under the leadership of
Dr. Wambugu when she was a director of the ISAAA AfriCenter).
The conference
- sponsored by Gatsby Charitable Foundation - shared experiences
from the participating countries including discussions Eucalyptus
and clonal forestry. It also discussed ways of encouraging private
sector involvement and identifying new opportunities for partnerships.
Among those who
attended the conference was the Chairman of Tree Biotechnology Project,
Joe Kibe, Bruce Hulett of Mondi Forest, Lawrence Cockcroft of Gatsby
Charitable Foundation and the Director of ISAAA AfriCenter, Dr Sam
Wakhusama.
SOURCE: Agnet
http://131.104.74.73:96/agnet/2004/7-2004/agnet_july_22-2.htm
For more information
about the Agnet research program, please contact: Dr. Douglas Powell
Associate Professor dept. of plant agriculture University of Guelph
Guelph, Ont. N1G 2W1 tel: 519-824-4120 x54280 cell: 519-835-3015
fax: 519-763-8933 dpowell@uoguelph.ca
- http://www.foodsafetynetwork.ca
