Too few frogs, too much Monsanto.

Over half of Europe’s amphibians face extinction by 2050. Climate change, diseases and habitat destruction and urbanisation are blamed. This was an assesment of the Zoological Society of London, in September.

This week the World Conservation Congress is gathering in Barcelona to discuss environmental problems and how to work towards a biodiverse and sustainable world. Thousands of the worlds leading decision makers in sustainable development will be at the conference which is run by the IUCN the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.Valli Moosa, the president of IUCN, said in the opening session that industry, commerce and businesses are significantly responsible for pollution and degradation of ecosystems, and he said there is a clear sense of urgency in stopping the die off of the Earth's animal and plant life which could have dire consequences for humans as well.

The 'Red List' is the global standard for conservation monitoring, and the 2007 edition shows more than a third of 41,000 species surveyed are facing extinction; a quarter of all mammals, one out of eight birds, one out of three amphibians, and 70% of plants.

I don't know whether Monsanto were invited to attend this congress. It is not likely because they have a history of walking out of important meetings when they cannot get there own way. This happened at the sessions held by IAASTD to make decisions on the future direction of agriculture. Anyway Monsanto’s methods are also responsible for loss of farmland wildlife... The government body ‘Natural England’ demonstrated through field based trials on GM crops which were prepared for commercial release in England, that wildlife is damaged far more by the GM process than by conventional methods. Michael McCarthy in his article ‘Hello green concrete, goodbye wildlife’’ wrote… ’It means a landscape in which fields have a crop growing in them but nothing else. No wild plants or flowers of any sort, no butterflies or moths, no smaller insects on which birds and their chicks can feed, and so no birds. Green concrete means a countryside that may still be called the countryside, and may still appear green, but apart from the crop, it will be entirely sterile and lifeless.

I can predict the self righteous response from Monsanto, I have heard it before., along the lines of…they are attempting to solve the world’s food shortage, etc. Monsanto persist in this argument despite the fact that the recent IAASTD report, after four years research, concluded that GM’s and intensive farming methods were not the answer to feeding the world’s population.

They are agreed that the solution to climate change is biodiversity and eco-system management. The problem is that the foundation of sustainable life is disappearing.Meanwhile Monsanto persists in its catastrophic use of Roundup(glyphosate) so called because nothing survives.