Planet Diversity will be a major international congress of individuals who promote and use biodiversity in farming, food and culture.
Over five days it will feature major speakers, workshops, a 'biodiversity bazaar', films and other events and actions.
The objective: Planet Diversity will help those working to maintain irreplaceable natural diversity in agriculture reach a wide audience, and connect among themselves: a "coming out" of many different initiatives under the common banner of diversity and food sovereignty.
Food and agriculture are at the heart of the unprecedented challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity. Technocratic concepts of agriculture and the co-modification of biomass for the global food, feed, fuel and fibre industries have accelerated the problems. While time to stop irreversible destruction and extinction is running out, key governments, global industries and scientific institutions retain their dangerous faith in centralised, technology-driven mega-solutions.
Meanwhile, the global movement of resistance to genetically modified organisms has been one of the most successful social movements with respect to agriculture and food in recent years. Beyond rejection of a specific technology, it encompasses resistance to corporate control of the food chain, patents on life, the destruction of rural livelihoods and communities, and a critique of industrial agriculture. It is also a common denominator for many movements promoting sustainable agriculture, from organic farming and the free exchange of seeds to fair trade, slow food and critiques of globalisation. Planet Diversity seeks to strengthen these initiatives, boost global co-operation and networking, and provide a forum to identify common goals and strategies.
To highlight the pressing challenges to biological diversity today and raise public awareness, Planet Diversity will kick off the Convention of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-9) and coincide with the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP-4), also taking place in Bonn.
HAVE YOUR SAY: You are cordially invited to participate in the preparations of "Planet Diversity": Express your interest, make suggestions for topics and issues, speakers and participants, submit papers and initiatives to present there, help securing the funding of this event, spread the word!
