Sojourner Truth: Global Justice Ecology Project guest: Anne Peterman

Today on Sojourner Truth in partnership with the Global Justice Ecology Project our Earth Watch guest is Anne Petermann, Executive Director of the Global Justice Ecology Project and international coordinator of the campaign STOP GE Trees.
Researchers at the State University of NY College of Enviornmental Science and Forestry are developing genetically engineered (GE)American Chestnut trees that are blight resistant, and hope to win government approval for its unregulated release in the environment. GE trees are being lauded as the biotech solution for forest conservation, however the reality is that should GE trees be approved they would be mass produced and used for commercial production of timber, pulp and bio-fuels, instead of forest conservation.
The GE American Chestnut could be the first GE forest tree species planted specifically to spread freely through forests, and the dangers of this could be catastrophic to existing forest ecosystems. Not only does the US regulatory system have no specific regulations to deal with the release of GE trees into forests, but the highly experimental introduction of GE trees could create new problems and worsen existing pressures on forest ecosystems, already strained from unsustainable logging practices, invasive species, introduced pests and pathogens and the surmounting impacts of climate change.
Anne Petermann has played a key role in the global effort to stop the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment in the last 22 years. In 2008 she led a campaign demanding a global ban on GE trees that won an historic decision on GE trees from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity warning countries of the dangers of GE trees
and urging them to use a precautionary approach.