G8 told to leave poor nations alone

Among those who spoke in a meeting in Edinburg recently, Devinder Sharma’s message to the G8 is uncompromising; "Leave us alone."

It might seem extraordinary that anyone from a developing country might be extending less than a warm welcome to the prospect of debt relief and increased aid. But like George Monbiot, Devinder sees the G8’s as a little better than an extortion racket.

G8 normally provides help on its own terms These include the requirement that recipients of debt relief "boost private sector development and eliminate "impediments to private investments, both domestic and foreign. There will be new opportunities – as Monbiot pointed out – for western money via commercialization, privatization, and liberation of trade and capital inflows.

Developing countries are under pressure to further open up their markets. And at the level of aid, we are also seeing a consistent pattern of resolutely tying assistance into "science and technology."

This is a mantra that is being taken up by an industrially-aligned Northern science community as well as its friends in the South who see it as a way of channeling sums of public money into projects of which they and their corporate-science agenda are among the principal beneficiaries.

In the case of genetic engineering, the biotech industry has faced growing public opposition, the entry of biotechnology has been promoted increasingly via ostensibly public sector and philanthrophic initiatives and the activities USAID and the UK’s Department for International Development. These initiatives add up to GM by the back door.

The poor and the hungry need low-cost readily available technologies and practices in order to increase food production. And the approaches are already there that can produce results.

A new science-based revolution is gaining strength built on real research into what works best on the small farms where a billion or more of the world’s hungry and live and work. No wonder some like Devinder are saying: Leave us alone.