African Biodiversity Network against mining in restricted areas

The African Biodiversity Network, a Coalition of African Civil Society Groups championing environment and food sovereignty on the Continent, has kicked against mining activities in sacred natural sites and territories in Africa.

It said a healthy planet is inextricably linked to a healthy ecological life support and called on African governments to strictly control mining and extraction in the continent.

“Each country is responsible for protecting the integrity of its life support systems as a national priority,” Mr Daniel Banuoku, Northern Regional Director, Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development (CIKOD), said at a press conference in Accra.

He said: “it is important to recognise the sacred natural sites and territories and the custodial governance systems, which have protected them for millennia, as the last remaining sustainable bio-cultural systems on our continent”.

Mr Banuoke said in the face of the continent’s massive ecological and climate crisis, there is the need to acknowledge and learn from the indigenous communities, especially the elderly ones that are ecologically literate on how to rebuild resilience.

He said there was the need to strengthen the diverse, ecologically adapted African food systems, which had generated an enormous diversity of crops on the continent and called for support for the growing food sovereignty movement in its commitment to revive Africa’s traditional diversity of food, and to build resilience back into the food systems.

He, therefore, called on academia, religious and civil society leaders and social movements to join forces in a campaign to build on the unique African strengths and heritage and to stop the continent from becoming the dumping ground for foreign systems and products.

“We are the last generation that has the possibility to revive, enhance and protect our severely threatened knowledge systems and our territories…it is our responsibility to speak on behalf of the future generations,” he said.

Mr Bernard Guri, Chairman for Alliance for food Sovereignty in Africa, said the Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New varieties of Plants (Arusha PVP Protocol), proposed extremely strong intellectual property rights to breeders, whiles restricting the age-old practices of African farmers to save, use, share and sell seeds and/or propagate material.

He said those practices are the backbone of the agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, as they have ensured the production and maintenance of a diverse pool of genetic resources by farmers themselves, and have safeguarded food and nutrition for tens of millions of Africans in the ARIPO region.

He called on Ghana's Parliament not to ratify the Arusha Protocol to ensure food security and sovereignty for the country.

A Diplomatic Conference held under the auspices of ARIPO on July 6, 2015 in Arusha, Tanzania adopted a harmonized regional framework for the protection of patent breeders’ rights.