ACP-EU Fisheries
This weblog shares information on key ACP-EU programmes and events from Brussels relevant to agriculture and rural development in ACP countries. Subscribe on line to the weekly e-newsletter.
Contents :
Wednesday, 03 February 2010
New GM crop trials are to be carried out in Britain after a trial by Leeds University successfully produced GM potatoes in 2009. The scientists who carried out the trial are to apply for a licence to continue testing crops in 2010 on dedicated testing farms around the UK. The government's chief scientific advisor, John Beddington, recently spoke out to the farming community advising a 'green revolution' to help combat problems of exploding population size and rising temperatures, according to the Guardian. The measures he advocated included nanotechnology and GM farming.
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Tuesday, 02 February 2010
Our video guest this week is Mr. Mona Herbert, he works for the German foundation for World Population (DSW) in Uganda. On the occasion of his intervention at the Brussels Development Briefing on population growth and its implications for rural areas in ACP countries, Mr. Mona Herbert explained the challenges coming with population growth, especially with regard to the youth. He stressed the need of youth council centres and pointed out that one can not reach the millenium development goal concerning universal primary education without recruiting more teachers to educate the growing number of pupils.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Bulgaria's nominee for the post of EU commissioner, Rumiana Jeleva, withdrew her candidacy after fellow politicians accused her of concealing business ties. Bulgaria has named a World Bank official to replace her. Rumiana Jeleva, Bulgaria's EU commission nominee and her country's foreign minister, withdrew her candidacy on Tuesday after other Bulgarian politicians in the European Parliament questioned her competence and accused her of dubious business practices. Jeleva had been nominated to the EU post in charge of humanitarian aid. At her confirmation hearing on January 12, she faced allegations that she concealed potential conflicts of interest when she was named to the European Parliament in 2007.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
High import duties keep products from developing countries out of Europe. One particular problem is tariff escalation: Import tariffs increase the more processed a product becomes. This measure ensures that most imports to the EU are raw products like coffee, cocoa or pineapples which cannot be cultivated in Europe. While the import duties for unprocessed cocoa beans is rather small, the EU charges 30% for processed cocoa products like chocolate bars or cocoa powder, and 60% for some other refined products containing cocoa.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
The 2922nd Council meeting on Foreign Affairs held in Brussels on 25 January 2010 continued the discussion begun at last week's extraordinary Council convened by the High Representative on the Union's response to the earthquake in Haiti. After the earthquake struck, the Union immediately mobilised search and rescue teams and earmarked EUR 122 million from the Commission and the Member States combined for urgent humanitarian assistance and a further EUR 100 million for the urgent restoration of government capacity in Haiti, as well as EUR 200 million for longer-term development.
Monday, 25 January 2010
The 16th Brussels Development Briefing will be on "Population growth and its implications for ACP rural development" and will take place on Wednesday 27th January 2010 from 8h30 to 13h00 at European Commission, Building Borschette, - Rue Froissart, 36, Room 1D. CTA in partnership with the European Commission-DG Development and EuropeAid, the EU Presidency, the ACP Secretariat, Euforic, IPS Europe and Concord organizes bimonthly Development Briefings in Brussels to raise awareness on key rural development issues with the development community based in Brussels. The next Brussels Development Briefing will be held on 27th January 2010 and will discuss the current state and future projections on population growth at global and regional levels and the main issues/challenges involved from a development perspective. We will also discuss future Policy responses to address the identified challenges. You can view the programme at http://brusselsbriefings.net. For registration please contact: boto@cta.int or pruna@cta.int
Thursday, 21 January 2010
The European Commission has approved 13 programmes in 11 Member States to promote milk and milk products in the European Union. The total budget of the programmes, running for a period of three years, is €35.8 million of which the EU contributes €17.9 million. This was one of a set of measures proposed by the Commission in July 2009 to address the difficult market situation faced by the dairy sector. The Commission committed itself to adopt an additional round of dairy product promotion programmes on the internal market.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
UK government's Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington recently stated that Britain needs to enhance the production of GM crops in order to fight climate change and global hunger, thus raising concerned reactions by the British anti-GM lobby. Speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference, Professor John Beddington said 'a new and greener revolution' was required to feed an extra 3 billion people by 2040, while also coping with climate change and dwindling energy and water resources. "Techniques and technologies from many disciplines, ranging from biotechnology and engineering to newer fields such as nanotechnology, will be needed", he said. He said that over the last 50 years, 75% of the increase in global output was due to yield increases but it is no longer possible to rely on this with current technologies as yield growth rates are now slowing, the Farmers Guardian reported.
Major conflict could return to southern Sudan unless there is urgent international action to save the peace agreement that ended one of Africa’s longest and deadliest wars, ten aid agencies warned today. In a new report “Rescuing the Peace in Southern Sudan” – released ahead of the fifth anniversary of the signing of the peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – the agencies said a lethal cocktail of rising violence, chronic poverty and political tensions has left the peace deal on the brink of collapse. In 2009 some 2,500 people were killed and 350,000 fled their homes, a human toll greater than occurred last year in Darfur. The rest of the world has largely overlooked this suffering according to the agencies. Communities say that women and children have increasingly been targeted in attacks on villages and the Government of Southern Sudan and international peacekeepers have not been able to protect them.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
The earthquake which has struck Haiti is a test for the capacity of Europe to act outside its borders. Nonetheless this catastrophe has seen a humanitarian response based on a national level. Each Member State is sending its own personnel, its own sniffer dogs, planes etc. This tragedy confronts us once again with the lack of European coordination in the face of humanitarian crises. ALDE feels it is time to re-launch EUR-FAST, which allows the European Union to consolidate civilian and military resources to dispatch within 24 hours.
