ETC Group podcasts ETC Group

In this interview, Sabrina Masinjila, from the African Centre for Biodiversity, speaks to ETC Group about some key targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) being negotiated at COP15 in Montreal. She explains the importance of agroecology and agricultural diversity in Target 10 of the GBF, and why these are so important for biodiversity in the future.

Find out what's happening at the Convention on Biological Diversity's COP 15 in Montreal, with this introduction to the COP by guest interviewee Christine von Weizsäcker. You can read the full transcript of the interview over at our website at: https://www.etcgroup.org/content/cop15-audio-introduction.

The push to get untried and untested corporate-backed bio- and digital technologies accepted as ‘nature-positive solutions’ is  taking place in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as well as climate negotiations. The long-postponed global biodiversity summit (COP-15) of the Parties to the CBD, which was supposed to take place in Kunming in China in 2020, is now taking place in Montreal in December. In Montreal a high-profile ‘Global Biodiversity Framework’ will be launched to determine the priorities for the next 30 years of biodiversity governance..

We’ve been working hard to try and ensure that the Global Biodiversity Framework and ongoing work of the Convention includes critical agreements to implement horizon scanning, technology assessment and monitoring of new and emerging technologies – especially modern biotechnologies. Governments need to give the green light to this next step in the Convention’s work, or risk undoing and undermining over a quarter century of commitments to the precautionary principle. This would, in essence, change the entire nature and ethos of the CBD and open the door to many risky and unjust technologies.

Jim Thomas, Silvia Ribeiro and Tom Wakeford will be at COP-15 in Montreal in December. In this 5-minute mini-podcast Jim outlines why horizon scanning, technology assessment and monitoring must be included in the new ‘post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’ and the CBD’s Work Programme on Synthetic Biology.

In celebration of United Nations World Philosophy Day 2021, ETC Group presents its third and final podcast in the "Spanner in the System" series, focussing on the philosophical underpinnings of corporate visions for disruptive technology, together with Dr Saurabh Arora from the University of Sussex.

This podcast is part of ETC Group’s new three-part mini-series about Disruptive Technologies, produced by ETC Group in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with Puma Podcasts. Supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Find out what geoengineering is, why it's so dangerous, and why the idea of these largely non-existent technologies is being used as an alibi for the fossil fuel industry to continue extracting and polluting.

Why not listen to our new podcast during your lunch break today? As we mark World Food Day (16 October), it’s a good time to pause and reflect on our food and where it comes from. Our first podcast, in our new mini-series on disruptive tech, produced in the Asia-Pacific region, does just that!

Together with Neth Daño, we learn about issues surrounding new technologies and their impacts on some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and what we can do about them. We look at the global food system, how we care for – and sometimes don’t care for – our land, and what needs to be done to make a better world.

This might all sound complicated, but we can start with bananas: believe it or not bananas can tell us a lot about how the world we live in works!

This podcast is part of ETC Group’s new three-part mini-series about Disruptive Technologies, produced by ETC Group in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with Puma Podcasts. Supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.