Latest Resources

17 March 2023

2,4-D GM MAIZE AND THE REGULATORY ANOMALIES REGARDING GMOs AND ASSOCIATED PESTICIDES

The case for categorising 2,4-D as a highly hazardous pesticide in South Africa In December 2019, three genetically modified (GM maize) varieties developed by Corteva (formally Dow AgroSciences) – genetically engineered to tolerate the toxic and highly hazardous chemical 2,4-D – were approved for commercial cultivation in South Africa, despite many long years of opposition […]

10 February 2023

JUDGMENT ON ACB’S HIGH COURT REVIEW OF MONSANTO’S ALLEGED DROUGHT TOLERANT GM TRAIT PENDING

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, 7-8 February, the ACB’s case was heard in the High Court. Five years earlier, the ACB lodged the application for this review, to overturn the decisions of the South African Executive Council (EC): Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Act, the GMO Appeal Board, and the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and […]

5 December 2022

The Africa we want?

A NEO-IMPERIALIST FOOD REGIME REINFORCED BY AGENDA 2063, THE UNFCCC, AND THE CBD Closely linked to this work, is a five part series of interconnected briefing papers which reflect on the inability of both the UNFCCC and the CBD, to address collapsing socio-ecological systems and rather, its complicity in re-embedding geopolitical inequality, debt, and underdevelopment […]

2 December 2022

Extractive tourism – a case study of biodiversity conservation in Tanzania, a legacy of gross hum...

This paper is part of a series of briefings by the African Centre for Biodiversity in the lead-up to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in December in Montreal, where a new deal – the Global Biodiversity Framework – will be finalised. In this paper, we deal with […]

2 December 2022

Civil society and farmer network organisations call on the South African Department of Agricultur...

This is the main thrust of the open letter we sent to Minister Thoko Didiza today, with Biowatch, Environmental Monitoring Group, the Association for Rural Advancement, and Tshintsha Amakhaya. So far 50 organisations have endorsed the letter.  This letter is intended to push the Department to engage systematically and meaningfully with CSOs, including household and […]

2 December 2022

EXTRACTIVE TOURISM. A case study of biodiversity conservation in Tanzania, a legacy of gross huma...

This paper is part of a series of briefings by the African Centre for Biodiversity in the lead-up to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in December in Montreal, where a new deal – the Global Biodiversity Framework – will be finalised. In this paper, we deal with […]

29 November 2022

The changing nature of Kenya’s seed sector: lessons from the potato seed industry

In this paper, we discuss the changes taking place in the Kenyan seed sector, with a focus on potato. The changes paint an extremely disturbing picture of how draconian agricultural and seed laws and policies are undermining smallholder farmers and their seed and food systems.  These laws and policies form part of the architecture that […]

20 October 2022

Global Biodiversity Framework stuck in a paradigm of catastrophic growth: what future for Africa?

A series on the GBF by Linzi Lewis and Mariam Mayet As part of a series of briefings by the African Centre for Biodiversity in the lead up to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to be held in December in Montreal 2022, this briefing examines the contradictory nature […]

19 September 2022

ACB comments on the Draft White Paper on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of South AfricaR...

Please find here ACB’s submission to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment regarding the recently published Draft White Paper on Conservation and Sustainable Use of South Africa’s Biodiversity, 2022.  The current conservation model and practice are founded on historical colonial practices, entrenched in apartheid, of over-exploitation and exclusion of African people. Historical inequalities have remained […]

14 September 2022

Breaking from the rest of the continent

South Africa moves towards recognising smallholder farmers’ Right to Seed and farmer seed systems – but the road ahead is still long By Linzi Lewis, ACB Research and Advocacy Officer & Mariam Mayet, ACB Executive Director After much anticipation, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) published draft Regulations to implement the Plant […]