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Cloners stumped by nature

Dolly the sheep, the world's first clone, appears to be ageing prematurely And elsewhere, attempts to clone monkeys are failing.

US Scientists at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre, the world's only laboratory attempting to clone primates - in this case, monkeys - are being defeated. The clones rarely survive past the 16-cell embryonic stage. And it is not just beginner's luck; cloners across the globe are failing in their attempts to produce carbon copies of healthy animals. Even in the most highly respected laboratories, half of all cloned foetuses harbour serious genetic disorders, from which most die before birth. Others succumb just days or weeks after being born, dying suddenly and mysteriously after a seemingly healthy start.

Now scientists believe they have come up against nature's in-built resistance to cloning. They suspect that a competition played out on a molecular level by the mother and father's genes for presidency over the genetic makeup of the baby is a vital part of the reproductive process.

This biological mechanism, known as imprinting, creates balanced male and female determinations within the embryonic cells. For example, male genes want the baby to be as big as possible, to ensure its continued survival past the womb. So they instruct the embryonic cells to make the woman provide a big placenta. But the female, who doesn't want to be robbed of all her nutrients, instructs the cells to make a smaller placenta.

Scientists believe that many of the defects that they have been finding can be explained by the inability of the cloning process to provide proper imprinting patterns. Dr James Robi, of the University of Massachusetts, tried to create 13 calf embryos. Of these, half had major genetic flaws, four died in the womb, one died at birth and two survived only briefly. Dr. Robi also discovered that most of the clones had severely abnormal lungs and enlarged hearts. Others had livers that were full of fat. But the most noticeable defect was the appearance of oversized placentas that were filled with fluid. Flaws like these, the likely consequences of single parent imprinting, kill both the embryo and carrier mother.

Last month, in a further blow to cloning laboratories, Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, was discovered to be geriatric before her time. Although she looks perfectly healthy, abnormalities within her cellular make-up spell a grave future for the celebrity sheep. Scientists believe that Dolly, who should have been two years old last February, may actually be the same age, genetically, as the six-year-old ewe from whom she was cloned.

Trade treaty trickery

The EU and Mexico have agreed a far-reaching, and potentially disastrous, free trade agreement.

The Global Agreement on Free Trade, Political Partnership and Co-operation was ratified by the European Parliament on 6 May this year without any transparency or popular discussion. This ominous treaty contains many of the central tenets of the notorious Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).

Controversial measures like the liberalisation and deregulation of agriculture, forestry and intellectual property rights have been endorsed, and multinational corporations have no obligations to ensure set standards for workers' or indigenous people's rights.

Neither do investors have to guarantee that they will leave their host country in the same environmental and social condition in which they found it. Instead, the treaty provides companies with increased powers over local governments, which can be held accountable for any actions that are deemed a restriction of 'free' trade.

Very few people have even heard of this new treaty, let alone understand its implications. A coalition of NGOs from both Mexico and Europe have denounced the treaty, and the way it was negotiated.

Environmentalists shame unscrupulous credit agencies

Secretive financial agencies are funding development projects that more publicly accountable institutions dare not touch.

Export Credit Agencies like Japan's Export-Import Bank (Jexim) regularly fund projects that displace indigenous people, degrade tropical forests and pollute the atmosphere with green-house gases. But whilst large development fund organisations like the World Bank have adopted (nominal) environmental standards, ECAs are quick to approve bottom-of-the-barrel projects that fail to meet international guidelines. Now environmentalists are calling for action to regulate these unscrupulous organisations.

Take the Three Gorges Dam project in China. When the World Bank and the US export credit agency refused to provide funding for the environmentally and socially sensitive scheme, smaller, less reputable agencies queued up to take their place. Similarly, when thousands of outraged protestors convinced the World Bank to pull out of the Narmada Dam project in India, the German ECA Hermes was quick to take over.

In 1997, ECAs subsidised 10.4 per cent of world trade, over half of which went towards large infrastructure projects in developing nations. According to the IMF, 20 per cent of all developing nation debt is now owed to ECAs a greater amount than that owed to the World Bank and IMF. And whilst the volume of trade facilitated by the multilateral institutions has remained fairly stable, between 1988 and 1996, ECA lending soared by 400 per cent.

In March, 45 NGO representatives met in Washington to discuss a comprehensive report on the credit agencies. They have called on G-8 leaders to implement uniform global lending standards for all OECD nations' export, credit and investment insurance agencies within the year.

• For a copy of the report, A Race to the Bottom: Creating Risk, Generating Debt and Guaranteeing Environmental Destruction, please contact Bruce Rich, Environmental Defence Fund, US, bruce@edg.org, Tel + 202 387 3500.

A forest too far

The logging industry is threatening endangered primates as never before.

The global logging industry has long been implicated in the wide-scale slaughter of forest wildlife. But as tree-felling continues to open up huge areas of formerly inaccessible forest, the slaughter of endangered species is accelerating.

In Central Africa, 'bushmeat' is being traded on an unprecedented scale. Every day, wild elephant, deer and endangered monkey carcasses are dragged down the new logging roads. In the Congo, communities based around 'open' forests are selling six times more wild game than villagers living beside untouched areas. Last year, Africa sold one million metric tons of bushmeat.

Because logging companies are often the only institutional bodies present in remote forest regions, the World Conservation Society is now urging them to encourage the responsible management of forest game. But loggers haven't just facilitated the wide-scale slaughter of forest mammals. Often, they are at the forefront of the abuse.

In Indonesia, loggers have infiltrated a 'protected' orang-utan reserve in the Tan-jung Puting National Park. Although companies have been cutting trees in the protected forests for some time, they used to do so under the cover of darkness. Now, the whine of chainsaws can be heard throughout the day, as the destruction edges nearer to the world-renowned orang-utan rehabilitation centres at Tanjung Itarapan and Camp Leakey. Loggers have even started using the rehabilitation centres as loading bays for their timber Many orang-utans have recently fled in terror, and forest wardens are too frightened of encountering the aggressive loggers to carry out the centre's vital work properly.

• Locals are urging the international cornmunity to write to Indonesia's Minister of Forestry, Dr Muslimin Nasution, urging him to stop the logging in Tanjung Puting National Park. Fax the Minister on + 62 2] 5700226.

Money for nothing

A British farmer has been fined for failing to harvest crops that nobody wants.

The European Union's ridiculous agricultural policies - which promote the spread of chemical monoculture farming and regularly produce vast food surpluses - were thrown into sharp relief last month when a British farmer, who earns £15,000 a year to grow a crop that nobody wants, was fined for not harvesting it.

For several years, the EU has paid Richard Goldsworthy to produce 100 tons of linseed fibre flax, which he is then ordered to destroy. This year, Goldsworthy decided to save himself the £1,300 cost of harvesting the crop by ploughing it in.

When EU inspectors discovered the deed, he was taken to court, charged with obtaining his subsidy by deceit. The judge, who described the case as 'scarcely believable", fined him £1,500.

Goldsworthy, of Kilgetty, west Wales, is eligible for a one hundred per cent EU subsidy for his 72 acres of flax. In previous years, be had been ordered to destroy the crop because the 350-mile trip to a reprocessing plant in East Anglia was said to make it uneconomical.

A Welsh Farmers' Union spokesman commented: "There's got to be something wrong with an agricultural system that encourages people to bin their crops".

Pedal power

Rickshaws are Appearing on the Streets of London

As The Ecologist reported in May 1998, rickshaws are beginning to make an appearance on European streets - where they are being seen as a novel answer to traffic congestion and pollution - even as they are outlawed as 'backward' in Calcutta. Last May, a fleet of Indian rickshaws was introduced to London, where planners hope they will cut traffic by up to a third. The rickshaws, which can carry two adults and a child, have been adapted for the Western user to include 21 gears, hydraulic disc brakes and halogen lights. A hooded parapet, hot water bottle and blanket will shelter passengers from the elements.

"Hopefully, the scheme will develop into a full community taxi service", says Andrew Bambridge, of Cityside Regeneration, the company that is funding the six-month pilot project. The venture will be managed by Erica Steinhauer, who runs the British Rickshaw Network. Steinhauer battled for five years to get city authorities in Oxford to recognise the rickshaw as a legitimate form of public transport. The fruits of her labours - a 12 -vehicle tourist service - now serves as a working model of the rickshaw's capacity to provide a convenient and environmentally friendly form of urban transport.

• For more information, contact: Erica Steinhauer, The British Rickshaw Network, 40 Cowley Rd, Oxford, 0X4 1HZ, Tel: + 1865 251 620 Far: + 1865 251 134.

Poisoned seas

A recent report reveals that PCB poisoning of the oceans is even worse than previously thought.

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are some of the most toxic artificial chemicals in the world. These oily liquids are used as insulating fluids, sealants, waterproofers and coolants in a wide variety of electrical appliances. PCBs were developed in 1929 by the Swann Corporation, which was later taken over by Monsanto, the corporation which, as well as trying to foist biotechnology onto an unwilling world, is also responsible for most of the PCB poisoning on Earth today.

Because, unfortunately for the notorious 'life science' company, PCBs turned out to be extremely dangerous. Like DDT, PCBs 'bio-accumulate' along the food chain in ever increasing concentrations of toxicity, and do not biodegrade. Even at low levels, PCBs disturb genetic traits, confuse the endocrine system and are highly carcinogenic.

When scientists discovered the dangers of PCBs in the 1960s, many countries banned their sale and production. Perhaps they hoped it would all end there. But a recent report in the journal Environmental Pollution suggests otherwise.

Whilst scientists had previously assumed that PCB contamination would be worst closest to production, the report reveals that, in fact, some of the wildest places on Earth are actually the most polluted.

Now, scientists believe that 20 per cent of all 1.2 million tonnes of PCBs ever produced are in the oceans, and dolphins seals and whales are carrying such high levels that, when dead, they have to be treated as hazardous waste. The pollution is playing havoc with the mammals' sexual characteristics. Last year, the Norwegian Polar Institute found four polar bear cubs with both male and female sexual organs.

Because humans, like polar bears, are at the top of the food chain, the bears' physiological reaction has caused deep concern. Native Arctic women have been warned not to eat the customary diet of marine mammal blubber before they have children.

Just say No to the WTO

NGOs are rallying the troops for the "Protest of the Century".

A seven-day campaign against the World Trade Organisation is being planned to coincide with the third Millennium Round meeting in Seattle, USA, next November. The "No To WTO", which is being organised by the Seattle-based Network Opposed to the WTO, hopes to bring together 100,000 people.

Of the 100 cases that have so far come WTO, every single decision has favoured corporations. WTO rulings have seriously undermined the environmental health and safety standards of nation states, as well as infringing upon the rights of governments to act on the behalf of their own people or principles (see "The WTO" by Steven Shrybman in this issue)

Across America, local authorities have set their teeth against the prospective MAI agreement, which was developed under WTO auspices. Even the WTO meeting host-town, Seattle, has declared itself an MAI-free zone. And recently, the WTO came under further attack for the way in which funds are being raised for the Seattle conference. International companies have been invited to sponsor the event, in return for a chance to rub shoulders with the world's top politicians. The most generous corporate sponsors will be entitled to tickets for five to two receptions and a 'ministerial' dinner.

Although Boeing Company executive Ray Waldeman, who heads the host committee, insists that the fundraisers are not "selling access", Daniel Seligman, of the Sierra Club trade and environmental group in Washington, is not so sure. "Trade officials are going to be much more likely to listen to top corporate sponsors like Bill Gates than other interested parties. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them."

International NGOs haven't been sent any of the cash-for-abash invitations, Seligman points out. When the world's top 500 corporations are paying for major public policy negotiations, affecting health, environment and labour standards, "you've got to raise fundamental questions about how neutral and legitimate it all is."

Tibetan culture faces new attack

Tibetans face a further assault on their culture if the World Bank agrees to fund a $40 million Chinese population transfer programme.

The Chinese government have asked for the World Bank's assistance in transferring 61,755 poor farmers to the Tibetan and Mongolian province of Qinghai. Free Tibet campaigners say the project would go against the financial institution's official policy of safeguarding the rights of indigenous minority peoples. The sudden influx of farming families, who are not Tibetan or Mongolian and do not understand the culture and language, would marginalise local people and threaten the 'autonomous' status of their province.

In accepting the Chinese as a potential trading partner within the World Trade Organisation, G-8 political leaders have turned a blind eye to Chinese human rights abuses. But there is no reason why the degradation of Tibet's peaceful, spiritual people should be of any lesser concern than the fate of the Kosovans. The Chinese population transfer would make a bad situation worse. Free Tibet campaigners are urging the World Bank to pull out of the relocation project.

• To voice your concern, please write to James Wolfensohn, President, World Bank, as above, Fax: + 202 522 303]
• To get involved, please contact Free Tibet Campaign, ] Rosoman Place, London EC1R 0JY. Tel: + 171 833 9958, Fax: + 171] 833 3838 Email: tibetsupport@gn.apc.org.

Are they angry, or are they just ... toxic?

Agricultural chemicals aren't just carcinogenic, they're making us aggressive. And micro-organisms in drinking water are proving a new danger.

A report in the journal Toxicology and Industrial Health says that continued exposure to low doses of water-borne weed killers, artificial fertilisers and pesticides, at levels comparable to US groundwater, cause significant changes in the way we behave. The study, which took medical researchers at the University of Wisconsin in the USA five years to complete, is one of the first to explore the effects of combinations of agricultural compounds.

Scientist Warren Porter's team discovered that combinations were far more likely to cause thyroid imbalances than individual chemicals. The thyroid controls the body's metabolic rate. People who have a fast metabolism tend to be more nervous and aggressive than those with a slow metabolism. Combinations of frequently-used chemicals were found to make the thyroid hyperactive, causing increased irritability and aggression.

Another study, carried out in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico, came to a similar conclusion. Elizabeth A. Guilette and her colleagues observed the behavioural, learning and physical differences between children bought up in the valley basin, where pesticides are liberally sprayed, and those who live in the foothills, where families don't use sprays at all. They found that the pesticide-exposed children were noticeably more aggressive than the children from the foothills.

A recent spate of violence from America's young has left people wondering what the problem is. Is it the breakdown of communities, religion, families? Is it violent TV? Few have questioned the role that increasing doses of man-made chemicals have to play.

But some say we should be more concerned about toxic water-borne micro-organisms. The American Society for Microbiology has found that micro-organisms cause up to 900 deaths and 900,000 cases of illness in the US every year. But whereas maximum concentrations standards have been set for over 70 different chemicals, only one micro-organism - the coliform bacteria - is regulated. The ASM says that coliform, which is supposed to act as a general indicator of microbial presence in water, is a poor representative. They have called on the US Environmental Protection Agency to carry out extensive research into effective ways to improve the microbial quality of US drinking water.

Dam them all

A Turkish dam project will drown one of the Earth's oldest human settlements. Meanwhile, China's large dams are already crumbling.

The Ilisu dam project in south-east Turkey is coming under increasing fire from environmentalists, historians and locals, all of whom claim that the project will be a disaster. The $1.52 billion hydroelectric project, which will hold back the headwaters of the Tigris, will submerge one of the oldest settlements on Earth.

Hasankeyf contains rare cave churches, ancient bridges and historic monuments. Ironically, because of its status as a heritage site, local entrepreneurs have never been allowed even to build a tourist hotel in the town. Yet in a remarkable U-turn, the government gave the go-ahead, back in 1982, for the settlement to be drowned forever beneath the waters of a reservoir which many say is unnecessary. Funding is currently being agreed with 15 different countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, few considerations have been given to the 20,000 locals who will have to be resettled. Although the government is offering generous compensation, the valley's inhabitants just want to keep their homes. "People here don't want the money", insists Ali Abdullah Tatus, who grew up beside the Tigris. "We want to stay here".

The project could also be a recipe for international conflict. The Turkish dam will divert the Tigris as it enters Syria and Iraq, in direct contravention of the globally binding 1997 UN Convention of the Non-Navigable Uses of Transboundary Waterways. This states that, where water resources are diverted, neighbouring states must be given prior-notification, significant harm must be avoided and all water conflicts peacefully resolved. The Ilisu project fails on all three counts.

"It wasn't meant to be like this", wrote Fred Pearce, in a recent issue of the New Scientist. "Big dams are supposed to be yesterday's technology".

China's tottering hydropower industry is a case in point. In March, the China Daily reported that the government planned to repair 33,000 dams and dykes at an estimated cost of £2.4 billion, saying that they were "poorly built". The work would be finished by 2010, but government officials were already wondering where funding would come from. Not from the Chinese people themselves, presumably, who are already paying a special supplement on their electricity bills towards the Yangtze's Three Gorges project. The dam, which will be the biggest hydroelectric project in the world, is yet to enter the second stage of its development.

Recently, surprisingly frank articles in the People's Daily, which has been called the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, have questioned whether the Three Gorges dams are needed at all. Already, the project is predicted to cost three and a half times more than the original $8 billion estimated. And the enormous 410-mile reservoir created by the dam will displace an incredible 3 million people.

The Chinese government claims to have re-located 160,000, but sources inside China say that the real figure is under half of that. No one wants to move from the villages that their families have lived in for generations. Moreover, much of the land staked out for resettlement lies on steep mountain plateaux, where high exposure and erosion provides unsuitable conditions for farming. To make matters worse, promised compensation is getting "lost" in corrupt local bureaucracies.

New Zealand dairy boycott

Activists across Asia and the Pacific have vowed to boycott all new Zealand dairy products if cattle farmers start using Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)

Approval for the use of the controversial genetically-engineered hormone, which has produced disastrous results in the US, is to be put before New Zealand's Animal Remedies Board this month. International studies have shown that injecting cows with rBGH causes mastitis, lameness, sores and short life spans amongst cattle. Drinking the milk has been linked to higher rates of prostate and breast cancer in humans. Despite this, NZ regulatory bodies will not carry out independent human clinical trials before making their decision.

In a formal statement, citizen movements in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and India - who are part of the Asia and Pacific pesticide Action network - have pledged to boycott all new Zealand dairy if use of the growth hormone is approved. NZ Food Minister, John Luxton, described the activists as "factually modified."

Secondhand hazards

Despite global agreements on toxic exports, hazardous Western chemicals are still being palmed off onto developing countries.

The 1995 amendment to Basel Convention on Toxic Waste Exports banned the export of toxic wastes from OECD to non OECD countries. But loopholes are appearing in the treaty allowing banned pesticides to be exported to the South.

Since the pesticide DBCP was banned from the United States in 1979, for example, more than 25,000 workers from banana and pineapple plantations in the Philippines, Costa Rica and ten other countries have sued manufacturers and employers over its continued use. They say it has made them sterile. So far, the payout has reached £52 million.

But DBCP "is just the tip of the iceberg", reports The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health this month. Adjunct Professor of Tufts University in the US, Barry S. Levy, believes there may be hundreds of other chemicals like DBCP out there; "chemicals that are known hazards, banned or restricted in this country and then shipped abroad."

The UN is now working on a globally binding pesticide convention.

Victory for French road protesters

Last French wild bears no longer threatened by road tunnel.

In a remarkable victory, French road protestors have successfully blocked the completion of a £200 million road tunnel across the Vallee D'Aspe national park in the Pyrenees, which is home to the last of France's wild bears. The campaigners, who have been battling with local authorities for 15 years, say the noise and pollution from up to 1,000 lorries a day would have completely destroyed the bears' habitat.

The protests were led by an activist known as "the Indian", who has been arrested 8 times over the course of the protest. Only days before the conservationists' final triumph, Eric Pététin was caught slashing a lorry's tyres and digging a trench across the newly widened road.

Russia faces "new Chernobyl"

Decaying nuclear submarines threaten new nuclear disaster.

Russia's decaying nuclear submarine fleet is threatening the world with a "Chernobyl in slow motion", says Russia's Deputy Atomic Energy Minister, Nikolay Yegerov.

Some of the submarines, which are literally collapsing at their moorings, are being kept afloat by refilling their buoyancy tanks with pressurised air. "Who knows how long this can go on?" said Valery Alexeyev, a dockyard official.

With the Russian economy teetering on the brink of collapse, funding to decommission the country's Northern Submarine Fleet is coming from abroad. The US and UK have both sent contributions, and Norway, Sweden and Finland, which are in the front line for any radiation contamination, have given aid as well. However, much of the funding is yet to be found.

An antique nuclear reactor in the same region of Russia's Kola peninsula is also causing concern. Safety experts believe that its two oldest pressurised-water reactors, built in 1973, should be closed immediately. Appeals to the EU for aid have failed. "We are in despair", said the plant's chief engineer, Vassily Omeltchuk.

The Kola peninsula is now one of the most polluted and volatile regions in the world.

Concerned European citizens should write to their MEP to ask what steps the EU are taking to help Russia decommission its dangerous nuclear submarine fleet.