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ETC Group
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ETC Group is an international organization dedicated to "the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights". The full legal name is Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration. "ETC" is intended to be pronounced as "etcetera". [1] [2]
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ETC Group works in the areas that it summarizes as erosion, technology and concentration [3].
"...not only genetic erosion and the erosion of species, soils and the atmosphere, but also the erosion of knowledge and the global erosion of rights. We are losing biological resources and traditional knowledge relating to the management of ecosystems and biodiversity."
"The ETC group believes that any major new technology introduced into a society which is not, by its nature, a 'just' society will exacerbate the gap between rich and poor." This statement was retrieved from the group's website.
"... the re-organization of economic power into the hands of high-tech global oligopolies." ETC Group asserts that the interplay between vanishing bioresources, life-dominating new technologies, and the emergence of ever more powerful concentrations of economic control is driving social and political change.
The group opposes human genomic research.
Known as RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) until 1 September 2001, the ETC Group traces its history back to the National Sharecroppers Fund that was established in the 1930's by, amongst others, Eleanor Roosevelt to help support the plight of poor, mostly black, tenant farmers in the US. In the early 1970's Pat Mooney, Hope Shand and Cary Fowler began working on the Seeds Issue through the Rural Advancement Foundation and in time set up an international arm concerned with the rights of farmers in the global south.
RAFI pioneered civil society research, critiques and advocacy on farmers rights, seed monopoly laws, genetic engineering in agriculture, patents on life and biopiracy (a term that RAFI coined) and new life science technologies such as terminator technology, genomic technologies and nanotechnology. RAFI played a key role is pushing for and shaping UN recognition of farmers rights and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. By 2000 there was some confusion with the original Rural Advancement Foundation (now called RAFI-USA) so RAFI changed its name to ETC Group to reflect its wider scope of concern.