Hi all,

Ahead of our call tomorrow, we wanted to provide some feedback from our project, kindly supported by the Gen-ethische Stiftung, on alliance building.

As part of our project, we are organising (together with Fulya – who will also join us for the call tomorrow) regional workshops to inform stakeholders – seed saving organisations and seed producers, farmer organisations, environmental NGOs, and campaigning organisations – about the issue of patents on seeds and the latest developments. The aim of the workshops was to motivate other national actors to get active on the issue and possibly to become NPOS members – recognising that we need support from more states to get change.

We have now done workshops in two regions (Benelux and UK/IE). Two more regional workshops will follow before the summer, plus a workshop in Brussels for EU stakeholders in the autumn. For the remaining regional workshops, we have three options: Baltic, Spain/Portugal, South Eastern Europe. We’d welcome any views on which to prioritise in tomorrow’s call.

We also wanted to share some feedback from the workshops to date:

There is a lot of interest in the topic and to become more informed. However, the feedback is that the issue – at least in the context of the current political / lobbying process – is very complicated, and as a result the threshold for getting involved feels too high. Those organisations that are politically active are also now focussed on the discussions on the new GMOS, and to a lesser extent on the upcoming reform of the seed marketing legislation.

We are of the view that it makes sense to continue with the workshops this year, as raising awareness on the issue is itself a very positive outcome. We are also building contacts with organisations who could become potential active supporters of No Patents on Seeds in the future. However, it is no longer realistic to expect that organisations, simply on the basis of the workshop, will become active on the issue. If it really is our goal to get a new member or at least active organisations from other countries, we would need a different approach, including more intensive, ongoing cooperation (such as recently between No Patents on Seeds and WeMove) and the provision of targeted campaigning and advocacy materials. This is of course much more intensive, so could not realistically be done for more than 1-2 countries, which would still not give us the majority we need at the European level. But is something that might become more realistic in future years if there is a change in the strategy of NPOS, e.g. if we have broader, less technical goals.

Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Best

Katherine  

Katherine Dolan

Leitung Politik / Head of Policy

+43 (0)676 557 4408

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