With the ousting of the neoliberal government in Argentina, the collapse of Enron and recent
victories in protecting people from the onsluaght of GMOs, a period has been
established that reflects the power of diversified movements. It is this
power that we are mobilising in Porto Alegre as we struggle for a different
world.

"Civilisations in decline are charcterised by a movement toward
standarisation and uniformity, while civilisations that are growing are
characterised by diversity," noted Paul Hawken, Author of Natural Capitalism.
The sea of charcole suits gathered at the WEF stands in stark contrast to
the spectrum of costumes collected at the WSF. With the ousting of the
neoliberal government in Argentina, the collapse of Enron and recent
victories in protecting people from the onsluaght of GMOs, a period has been
established that reflects the power of diversified movements. It is this
power that we are mobilising in Porto Alegre as we struggle for a different
world.

Two notable victories exemplifiy the effectiveness mobilised diversity.
Recently in Brazil, the courts stopped Monsanto from introducing GMO corn, a
precedent that has come to act as an temporary law rendering all transgenic
crops illegal for cultivation. "The most important factor to our victory is
the dispersed front," commented Marijane Lisboa of the Campagn for a
Transgenic Free Brazil. Coalitions of civil groups, indigenous people and
farmers brought the case against Monsanto to the courts. This popularist
movement has resonance with the judiciary who are generally mistrustful of
the government and foriegn interests. The diversity of the movement is
complemented by Brazil's Biodieversity. This country has the highest
mega-biodiversity in the world, but the lack of environmental assessment
laws make it a battle ground between biotech and biodiversity. As the fight
against GMOs continues, in the courts, government and the farmer's fields,
Lisboa wonders how the the governments can possible support the
transnational corpororations' (TNCs) over their democraticly inspired
resistance.

In India, a similar movement forced the government to bring down laws
against the production of transgenic cotton. Dr. Vandana Shiva, during a
panel discussion on anti-transgenic campaigns, rememered that "When [she]
discovered that the TNC's desperation was so intense that they wanted to be
able to ensure the they could acces every concievable market through the use
of transgenic seeds, [she] began to work with communities to establish seed
banks and establish The North Coalition Movement Against Seed Monopolies and
Transgenics." The seed banks act as protection against the planned phase
out of local crop varieties while the Coalition encourages farmers around
the country to resist market forces and laws that forced them to use
transgenic seeds. By protecting seeds stores across India, and
establishing "Monsanto Free Zones" a wide range of interests have come
together to raise physical and polical barriers agains the spread of
transgenic crops and protect India's agricultural biodiversity heritage.

Borrowed phrases from the defeatist monologue of the encumbant capitalist
hegemony help to shed light on the force of diversity. It's the "Law of the
Jungle," it's just "Human Nature." Biodiversity defines the power of the
jungle; eat or be eaten, adjust, shift, keep your options open.
Biotechnology flies headlong at the beast of Biodiversity. The hubris of
the technocrats, who have standardised their own doctrine such that it masks
the flawed science behind their patents, will be their undoing. Barry
Commoner, Senior Scientist at the Centre for the Biology of Natural Systems
at Queens Colege, suggests the recently defined human genome is not complex
enough to "define the inherted difference between a weed and a person."
This points to nature's varied methods of inheritance, debunking the myth
that DNA is the business plan of all life. Biotechnology attempts to
standardise life, making clones, limiting agriculture to patented crops,
essentially corporatising the functioning of life. Natural agricultural
processes will always contain an inherited power that makes then superior to
any approach that the Biotech industry can offer.

Currently there is a resource shift from Biodiversity to Biotechnology, an
attempt by the TNCs to usurp some of the power they face. "Transgenic crops
are being illegally sewed around the world," cried Shiva during a WSF pannel
on the anti-transgenic movement. Monsanto has distributed seeds that lead
to the illegal planting of GMO cotton on 10,000 acres in Gujurat. She went
on to say that "Around Porto Alegre, GMO crops have infiltrated farmers
fields, despite a ban by the government of Brazil." GMO foods have been
commonly found in disaster releif packets. This is the standardised
approach of the transnational corporate system to solve one problem (in this
case disaster) by creating another. Likely they believe that the true root
of power is the ability to perpetuate suffering, but mother nature filed the
patent on famine and suffering long ago. The royalties that she demands
will bankrupt those who use her intelectual property to their own profit.
Infiltration is an effective means to begin the fight against a system that
is more powerful, and we have yet to find a system more powerful than
nature. As these crops difuse their genetic poison into ecossytems, they
take up water, nutrients and land that once supported the natural products
of evolution. Simultaneously, GMO crops often cross-polinate with
neighbouring speicies leading to genetic contamination of exisiting seed
stocks. This is all an attempt to snatch resources, to change the
distribution, and bring about a shift in power. Shiva notes that "Through
the terminator gene they (TNCs) seek to elimate the ancient sytems of
mixing, sellecting and replanting." This takes the power away from the
farmers and their local ecology, placing it in the hands of monolithic
corporations.

Imagine a world where a corporation, such as Monsanto, controls the
distribution of the world's seeds, each year the farmers having to return to
the distributors to be supplied with new seed. What options will they have
to offer against unforseen pests. Will they have as wide a product range as
nature? Even a thousand monkeys in a thousand charcole suits could not
secure that many patents. Now imagine the year in which market uncertainty,
theivery and dubious accounting collapse Monsanto as they did Enron. The
seed supply vacuum after such a collapse would immediately translate into
world-wide famine.

Agricultural biodiversity provides options to adjust to pests, climate
change and prolonged periods of sporadic weather; biodiversity is not
susceptable to market crashes. According to Hawken, if there is a systematic
flaw in a society, diversity offers a way out, a chance to recentre the
power around an alternate model. Concentration and standarisation limit
options, build barriers to change, leading to collosal collapses. A
diversity of agricultural crops is the source and result of the power of the
farmers' networks and twenty thousand years of experience.

But it is not only agricultural movements who benefit from diversification.
John Jordan of Reclaim the Street in England today held a workshop title
"The diversity of tactics for civil action," here at the WSF Youth Camp.
Jordan pointed out that accepting a diversity of tactics empowers the
movement of movements by mobilising a wider spectrum of people. He suggests
that when building a campaign, it is important not to marginalise groups
whose tactics may not fit the planned agenda. This type of marginalisation
simply leads to increase in non-constuctive actions. Instead groups need to
work together, not by prostituing themselves and giving up their ideals, but
by recognising the needs and values that each group share. Tactical
diversity links can be likend to biodiversity links. Each ideology, concept
and tactic are connected, feeding on and feeding off each other - species in
an ecosystem. Varied tactics enrich the movement bringing different
experiences together, providing a new set of options and building a space to
be creative. The difficulty of bringing activism styles from the North and
South together highlights the value of this technique. In Argentina there is
a history of spontaneous mass mobilisation, which can accomplish major
change, but its size and quickness make it difficult to direct. In the
North there is a greater degree of organisation, but it lacks majority
participation. A space for the mobilisers from the North and South to meet,
engage and exchange experience builds a robust movement and therin lies the
power of diversified meetings such as the WSF.

Power is the ability to mobilise resources in favour of one's interests.
And power is precisely the tool that encourages a shift from one method of
resource distribution to another. As the TNCs try to wrestle power out of
our communities and ecosystems by stealing our resources, their tactic of
uniformity and regulation is putting fuel on into the tanks of the
diversified groups that they are attempting to marginalise. A new
civilisation is on the rise.