This Conference will have two major goals:

1) To show to the world and the GMO experts from 141 member states of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that Europe says NO to GMOs in Agriculture.

2) To jointly celebrate the diversity of plants and animals, agricultural practices, food cultures and regions of the world and to discuss how to defend this diversity against concepts of agricultural globalisation - concepts based on uniformity of production, food and corporate control.

We want to enable participants from all regions and continents to present their cases and concerns as well as their successes and demands.

To this end we need your active support and participation - your ideas and suggestions, your outreach within your own country and to your partners and friends world-wide, as well as your financial contributions. Bringing together people from around the world is a costly endeavour - we believe it is well worth it, and it will also strengthen our local and European fights. Preparing for such an event also takes a lot of time and work. Starting NOW is neither too early nor too late.

We are looking forward to your responses and ask you to distribute this call for participation widely: For further questions please call and email us directly.

Best regards from Berlin!

Benedikt Haerlin and Shannon von Scheele
GMO-Free World Summit on Diversity, Bonn, 12-16 May 2008
 http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/worldsummit2008.html


A questionnaire is available online:
 http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/worldsummit2008/online-questionnaire.html

INVITATION TO JOIN THE GMO-FREE WORLD SUMMIT ON DIVERSITY
Bonn, 12 - 16 May 2008

Dear Friends on our small planet!
From 12 - 16 May 2008 representatives of 141 member countries of the "Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety" under the Rio Convention on Biodiversity will be meeting in Bonn, Germany. The main issue on their agenda will be liability and redress from damages caused by genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Also participating will be hundreds of delegates from non-member parties, such as the USA, Canada and Argentina as well as the GMO industry and scientists.
We believe that this is the perfect occasion to hold the world's first GMO-Free Summit on Diversity. At a recent European conference of GMO-Free Regions in Brussels 300 delegates from 36 countries and 230 GMO-Free Regions in Europe issued this invitation:

"We invite the farmers, gardeners and consumers of the world to celebrate the diversity of our seed and food and cultures and their freedom from GMOs, patents and corporate control. This celebration will coincide with and address the meeting of the parties of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Convention on Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany in May 2008. We call upon organisations, communities and institutions from around the world to join us in organising this event and to contribute to its program. Let us join forces for the freedom of seed and reproduction and freedom from GMOs and patents on life. Let us also make our message be heard by the representatives of governments as well as the people of the world."

The local organising committee hosting this event is now seeking partners from all regions and continents of the globe to prepare and participate in order to facilitate a truly international event. What we have in mind so far is a three-day international conference and a week of celebrations, exhibitions and events. We are seeking your advice on the programme, and we call for your participation and contributions - your imagination and causes, your recipes and traditions, your seeds and success stories. We also invite your suggestions on how to defend natural and cultivated biodiversity against the threats of a genetically engineered industrial agriculture.
If you would like to be part of these celebrations and events, please respond to this call within the coming weeks and no later than July 15th.

The provisional organising Committee:
GENET (European NGO network on genetic engineering, 50 members), CONSUMERS INTERNATIONAL, GREENPEACE, FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, IFOAM (Int. Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements), ABL (Family Farmers Union, member of Via Campesina), Church Development Service (Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst - EED), Initiative of GE-Free Seed Breeders (IG Saatgut), BUKO Agro coordination, SAVE OUR SEEDS (Foundation on Future Farming).

Contact:
"Save Our Seeds", Foundation on Future Farming
Marienstr.19-20, 10117 Berlin, Germany,
Tel +49 30 27590309 Fax +49 30 27590312
Email: info at gmo-free-regions.org

Web:  http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/worldsummit2008.html