« Welcome to Biovision! My work and my life are filled with the wish that all people can live in a healthy environment and have enough food to eat.»
Dr. Hans Rudolf Herren, Winner of the World Food Prize, Founder and President of the Biovision Foundation
Stockholm Convention fails to set deadline for worldwide ban on DDT: Geneva, 3 May 2013 – The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) could not agree on a date for a worldwide ban on DDT. The persistent poison has been banned in industrialised countries since the 1970s, but is still being used to fight malaria in the developing world.
The Stockholm Conference has only agreed to intensify research for affordable alternatives over the next few years. To this end, the convention wants to establish a roadmap. It was the strong opposition to setting any time frame of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the last producer of DDT, India, that killed the proposal for a deadline.
“Regrettably, the proposal to the convention’s stakeholders to commit them to a deadline of 2020 for provision of alternatives to DDT made by the African Group could still not be accepted. This puts in question the commitment of the developed nations and the WHO to stop the use and exposure of our people to already listed POPs like DDT,” said a disappointed African delegate who did not want to be named.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced 12 more nominees for Cabinet positions and Biovision’s long standing associate Judi Wakhungu has been nominated for the position of Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Water and Natural resources.
The nominees now have to go through a vetting process by a parliamentary commission and then have to be confirmed by parliament. But observers have little doubt that Judi Wakhungu will get through this process.
Judi Wangalwa Wakhungu holds a PhD in Energy Resources Management. She is currently the Executive Director of the African Centre for Technology Studies. She is also the Advisor to the Energy Sector Management Programme of the World Bank as well as the Legatum Centre in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, she is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Management of Social Transformation Programme.
Her connection to Biovison originated when she shared the chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development with Hans Herren. She is now on the Board of the Biovision Africa Trust, our sister organisation based in Nairobi. She was also a guest on the podium of the Biovision symposium in November 2012 in Zurich. Biovision is delighted that such a competent person takes on the responsibility for a key department of government in Kenya and we wish her all the very best for this new challenge.
