*[Enwl-eng] The bees need you now
ENWLine
We all care about bees because we know our fate is linked to theirs. But they are dying as companies like Bayer-Monsanto make sure farmers can’t survive without their bee-killing pesticides. This could change if we reach one million signatures by Thursday. |
Hi,
Bees are dying out. Big pesticide producers like Bayer-Monsanto will do anything to increase their sales and bottom-line, and they are forcing the hands of farmers. The only way for farmers to succeed in this intensive, industrial agriculture system is to use pesticides that kill the bees.
We need bees because they pollinate one-third of the food we eat. Pollination is essential to our lives because our fruits, vegetables, and the crops that feed livestock require pollination to be fertilised. Without bees, there would literally be no food! [1]
And we have little time to prevent bee populations from disappearing. That’s why we’re supporting a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) to radically change our agriculture for the better, restore our ecosystems, and protect our farmers and bees.
We’re asking for all pesticides to be phased out. It’s a big ask, but if more than ONE MILLION of us sign, the EU Commission and our MEPs will be legally obligated to meet us and address our demands -- and we're nearly there.
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Intensive agriculture (made possible by synthetic pesticides) has destroyed the diversity of the Earth’s nature. That diversity is essential for sustainable agriculture and protecting our climate. Thankfully, nature recovers quickly when we take decisive action to bring back wildlife and abandon the use of synthetic pesticides. But we have to act now, before it’s too late.
For decades, billions of euros worth of public and private funds have been poured into the pockets of pesticide producers. All while those producers have convinced our politicians to ignore the negative effects pesticides cause on bees, the environment and on our health. But finally, our leaders are starting to wake up to our calls because of people’s mobilisations.
Following calls from millions of Europeans in 2018, the EU agreed to a near-total ban on neonicotinoids, a specific kind of pesticide that harms the central nervous systems of bees. [2] And all of this on the back of a new law that the EU approved in 2019, increasing transparency throughout the pesticide approval process! [3]
But we can’t just keep banning individual types of pesticides! Our public resources ought to fund research to allow agriculture to prosper and bees to thrive, while also rebuilding our dying ecosystems. And to do that, we need to phase out synthetic pesticides altogether.
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Our WeMove Europe community has been at the forefront of the struggle for sustainable agriculture in Europe. Now, with this ECI we have a real chance to push for a truly different and sustainable agricultural model for Europe and the world. Will you join us?
David (London), Virginia (Madrid), Alex (Marseille), and the entire team at WeMove Europe
P.S. Because this campaign is a European Citizens’ Initiative, you’ll have to enter your details in a two-step process. The ECI is like an official EU petition, so it requires more information than we’d normally ask from you to sign a petition. Please fully complete the ECI form in order to have your signature counted and verified by your national government.
References:
[1]
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/bee-decline-dying-out-honeybees-uk-food-production-extinction-a6939266.html
[2]
In 2017, our community launched an ECI to ban glyphosate with a large coalition
of partners across Europe. While we didn’t get an EU-wide ban on glyphosate, we
won major changes to the EU transparency of the pesticide approval procedure
which were passed into law earlier this year. For more information about ECIs,
see the EU website here:
https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/public/welcome
[3]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43910536
WeMove Europe is an independent and values-based organisation that seeks to build people power to transform Europe in the name of our community, future generations and the planet.
WeMove Europe is funded by donations from our community across Europe. Can you chip in with a few euros a month and help make sure we can move fast to win the campaigns that matter to all of us? Donate
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WeMove Europe SCE mbH | Planufer 91 Berlin | www.wemove.eu | Privacy policy
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