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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
“Public debate is essential”
Colonising Africa’s agriculture
GM cotton in a dead end street
“The farmers have the choice”
Not yet mature – it is too early to bet on GM crops
02/2006
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“ The public debate is essential”
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety directs member states to provide regulation on living modified organisms (see p. 58). With funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2001 started a project to help developing countries to draft national biosafety frameworks. The project’s task is not to tell countries to use, or not to use GM crops, say Fee Chon Low and Chris Briggs of the UNEP/GEF Biosafety Unit. Rather, the idea is to assist countries to build up capacities that enable them to make informed choices.
[ Interview with Fee Chon Low and Chris Briggs ]
Can GM crops contribute to food security and poverty alleviation?
Fee Chon Low: I think genetic engineering has the potential to contribute a lot to agriculture, especially in countries where food security is a problem, perhaps because the soil is poor or climatic conditions are not conducive for increasing yields. If agricultural productivity is increased, this may contribute to some poverty reduction among the farmers and perhaps even in the whole society. Therefore, genetic engineering in agriculture has the potential to contribute to poverty alleviation.
What conditions must be met for this to happen?
Fee Chon Low: First, the government has to be committed to the technology and must politically support it. Second, the community has to be receptive to the technology: farmers and other stakeholders must be willing to try new GM crops in order to benefit from traits that traditional plant breeding does not deliver. However, you also need farmers as well as extension services who are able to apply the technology safely in the field. In some countries there have been a lot of seeds which were claimed to be genetically engineered but in fact were adulterated otherwise. As a consequence, the farmers found that they didn’t have the crop yields or the protection against diseases or pests they expected. Therefore, what is also needed is stricter enforcement of regulatory systems that have to be in place in countries that are going to make use of this technology.
Chris Briggs: In other words, you must start by setting up a robust biosafety system that will include a regulatory framework that allows you to deal with an application for approval of a GM crop developed by a company or a public sector organisation. That is what we are involved in: giving advice to participating countries in setting up a system for administration, a regulatory framework, as well as means for facilitating public participation, education and awareness, monitoring and enforcement. It is, therefore, a rather complex box of different regulatory tools that countries need to sort out. What we see as one key point is raising public awareness through a thorough consultative process with stakeholders. Then there will eventually be a government decision, which more likely will be an informed decision.
In many poor countries these preconditions are not met. Critics of GM crops accuse biotechnology companies of behaving irresponsibly by selling their seeds in these countries without paying attention to possible negative side-effects. Do you agree?
Chris Briggs: What our projects are trying to do is help countries to see the wide range of opinions and possibilities in biotechnology and biosafety rather than saying that one viewpoint is correct and the other is not. We do not say that something is good or bad. What we can say is that, as a general principle, GM crops are potentially useful, but that they are potentially risky as well. It is a question of where you sit on that borderline, pointing more to the potential benefits or the potential risks. We sit in the middle and accept both views, and it’s the country that needs to decide, case by case, within a structured system which puts the government at the centre and still remains available for public comment and stakeholder inputs. The informed participation of the people at every stage is crucial if you want to have broad and long-term acceptance of GM crops.
Should poor countries follow the liberal US approach for regulating GM crops, or impose stricter rules like European countries did?
Chris Briggs: We see the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety as the skeleton of a system set up jointly by developing and developed countries to manage GM. That is the basis we are working on in more than 140 countries. We receive our funding to help them to
apply the Protocol consistently. Of course, among them are countries that are not parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Cartagena Protocol, and they decide what to do. We cannot say that one approach is better than the other.
What are the greatest risks associated with GE in agriculture – social, economical, and environmental?
Fee Chon Low: The impact of GM crops depends on the environment in which they are grown. For example, the risk in a centre of diversity will be greater than in an environment without any wild relatives. Another environmental risk relates to non-target organisms. Consider a pest-resistant crop targeted at caterpillars: what happens if the pesticide-bearing parts of the crop are eaten by non-target organisms? There could be negative consequences to the ecology and the broader ecological community.
With regard to social impacts, genetic engineering may pose a risk to the practice, which is prevalent in many poor countries, of saving seeds for the next season and exchanging seeds within communities. GM seeds are neither meant to be saved nor to be shared because farmers have to pay royalties for them. In countries with a potential for organic, GM-free farming, there is also a specific economic risk: if GM crops in such a country are not managed properly, the contamination of supposedly GM-free products could result in the loss of important niche markets.
Is it possible to effectively contain the environmental risks of GM crops?
Fee Chon Low: It depends on the environment. Doing so is difficult wherever you mainly have small farms. Many farmers in poor countries cannot afford to plant refuge areas with non-GM crops to avoid the possibility of pests becoming resistant, or to leave enough space to neighbouring non-GM fields to avoid contamination. Different farmers may also share common waterways which will transport GM seeds out of the cultivated area. In short, risks can be contained in theory, but sometimes it is very hard to do so in practice, especially for poor farming communities.
Are existing international agreements like the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Cartagena Protocol sufficient to contain the risks? Are there any gaps that need to be filled?
Chris Briggs: The Cartagena Protocol exists exactly because developing and developed countries were interested in having a forum to discuss and decide on what sort of measures need to be taken. The Protocol allows you to adapt to dynamic circumstances. If there are gaps, theoretically at least, I would say that they could be met by the Protocol because the parties are those who are interested, and even those countries that are non-parties have a significant role within the forum of the Protocol. Naturally, there are things not considered under the Protocol, but can you really set up all the answers to complex issues in one binding agreement? We see the Protocol as a living document that will improve in time and in line with inputs. We are equally trying to help countries to understand which bits are not covered in terms of working on issues of transit, contained use in laboratories, et cetera. These are things the countries anyway need to make decisions on, and the annual Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol could also make rulings. It is a fluid process. It is this flexibility that allows all of the countries to come together and discuss an issue, and either come to conclusions or allow each country to make their own definitions of how it feels about a particular issue.
Critics say the UNEP/GEF projects promote a permissive, uncritical view of GM crops in poor countries . . .
Chris Briggs: Over the past four years I think we have been attacked by every single stakeholder for one reason or another. The industry and NGOs tend to take different views of us: one says we are too permissive, the other says we are not permissive enough. In that light, the GEF Council actually committed to an evaluation of all the work that has been done under GEF by UNEP, UNDP, or the World Bank on biosafety capacity building. The report concludes that UNEP capacity building is carrying out work of high professional quality and in line with the Protocol, and that it is neutral in its work. The real difference of opinions comes with the interpretation of the Cartagena Protocol – and this is something we constantly attempt not to do. Interpreting the Protocol is up to the parties, not UNEP. The industry, academia, and the NGOs all think that their interpretation is the correct one, whereas, of course, any interpretation is itself open to further interpretation. Everybody is entitled to a different opinion, but the majority of countries we deal with are particularly happy that we stand neutral. That we are attacked both by the industry and NGOs is a good sign of our neutrality.
Does the multitude of different stakeholders inhibit the search for adequate regulatory frameworks?
Chris Briggs: It is the reality for the countries. And that is why they ask us to help them understand what they have to do and what they don’t have to do. Then they can make their own decisions. We cannot tell them what is right. They have to listen to the voice of public opinion, they have to listen to the industry, they have to listen to the customs and the public sector – they have to see what it is that they want to do. But you’re right. Of course, having an incredibly high level of interests in this matter makes things more difficult. You can’t just sweep the issue under the carpet. It’s a topic discussed in major articles every week in some papers. It’s bound to be this way, because it is an important issue. It’s a very hot issue, and it will continue to be so. The issue challenges human beings, because it challenges the way we have been doing agriculture in the past.
So you would say, in the end, that it is valuable to have so many people engaged in the GMO debate?
Chris Briggs: It’s essential. It’s part of the Cartagena Protocol that everybody should have the possibility to say what he or she feels, that there should be discussions and consultations, and that the public should be involved in decision-making.
Questions by Tillmann Elliesen.
Fee Chon Low
works for the UNEP/GEF Biosafety Unit in Geneva and is responsible for managing the team assisting countries with the UNEP/GEF Demonstration Projects.
feechon.low@unep.ch
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