Debating GM crops

The debate over genetically-modified (GM) crops is one of the most controversial and fiercely contested of recent times. While media coverage often focuses on disagreements between the United States and Europe, perhaps the main battleground today is the developing world. It is here that large markets are emerging, consumer resistance is less organised and claims that GM crops can help to alleviate hunger and food insecurity are tested.

The debate about GM crops has often focused on limited discussions of the technical or economic value of particular crops and traits. While these issues are undoubtedly important, there are others to consider. The controversy is fundamentally about the future of food and farming and what this implies for development. For some, the debate is about politics, control and access in agri-food systems, with issues of corporate dominance, patenting and the changing nature of public sector research and development at the forefront. For others it is about ethics, morals and rights, centred on the value of nature, the role of science and the opinions of farmers, consumers and future generations. Still others focus on the potential risks and uncertainties for biodiversity, for agro-ecosystem stability, for human health and so on. The issue here is how to design effective regulatory systems in the face of scientific uncertainty, public disquiet and mistrust in formal risk management institutions.

In many respects, the GM crop issue provides a window through which to examine a range of current development policy issues. What role should the private sector play? What complementary roles are there for public sector research and development? What form should state-led regulation take? How safe is 'safe' in the context of uncertainty? How can public trust in regulatory institutions be improved? What forms of public engagement - in priority setting, in regulatory approval, in monitoring and assessment - are required, and through what mechanisms? And, overall, what role can a more democratised science and technology effort play in addressing the diverse development challenges of developing countries?

These are some of the questions focused on in three recent projects on agricultural biotechnology. These involved over 20 researchers from a range of disciplines and 11 institutions in China, India, Kenya, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom (UK). These projects, funded by the UK Department for International Development and the Rockerfeller Foundation, examined the policy processes surrounding agricultural biotechnology and GM crops in particular, in four countries in Africa and Asia. The aim was to go beyond technical and economic assessments and ask how, in different contexts, priorities are set, regulations are envisaged, the public is involved and who and what are included and excluded.

Five years ago, the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics examined the prospects for agricultural biotechnology in the developing world and stated:

'As GM crop research is organised at present, the following worst-case scenario is all too likely: slow progress in those GM crops that enable poor countries to be self-sufficient in food; advances directed at crop quality or management rather than drought tolerance or yield enhancement; emphasis on innovations that save labour costs (for example, herbicide tolerance), rather than those which create productive employment; major yield-enhancing progress in developed countries to produce, or substitute for GM crops now imported in conventional (non-GM) form from poor countries.' (Nuffield Council, 1999)

The research projects aimed to find out whether this was still the case or not. The case studies threw up highly different scenarios. As Keeley discusses with regard to China, the public - and increasingly the quasi-private sector - capacity for GM research is massive, with vast areas now planted with genetically modified cotton. The regulatory bureaucracy is informed by committees of technical 'experts' including many biotechnology scientists, with no representation for consumers, farmers or civil society. Despite pressure for commercial approval (particularly for rice), policy-makers remain cautious. To date, no major food crops have been approved for large-scale cultivation. The regulatory authorities in India have also been cautious, although widespread illegal planting of insect-resistant GM cotton preceded the formal approval of the Monsanto variety.

In Kenya and Zimbabwe, there have been no approved releases of GM crops, but plenty of research. The hope is that GM technologies may deliver the Green Revolution which Africa missed out on. However, as Odame, Kameri-Mbote and Wafula highlight, the conditions needed for GM crops to be appropriate for smallholder farmers are challenging. As Glover shows, the only GM crop widely released in Asia and Africa has been Bt cotton (cotton genetically engineered to contain the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis within its tissue). While there have been some positive experiences, these must be qualified.

These concerns were highlighted in Zimbabwe - and more widely in southern Africa - with the proposed importation of GM maize as food aid in 2001. This caused a major furore. Glover shows that the politics of international trade and the need for GM companies to secure markets has become a major driving force in the push for the acceptance of GM crops around the world. But, as Katerere argues from the experience of Zimbabwe, a focus on private property and corporate rights, protected by international trade rules and narrow regulatory regimes, may be too limiting for the GM issue. There are wider rights issues at play. A rights focus suggests that local understandings of science, technology and development processes need more fundamental debate and need to enter the framing, priority setting and policy formulation process at both national and international levels. Experiments in deliberative policy processes, through participatory scenario workshops and citizens' juries, have been carried out in both India and Zimbabwe as part of this work. These revealed not only methodological and practical challenges, but the important potential such approaches offer for democratising biotechnology.

Linking local-level discussions about the future of science, technology, food and farming to the wider international processes that dominate the biotechnology debate remains, however, a major challenge. Mackenzie identifies a growing tension between pressures to standardise international rules and regulations (around biosafety, phytosanitation, trade, intellectual property and so on) and the need to respond to the huge diversity of local conditions and priorities. While existing arrangements do allow scope for flexibility, this does not always occur in practice. As Glover highlights, the importance and power of the corporate sector in defining these rules should not be underestimated. Such corporate interests often merge with pressures from developed country agencies eager to promote their own countries' trade and investment opportunities. Yamin shows how, due to the type of 'capacity building' support on offer, strong intellectual property regime models are often adopted, when in fact a more limited and flexible approach may be better for farmers and consumers. In the same way, support for building regulatory capacity in biosafety has, as Mackenzie and Newell emphasise, focused on a particular form of regulatory system, often to the exclusion of more widespread and effective public participation. This follows on from the ratification of the Cartagena protocol, an international agreement that seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by modern biotechnology.

To democratise biotechnology for development, a number of policy aspects need to be rethought in fundamental ways. These include:

• encouraging greater involvement of technology users and consumers in the framing of research and establishing development priorities
• revitalising public sector research and development in agriculture, with a focus on technology development for low cost, high employment, small-scale agriculture
• rethinking regulation in a way that will reflect local priorities and will hold the public and private sectors to account
• reflecting local priorities in new trade, regulatory and intellectual property models
• facilitating wider and more inclusive discussions - among marginalised people elite groups - in setting future directions for science, technology and development.

Ian Scoones
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9RE
UK
ians@ids.ac.uk

See also

www.ids.ac.uk/ids/env/biotech/pubsBriefings.html

Nuffield Council (1999) Genetically modified crops www.nuffieldbioethics.org/go/ourwork/gmcrops/introduction

Scoones, I. (forthcoming, 2005). Science, Agriculture and Policy: The Case of Biotechnology in India. Orient Longman: Hyderabad

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