UN: World failing to monitor biotech trade: U.N.
Efforts to control to spread of biotechnology know-how which could provide terrorists with the building blocks of biological weapons are insufficient; only $135 million, a fraction of the amount needed, had been spent on helping developing countries to build up skills to monitor a rising use of biotechnologies in the past fifteen years
The world is failing in
efforts to control an international biotechnology trade ranging from
genetically modified crops to the building blocks of biological weapons, a UN
University study said on Tuesday. The study said a lack of controls was “a
potentially contributing factor to the spread of bioterrorism” — the
deliberate release of naturally occurring or human-modified bacteria, viruses,
toxins, or other biological agents. It said just $135 million, a fraction of
the amount needed, had been spent on helping developing countries to build up
skills to monitor a rising use of biotechnologies in the past fifteen years.
Lack of training and knowledge is “so pervasive and broad that there is no
effective international system of biosafety at the moment,” according to
the 238-page report by the Japan-based UN University Institute of Advanced
Studies. “The use and prevalence of biotechnology seems certain to
increase, not least in agriculture,” it said.
More than 100 developing
nations lack the ability to implement the UN 2003 Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety, meant to help regulate trade in genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) including crops such as maize, tomatoes, rice, or soybeans.
Biotechnology has been held out as a way of helping poor nations, for instance
with crops with higher yields or genetic traits that can withstand droughts
that may become more frequent because of climate change. Some countries,
worried about GMOs that some environmentalists brand “Frankenfoods,”
have banned all biotech imports. “A country that lacks capacity is more
likely to bring in very restrictive systems in order to counterbalance its
deficiencies,” the report said, released during a 19-30 May UN meeting
about biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. The findings raised questions about “the extent to
which capacity deficits are undermining the promise that advances in
biotechnology would directly address the needs of the poor,” said A. H.
Zakri, head of the Institute of Advanced
Studies.
“There may also be broader implications … These may include an impaired
ability to meet the challenges of global issues such as climate change, or to
protect humans and the environment against biosecurity risks,” he said in
a statement.
Sam Johnston, one of four
authors of the study, said many countries lacked officials to check shipments.
“It’s just not working,” he said of the Cartagena Protocol.
“Outside Europe there is nothing effective. You end up with an
ineffective, dysfunctional international regime.” He said it was almost
impossible to buy GMO free soya anywhere in the world. “There is simply so
much GM soy that it becomes contaminated,” he said. “Climate change
will make marginal lands bigger…and you need technological answers, make
crops that can resist stresses like drought and salinity,” he said.
“But even if you do develop those technologies, you’ll find it difficult
to roll them out without an effective regime.”
