Alexander Gillespie: New GMO rules follow middle-of-road course

COMMENT

Alan Oxley suggested that New Zealand's decision to ratify the Cartegena Biosafety Protocol was dangerous because we are about to "drop out of the global mainstream" and "delude ourselves" into thinking that this is a positive thing to do.

The piece shares all the trademarks of the extreme Green position - that all genetically modified organisms are bad - except that Oxley argues from the diametrically opposite position - that all controls over genetically modified organisms are bad.

The reality is somewhere between the two extremes, and that is where the international community is heading with the biosafety protocol.

First, the science. In a refreshingly apolitical annual report, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations addressed the growing body of scientific and economic data on GM crops. It said that after 10 years of science, the overwhelming evidence was that the GM food plants on the market posed no risk to human health.

At the same time, such technologies could bring large benefits to the environment and farmers. For example, when four million small-scale cotton farmers in China switched to planting insect-resistant GM cotton, they not only reaped 20 per cent higher yields but reduced pesticide use by 78,000 tonnes.

Despite these benefits, the FAO struck a note of caution on multiple gene transformations, now in development. This technology would require further examination, it said. The FAO also suggested more research was needed on the environmental impact of GM crops.

Nevertheless, the FAO noted that, so far, the widespread cultivation of the plants in North and South America had not lead to environmental catastrophe.

In a nutshell, so far it appears that GMOs are scientifically safe, although there are still areas of uncertainty. Given that GMOs have not produced catastrophes, and are starting to show some of their potential benefits, it is likely that work into, and produce from, them will grow exponentially.

This growth will be in marked excess of the 5.5 million farmers worldwide covering more than 50 million hectares in 2002. However, given that this huge future market has both real rewards and potential risks, the international community has agreed to a governing structure. That structure is the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol.

Mr Oxley suggested that unless we launch into unrestrained development of GMOs, the burgeoning Third World will starve. This is disingenuous. The fact that people starve to death is because of international policies relating to trade, aid and debt. These policies are often aided and abetted by domestic administrations, which contribute corruption, inefficiency and criminally stupid laws against their own citizens.

Both the radical ecologists whom Mr Oxley criticises for wanting such people to starve, and the GM apologists who suggest they can save them, make the same critical mistake. The main reasons people starve to death have very little to do with ecological scarcity.

Mr Oxley also contends that in agreeing to ratify the Cartagena protocol, New Zealand has signed away its rights at the World Trade Organisation. Although he is correct that there is an overlap between the WTO and the protocol, he omits to point out the protocol explicitly recognises that trade and environment agreements should be mutually supportive, and that the protocol is not to be interpreted as implying a change in the rights and obligations under any existing agreements.

Nevertheless, at the same time, the protocol is not subordinate to other international agreements. The nub of the issue will come over the ability for trade restrictions. The restrictions (for any product) will be prima facie permissible if they accord with a multilateral environmental agreement.

The biosafety protocol is such an agreement. It so far has 107 signatories, and is the premier instrument driving international policy on the global exchange of living GMOs. Even if a country does not wish to join the protocol, in dealing with a signatory to the protocol it will be expected to live up to the same expectations.

As a signatory to the protocol New Zealand will at least be given the chance to change aspects of the international law that it might not like. As a non-party, it would either be excluded from an increasingly comprehensive regime on this subject or be indirectly forced to comply without a voice.

Finally, Mr Oxley has contended that under the protocol, products can be "unequivocally" restricted "without scientific justification". No such language exists in the protocol. What it does allow is for the implementation of the precautionary approach.

This approach, as adopted by the international community (including New Zealand) at the 1992 Earth Summit, stipulates: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."

The difference between the biosafety protocol and the Earth Summit is that the protocol puts an end to any possible open-ended process whereby the precautionary approach may be used without restraint. Through the protocol, the application of possible restraint will be closely monitored, compared and synthesised into what will one day be a coherent body of work.

Now that New Zealand has decided to ratify the protocol, we will be part of this work. It is work that we must have a say in because to be excluded would be the antithesis of our interests in this rapidly growing area of risk and reward.

* Alexander Gillespie is a professor of law at Waikato University. He is responding to the view of Alan Oxley, a former Australian ambassador to Gatt, that ratification of the protocol represents another own-goal in the area of GM technology and trade.