Forum discussions

The guiding question for theme 6 is "What capacity-building initiatives relating to socio-economic considerations in the context of the Biosafety Protocol, living modified organisms or beyond have been undertaken or are currently being implemented?"

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Program for Biosafety Systems have accumulated a significant portfolio of capacity building/strengthening activities and real world "hands on" experience with biosafety risk assessments and with socio-economic assessments and socio-economic assessments as part of a regulatory decision making process.

Many of the materials and activities can be found here http://programs.ifpri.org/pbs/pbs.asp. IFPRI has a wealth of data, sources, models and experience with broader than LMOs assessments and policy research. this can be found at IFPRI's web site at http://www.ifpri.org

Some examples of the wealth of experience and materials with capacity building are:

Capacity building activities related to socio-economics

1) Training workshops
a. A training on economic methods for assessors for the LAC-Biosafety project lead by CIAT-Colombia, delivered by IFPRI.
b. A training on economic methods for economists organized by CORPOICA-Colombia and IFPRI
c. A training for the stakeholder at the RAEIN Africa network that included regulators, policy makers, government officials and other stakeholders, in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa

2) Targeted workshops and presentations on specific issues related to socio-economic considerations, cost of compliance with regulations and biosafety
a. Delegation from Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, South Africa and COMESA visiting IFPRI.
b. Presentations made at SEARCA, University of the Philippines-Los Baños, ICABIOGRAD-Indonesia, Wilton ParkConferences in the U.K., COMESA Secretariat, National Biosafety Committee of Uganda, Escuela Agricola Panamericana –Honduras, World Bank,  Inter American Development Bank, African Development Bank, USAID, USDA, amongst many others.


3) Policy roundtables at the international, regional and national levels
a. APEC High-Level Policy Dialogue in Lima Peru
b. Delivered two side events on socio-economic issues and methods and cases studies at COP-MOP. One at the COP-MOP in Bonn and the second in Nagoya.
c. Policy roundtables at the International Consortium on Agricultural Research (ICABR) . The next roundtable will be in the 2011 conference to be held in Rome.
d. SEARCA-SEAMO events

4) Longer term capacity building
a. Development of biosafety and biotechnology at Moi University in Kenya
b. Supported training of M.Sc. and Ph.D. students on economic approaches from Uganda, Pakistan, US and others.
c. bECON: A database on the literature on the applied economic impact of LMOs . http://www.ifpri.org/publication/becon
d. BIOCONSERV: a database on the literature on the applied economics related to biodiversity. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/bioconserv


In progress
1) Development of a roadmap/guideline for socio-economic issues in collaboration between RAEIN-Africa, University of Pretoria, IFPRI and other partners for SADC countries.
2) Development of training materials and elements of best practice for economic and social assessors on methods, issues, decision making rules and experiences accumulated over time.
3) Ongoing social and economic assessments of potential and actual agricultural LMOs in developing countries.

This is just a partial list meant to highlight was our experience is on our experience with capacity building. A more detailed and comprehensive list of activities can be found in the CBD Secretariat report for the working group on capacity building.

The impracticalities of incorporating socio-economic considerations into the regulatory framework for GM crops is highlighted in the recent EU report On Socio-economic Implications of GMO Cultivation. The press release from the European Commission clearly demonstrates why the inclusion of socio-economic considerations are fundamentally and methodologically flawed, when it states the following.

“Specifically, the report to the European Parliament and the Council, which is based on information principally provided by Member States, reveals that the existing information is often statistically limited and that it is frequently based on already preconceived ideas about GMO cultivation.”

Any non-science based assessment methodology that attempts to incorporate politics or emotions into the regulatory framework is simply courting disaster. Not only will technologies not be commercialized, but international trade will decline and those that currently suffer the most, the world’s malnourished, will suffer more.

It has been noted by many, but most recently by Bob Thompson, former Senior Advisor on Agriculture Trade Policy at the World Bank, who now holds the holds the Gardner Endowed Chair in Agricultural Policy at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. In a recent talk, Thompson articulated how the Great Depression of the 1930s was deepened and lengthened by the increased use of  trade barriers, resulting in a decrease in international trade.

History has shown us that using trade barriers (such as all forms of socio-economic considerations for LMOs) results in a decrease in international trade. When this happens, those that are affected the most, are society’s poorest. If there is one thing we know about history, it is that it is repeated. If socio-economic considerations are incorporated into regulatory frameworks for LMOs, these will violate the WTO Agreement and international trade in agriculture products will decline. This effect of this will be negligible in the affluent societies of Europe and North America, but in developing nations, the impacts could easily be staggering in their effect. Simply put, the inclusion of socio-economic considerations are a direct threat to the World Millennium Goal or eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

Press release available at:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/477&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Full report available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/biotechnology/reports_studies/docs/socio_economic_report_GMO_en.pdf

I am sorry but I disagree with the statement made by Stuart Smyth when he says that:

"The press release from the European Commission clearly demonstrates why the inclusion of socio-economic considerations are fundamentally and methodologically flawed, when it states the following."

I don't think the statement demonstrates that. Of course if you don't have enough information and don't use appropriate methodology yours results will not be solid, robust, credible, etc. But I think the broad point of this forum is to talk about when do we need to include socio-economic considerations and then how do we go about implementing them in a “correct” way.  I think that precisely what we want is to have a framework that allows us to include socio-economic considerations in a methodologically correct way.

Alejandro

I believe that the objective of this forum is to provide information about all the options and the consequences from such options regarding the potential inclusion of socio-economic considerations into biosafety and/or technology decision making processes.

As such options for inclusion would vary from no inclusion to the inclusion of broad social and economic considerations. From voluntary to mandatory submissions. From those assessments submitted by the developer to those done by professional-full time assessors within government...and many more permutations about these issues.

Consequences in terms of the negative and positive effects on cost, information gains, impacts on technology flows especially for the public R&D sector, implementation potential, human and financial resources needs and inventories, decision making rules and standards and the impact on biosafety itself.

So, I believe the broader and more evidence based information that countries receive in this forum, the better. In the end, what countries decide is what those of us who are experts will need to implement in practice. Based on our experience with practical socio-economic assessments, we hope that those policy and decision makers will consider all of these options, with this information in mind, and considering the elements of a functional biosafety system including transparency, proportionality to risk, protectiveness, feasibility and cost efficiency, and protectiveness as discussed by Greg Jaffe in his publications.

I would also draw exactly the contrary conclusions from the recent EU-wide survey on the experiences with socioeconoic considerations. It is not surprising that most EU member states cannot provide the EC with comprehensive knowledge and systematic analyses. Since the evaluation of SEC is not prescribed in the EU regulations - and indeed opposed by many governments - the governments cannot supply systematic information to the EC. And this is not only due to the fact, that only Spain grows a significant amount of GE crops. SEC could also been requested in the context of larger field trials which had been conducted in the EU.

Furthermore it is clear that there is substantial knowledge and even national regulation on the issue of coexistence as a part of SEC. But again, member states come to very different conclusions and provisions - one reason is that until now the regulation of coexistence was not seen as a matter that should be harmonised at EU level.

The EU survey together with the public discussion on SEC shows clearly that there is a certain need to start a systematic discussion at the EU level. The fact that many member states have not submitted examples of good practise in SEC does not reflect the fact that there are no good practices but rather that those people who know about it have not been included in the survey.

And I cannot also not see how the applications of SEC in the EU could harm the poor - the trade of GM commodities into the EU hardly benefits the poor of the world but is largly produced by industrial-type of agriculture and used industrial-type of animal production as feed. This assumption also implies that the inclusion of SEC would automatically lead to a rejection of an application - which also need not to be the case.

The Biosafety course at Genøk – Centre for Biosafety in Tromsø (Norway) has included socio-economic in its course program. GenØk has been carrying out the capacity building projects related to gene technology and gene modification in developing countries since 2003 (see http://www.genok.com/courses).

Dear Colleagues,

I agree with you Anne Myhr, thank you for making these important points. I would like to add that, the needs also include capacity building of veterinary (and medical) professionals/doctors, livestock drug manufacturers and public health professionals now that there is more strong evidence of disease ecology linkages to agrienvironment, risks (environmental, taking into account risks to human health) of LMOs (and their invasiveness plus risks of horizontal gene transfer) - evidence that continues to increase worldwide and in each country where LMOs are introduced.

This is also necessary to properly consider the socioeconomic risks (in terms of both agriculture as well as environmental and human health) of introducing LMOs such as living modified mosquitoes.

Agroeconomy depends on healthy soil, water and overall health of our environment in which each species, even mosquitoes, has a role. Same with human health - it is still very much part of social and economic circumstances.

For example, see the following:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0789e/a0789e03.htm (2006, Wilcox B. A., Ellis B., ‘Forests and Human Health’, FAO, Unasylva No. 224, Vol. 57, 2006/2) and http://www.i-sis.org.uk/madSoyDieaseStrikesBrazil.php

Note:
My comment here is also meant for the discussion Thread #2309 (http://bch.cbd.int/protocol/cpb_art26/discussiongroups_se.shtml?threadid=2309)


Best Regards,
Khalid Khan Hassan
(khalid.has10@gmail.com)
Agronomist
(Programme Manager, ALSSO)

Dear Colleagues,

I agree with you Khalid Khan Hassan, to draw our attention to the need of capacity that is required to collate evidence and analyses them. I feel it is important what data framework is chosen and how we arrange the approval mechanisms to be geared towards the necessary inputs for any meaningful decision making.

Socio-economic analysis for the decision making on the adoption of LMOs/technology needs to take into consideration possible indicators, around which the private firms or the applicants should be encouraged to supply data. In case of India, we did try to see what are the parameters on which data is submitted for approval. (Chaturvedi Sachin, Wendy Craig, Vanga Siva Reddy and Decio Ripandelli, “Environmental Risk assessment, Socio-Economic Considerations and Decision making Support for LMOs in India”, http://www.ris.org.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=20 joint study by International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and Research and Information System for Developing Countries, 2007).

It is important to identify how this matrix is to be evolved. Would it vary from crop to crop or would it have some constant features and some features would be dynamic in nature.  I hope this forum would stimulate us to think in this direction.
Best
Sachin

************************************
Dr. Sachin Chaturvedi
Senior Fellow
Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS)
Zone IV B, 4th Floor India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003 (India)
Tel: 91-11-24682177-80; Telefax: 24620051
Fax: 91-11-24682173-74
Email: sachin@ris.org.in; chaturvedi_S@hotmail.com

At the Sociology Department in the Metropolitan Autonomous University we have a little experience in giving a course of socioeconomic methods for a delegation from Colombia.