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Trading Life Awayby Patrick Mulvany, Senior Policy Advisor, ITDG
The conference was grappling with ways to conserve the planet’s rapidly depleting biodiversity, to share the benefits from using it and to regulate international trade in GMOs. With tens of thousands of species under threat of extinction and 95 per cent of crop varieties lost from farmers’ fields in the past century it was clear what was at stake: the preservation of life on Earth. At the opening session of the conference the eminent geneticist David Suzuki laid it on the line to the delegates: "You are here to deliberate the fate of biodiversity on the planet, and I urge you to look beyond the human priorities of politics and economics because it is a matter of survival." But politics and economics mired the proceedings, as they have since the Convention on Biological Diversity was born in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. The then US President George Bush Snr. summed up his refusal to sign up to the Convention with the words ‘in biodiversity it is important to protect our rights, our business rights’. Twelve years on this clash between business and biodiversity remained. Although the US is not a signatory to the Convention, it sent several dozen delegates to the conference – many times more than most developing countries. The Convention and its Biosafety Protocol – which allows governments to ban imported GMOs in food if they fear adverse effects on biodiversity or human health – was ensnared in a tangled web of issues around international trade and GMOs. A few countries – the so-called Miami Group – which includes the major grain trading nations, tried to ensure that the conference would not limit their exports. Even in the seemingly innocuous discussions on how to protect mountain ecosystems, the trade lobby tried to ensure conservation should be subject to free trade World Trade Organisation rules. This was roundly rejected, most notably by Africa’s leading negotiator Tewolde Egziabher, head of Ethiopia’s Environmental Protection Agency. "If these proposals had gone through, it would mean conservation programmes would be restricted by trade concerns," he said. Some in the bio-industry act as bio-prospectors and see the developing world as a rich source of genetic resources that can be tapped and patented. This clashes with the Convention’s clear commitment to sharing the benefits of the planet’s biodiversity. Getting ownership of these genes through intellectual property rights is crucial but because of the enforcement of any gene patent, new biological alternatives are being developed such as ‘Terminator’ technology. Designed to render infertile the seeds of harvested crops Terminator technology ensures that farmers cannot re-use them. This potentially threatens the food security of half the world's farmers who are too poor to buy seed each year and use farm-saved seed. These farmers grow about 20% of the world's food and feed more than one billion people. A US seed company, Delta and Pine Land, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) hold the patent on Terminator technology. The USDA has sought to promote its proprietary interests at every opportunity, including this biodiversity conference where it used official UN channels to circulate a report on Terminator technology. Many developing countries called for a ban on the technology, but to no avail. Despite these problems, developing countries keep returning to the negotiating table for two reasons. Firstly, because they see the potential to set binding rules on the biodiversity-threatening activities of some countries, and secondly because they see the promise made by wealthy countries to transfer funds and technologies is sufficient to enable them to conserve biodiversity and use it sustainably. The CBD could achieve its target to halt biodiversity decline by 2010 if sufficient funds and appropriate technologies were made available. But the transfer of patented technologies, including GMOs, is not what is wanted. Indeed the UK’s own Commission on Intellectual Property Rights has found that intellectual property rights "do not help reduce poverty in developing countries." Despite this, the USA is imposing intellectual property rights systems on countries as a condition of bilateral aid and trade agreements. Developing countries repeatedly voiced their need to have effective global governance of biodiversity that would protect it, keep it from the predations of bioprospectors and clear of contamination from GMOs. And the last minute deal secured in Kuala Lumpur – to require compliance, accept liability and effective labelling of GM exports – is a step in the right direction. Ethiopia’s Tewolde Egziabher said that these are "badly needed. … for the caution that we will force on those who export." This is the second major international conference in the space of a few months where the developing world’s confidence has come to the fore. It didn’t lead to total melt-down as was the case with the WTO meeting in Cancun last year. But in Kuala Lumpur there was a sense of victory with the developing world asserting itself, standing up to rich world bullying and coming out of the contest with an agreement on regulating GMOs.
ITDG pages on CBD/COP7 and MOP1
Sustaining Life and Livelihoods: The Global Commons
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As the UK government continued to
dither over what to do with GM crops, on the other side of the world 87 countries were
more decisive. At the United Nations conference in Malaysia on the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Bio-safety Protocol they agreed strict international
trade rules to regulate exports of GMOs. The decision, lead by Africa, came in the final
24 hours of a marathon three-week meeting and was not welcomed by some major grain
exporting countries such as Argentina, Australia and the USA. 
