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Focus

“Public debate is essential”

Colonising Africa’s agriculture

GM cotton in a dead end street

“The farmers have the choice”

Not yet mature – it is too early to bet on GM crops


02/2006 		 

Colonising Africa’s agriculture

South Africa is the only country south of the Sahara to have permitted the cultivation of genetically modified plants. Many other African countries, however, are drafting biotech legislation. The USA and UNEP give advice on these matters and are exerting pressure in a pro biotech sense. They show little respect for the Model Law designed by the African Union in an attempt to meet African needs.


[ By Mariam Mayet ]

“Most African countries, like many other poor countries, cannot advance GM crop research because their national policies or regulatory systems are not prepared to deal with safety requirements for approving general use.” Joel Cohen of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute said this and went on to encourage African countries to build up the capacities required to manage the potential risks associated with GM crops.

There are several reasons why developing countries in particular need strict regulatory frameworks for the use of GMOs. Genetic engineering goes along with a wide range of biosafety concerns and broader socio-economic impacts. It requires the acceptance of intellectual property rights on living organisms as well as expensive research and development at the expense of farmer-based innovation. Genetic engineering and GMOs touch upon several fundamental human rights, including the right to nutritious, safe and culturally acceptable food, the right to informed choice, the right to democratic participation, the right to save and exchange seeds, and the right to a safe and healthy environment. There are also far-reaching ethical concerns for anyone who adheres to the value systems underpinned by African communal spirituality regarding life and food.

In response to these challenges, comprehensive and stringent biosafety regulations are required to protect Africa’s biodiversity, environment and the health of its people from the risks posed by GMOs. Such biosafety regulations must adopt a risk averse and cautionary approach, allowing countries to restrict or even to ban the import of a GMO in the case of uncertainties concerning safety or possible socio-economic impacts.

However, the pro-biotechnology lobby is re-doubling its efforts. With a whole array of biosafety projects, it is putting pressure on key countries to finalise their legal frameworks in order to put GM crops into the African soil. The most active players include USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the Biosafety Unit of UNEP/GEF (United Nations Environment Programme/Global Environmental Facility). The capacity building efforts by the two latter institutions appear to be providing ample opportunities for foreign experts to unduly influence national biosafety processes.


The African Model Law

This is all the more presumptuous as Africa already has a blueprint biosafety framework ready for use, designed to meet African needs: the African Model Law drafted by African biosafety experts and finalised in May 2001, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by 89 participants representing 35 African countries.
The Model Law is an attempt to facilitate the harmonisation of existing legislation in the area of biosafety and to ensure the adoption of unified legislation in Africa. It has been strongly influenced by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (see page 58). However, the provisions of the African Model Law are far more comprehensive than those required by the Biosafety Protocol. They acknowledge the importance of Africa as both a centre of origin and a centre of diversity of food and other crops.

Crucially, the Model Law embraces the precautionary principle and recognises the sovereign right of every country to require a rigorous risk assessment before any decision is made. This applies to all GMOs and all purposes of use. The Model Law does not allow approval to be given unless there is firm and sufficient evidence that GMOs or products of GMOs pose no significant risk to human health, biodiversity and the environment. Moreover, it includes the provision that whenever a country finds that risks cannot be avoided, it must refuse approval. In practise, the precautionary principle is built on common sense notions such as “prevention is better than cure.” In a similar sense, all available alternatives should be scrutinised, and benefits and justifications must be weighed against risks and costs.

The Model Law captures the essential elements of a liability and redress regime, which should be incorporated into domestic biosafety legislation. Stricter controls regarding the use of GMOs as food aid can also be introduced through the Model Law.

An AU biosafety capacity building project, designed to spearhead the harmonisation of biosafety legislation between member states based on the African Model Law, has long since been conceived. However, the project has been unduly delayed for several years because of internal bureaucratic hurdles, with the result of much lost ground. Attempts are now underway to revive this project, in order to promote the African Model law across the continent.


USAID unduly involved

Meanwhile, biotech lobby groups have lost no time in trying to discredit the African Model Law by deliberately misconstruing its provisions. At the same time, pro-biotech donors and international organisations try to influence decision-making processes in several African countries. For instance, USAID is directly involved in the Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS). The PBS has been allocated $14.8 million to help countries in Africa and Asia develop biosafety systems and to assist in biosafety decision-making, and is coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Ghana is part of a three-year PBS project. In July 2005, Christine Churcher, the minister for environment and science, launched Ghana’s National Biosafety Framework (NBF), including its Biosafety Bill. She pointed out that Ghana was the first country in Africa to develop a NBF under the UNEP/GEF’s Biosafety Capacity Building Project, with the support of USAID, proving Ghana’s ability to ensure sustained use of modern biotechnology products and processes.

However, the Ghanaian bill exemplifies the major flaws of the USAID sponsored approach to biosafety framework formulation:
– The bill utterly failed to take the African Model Law into account.
– It has principally been drafted to deal with permitting the planting of GMOs in Ghana in general and field trials in particluar. The impacts of GMOs on human health are of no concern. Therefore, the approach is not consistent with the Biosafety Protocol, to which Ghana is a party.
– The Biosafety Bill is silent on the regulation of GMOs imported for direct use as food (aid), feed and processing, notwithstanding that these GMOs constitute the bulk of commercial imports and aid.
– Public participation in decision-making is not provided for at all. Public input by way of a notice and comment procedure is possible, but only with respect to applications for environmental releases.
– Decision-making is not based on the precautionary principle.
– The provisions dealing with unintentional and unauthorised releases into the environment provide an open invitation for people to plant GMOs illegally because the government regulatory agency (Biosafety Board) will step in and legalise such releases by either conducting ex post risk assessments or imposing risk management measures.
– No specially tailored liability and redress provisions have been crafted.

Last year, USAID also started a three year project through its Office of Economic and Science Policy (ESP) to provide biosafety regulatory assistance to several West African countries that are part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Among the countries concerned are Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin and Chad. This project will provide much more “targeted assistance” by focussing on Bt cotton field trials and GM food aid.

USAID does not miss any opportunity to weaken biosafety laws in Africa. For example, it extensively commented on the draft of Zambian biosafety legislation, urging Zambia to use specific wording of the Biosafety Protocol in regard to definitions, socio-economic impacts, risk assessments, the precautionary principle and so forth. The Biosafety Protocol allows member states to take more stringent and protective measures than those promoted by USAID.


Flawed UNEP/GEF capacity building

The UNEP/GEF biosafety capacity building project (see page 56) provides funding, technical and other support to numerous developing countries. It is structurally flawed for several reasons. First, it has been designed primarily to coax governments to establish a permissive rather than an effective biosafety regulatory system and as such is preoccupied with administrative processes. Second, it focuses principally on the implementation of the Biosafety Protocol, with the result that government officials run the risk of being misled into believing that once they have implemented the minimum standards of the Biosafety Protocol, their Biosafety Frameworks would thus be complete.

The biosafety bill of Kenya provides a good example of the one-sided UNEP/GEF approach:

– The Kenyan Bill is merely a permissions system designed to approve applications for the contained use, import, export, marketing and release of GMOs. The underlying imperative of the bill is the promotion of genetic engineering and not of biosafety.
– Important provisions of the Cartagena Protocol that form the cornerstones of biosafety regulation have been omitted from the bill entirely. These include the precautionary principle and public participation.
– The bill restrictively applies only to adverse impacts on the environment. It does not deal with biodiversity and human health at all.
– The bill fails to deal with traceability, labelling, liability and redress. In this regard, the African Model Law has been ignored entirely.

Tanzania, which also participated in the UNEP/GEF project, was poised to begin field trials of Bt cotton in October 2005, in the southern highland regions of Mbeya, Rukwa and Iringa. This country opted for a set of voluntary, non-legally binding biosafety guidelines. They emphasise field trials, yet neglect to provide adequate regulation of commercial releases and imports of GM food, including food aid, feed and processing.

To be sure, African governments also are responsible for bad biosafety laws and for allowing external pressures to influence sovereign processes. However, the lack of adequate biosafety capacity in Africa is widely acknowledged as a major problem, making it easy for foreign “technical expertise” to be brought in and unduly influence the process.

Nevertheless, Africa has some biosafety expertise and capacity that should be developed for national and regional biosafety processes. The Model Law has, after all, been drafted by a group drawn from various countries in Africa. This group included scientists, regulators, lawyers, development specialists, researchers and policy makers who had been involved in biosafety issues in Africa for a time, including the negotiation of the Cartagena Protocol. African civil society is also becoming much more involved in the GM debate. Consequently, external influences in domestic regulatory issues may face stiff resistance in the future.

The revival of the AU’s biosafety capacity building project can go a long way towards neutralising adverse political pressures. A unified legislation based on the African Model Law would protect Africa from abuse by the powerful biotechnology industry looking for an experimental facility and dumping ground for its products.



Mariam Mayet
is a lawyer. She heads the African Center for Biosafety in Emmarentia, South Africa.
mariammayet@mweb.co.za