June 17, 2009
by Julius T. Mugwagwa,
SciDevNet
A layered and cooperative approach
would help Southern African countries harmonise their biosafety
laws, says Julius Mugwagwa.
African countries have debated the pros and cons of modern
biotechnologies for the best part of two decades. For Southern
Africa, the debate changed fundamentally with the 2002–2003 food
emergency. The region had faced food emergencies before, but
this crisis posed an additional concern. Thousands of tonnes of
food aid were thought to contain genetically modified (GM)
maize.
The dilemma — use GM maize or face famine — revealed how
unprepared individual countries (and the whole region) were for
dealing with biosafety issues. It stimulated new efforts to
develop national, and cross-national, regulatory regimes.
Some countries put interim measures in place. Malawi and
Zimbabwe, for example, decided to distribute only milled grain.
Zambia refused the grain outright.
Agriculture ministers from the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) recommended creating an advisory committee to
develop guidelines on GM organisms and broader biotechnology
issues at a regional level.
Biosafety in numbers
A harmonised, or collective, regulatory biosafety system in
Southern Africa is important for many reasons. In particular,
geographical proximity and the inevitable spill-over effects of
some biotechnologies mean countries must work together to solve
problems. Shared policies could, for example, help national
institutions prepare for the reality of GM products spreading
across porous borders.
Cooperation would also help build economies of scale large
enough to attract favourable technologies and products to the
region, while creating a strong force to resist unwanted
technology (for example where GM seed could threaten existing
seed systems).
But a number of difficulties still loom large for the
harmonisation agenda. International cooperation is difficult in
any policy arena. The many actors are continually changing and
'policy' may mean different things to different people.
The fast-paced field of biotechnology is especially difficult.
Even agreed policies can quickly stagnate as newer
biotechnologies emerge.In Southern Africa, some policy actors
remain skeptical, suggesting a regional biosafety agenda is a
fad that will soon disappear.
Biosafety issues are also enmeshed within wide-ranging GM food
issues, often with conflicting goals for trade and environmental
management. And industrial giants, albeit a diminishing number,
still dominate biotechnology and wield significant corporate
power, while pressure groups can polarise debates.
A regional agenda would have to balance these conflicting
pressures, as well as national interests (including sovereignty,
institutional arrangements, relationships with external trading
partners and economic groups, and interpretation of
international law), against regional aspirations.
One size doesn't fit all
The region's varying capacity for regulation further complicates
things. For example, countries with advanced regulatory systems
are unwilling to 'step down' to a regional framework, while
others are reluctant to commit to seemingly unrealistic
objectives.
The region also apparently lacks political will for a harmonised
biotechnology agenda. Previous efforts, for example the 1990s'
Regional Biosafety Focal Point funded by the Dutch, and lately
the AU Model Law on Safety in Biotechnology, have had limited
success, leaving stakeholders reluctant to embark on new
initiatives.
Some policymakers say pressures from international regulatory
and technological targets, such as the AU Model Law, are rushing
member states towards harmonisation when they would be better
off developing incremental national or sub-national policies.
A last concern is that individual countries may lose out on
funding if a regional technology management structure is
established. Donors may prefer to support regional efforts
rather than national programmes.
Cooperation from contribution
Given all this, establishing a harmonised cross-national
biosafety framework for the SADC, where all countries face the
same obligations, would be difficult and could spawn divisive
tensions.
Far better, I believe, would be a multi-layered harmonisation or
'convergence' framework.
The layers would group countries by their development and use of
biotechnologies. Layered regulatory systems would then impose
appropriate obligations, guided by the regional position.
Problems could still arise — for example, if some countries
prefer to only collaborate with more advanced nations than them.
But the approach would allay fears of domination, promote
ownership of regulatory processes and make 'cooperation from
contribution' more feasible. The layers could also provide
useful benchmarks for measuring individual countries' progress
in developing and implementing biosafety systems.
Layering could also be issue-specific. The European Union, for
example, issues regulations and directives on specific aspects
related of GMOs, such as labelling, product release or risk
assessment. A similar approach in Southern Africa could
prioritise urgent matters, easing the pressures governments face
from other policy arenas.
But whether biosafety regulation is regional or layered,
supranational organisations such as the SADC, the African Union
or the New Partnership for Africa's Development, should clearly
play a role in regional harmonisation — particularly by
encouraging countries to learn from each other through
sector-specific programmes and by helping individual countries
implement new policies.
A coordinated approach that shares experience could strengthen
weaker national and sub-national capacities and help develop and
manage biotechnology.
Julius T. Mugwagwa is a researcher in the Development Policy
and Practice/ESRC Innogen Centre at the Open University in the
United Kingdom |
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