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POLITICS: Greenbacks Set to Colour Biodiversity Meet

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Feb 3 2004 (IPS) - Control of the trade in genetically modified products and who should profit from the exploitation of natural resources are just two of the controversial items on the agenda of this month’s global meeting on biodiversity.

Ten years ago, the international community created the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) to conserve biological diversity, advance sustainable development and ensure equitable access to and the sharing of benefits from the use of that diversity.

But a decade later, those well-meaning promises have faded.

For example, the 187 nations (plus the European Union) that will meet in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the seventh conference of parties (COP-7) to the CBD are supposed to decide whether to set up a working group to devise rules on access to biodiversity.

These would cover such ventures as pharmaceutical companies searching the Amazonian jungle for a cure for cancer, and would regulate, among other things, how to split the benefits between a company and local people if a drug was actually developed.

But a November working group meeting in Montreal found little agreement on the issues.

"I think the North-South conflict is quite stark, because of the expansion of patents (of diversity), especially in the U.S. and even now in Europe … the problem of bio-piracy is very ‘hot’," says Chee Yoke Ling of Malaysia-based Third World Network, a non-profit international grouping of organisations working on development issues.

"To what extent has the convention been able to create a more equitable benefit-sharing regime? That in fact hasn’t happened," she added in an interview.

Or take the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted in 2000 to ensure the safe use of living modified organisms (LMOs). (The term "living modified organisms" was used in the Protocol as opposed to the broader "genetically modified organisms", GMOs.)

The Protocol’s 82 state parties who will gather at a separate meeting later in February, are set to discuss rules on documenting such shipments, and to decide how to assess liability if something goes wrong en route.

"Some (governments) they don’t want it to be legally binding, such as Australia, the United States and others. Some want it to be legally binding." The result will likely be a mix, says CBD Executive Secretary Hamdallah Zedan.

In a pre-conference briefing, Zedan told journalists the CBD conference on Feb. 9-20, will look at a number of other issues, including mountain diversity, protected areas and governments’ progress towards the goal to significantly cut the decline in biodiversity by 2010.

"On the whole, biodiversity is still being lost," he said, referring to a recent study that forecasts climate change could result in the loss of one-third of the Earth’s biodiversity by 2050.

To reverse that trend, says one expert close to the talks, will require: clear, tangible targets for both protected areas and sustainable use; indicators, or a sort of "inflation rate" for biodiversity, and funds to assist developing countries to meet targets.

Zedan predicted that talks over liability for problems that might arise from the shipping of LMOs "will be extremely extremely difficult negotiations", partly because industry has refused to accept liability.

"We say (to them), ‘are there risks’? They say, ‘no’. ‘Then’, we say, ‘why don’t you want to have liability’?"

Groups like TWN and Greenpeace are opposed to an agreement signed between Canada, Mexico and the United States (partners in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement) late last year, arguing that the pact undermines the documentation provisions in the Biosafety Protocol.

The trilateral deal says that cross-border shipments of grain for food, feed and processing – but not for introduction into the environment, a process that entails more rigorous standards – which contain less than five percent of living modified organisms do not have to be labelled "may contain" LMOs.

The deal’s opponents say that could leave the door open for LMOs to escape into the environment and alter the genetic make-up of local crops.

"We are concerned about this. We see it as a way of trying to undermine the actual Protocol and pre-empt some of the decisions that the parties have to adopt," Greenpeace International political adviser Eric Darier told IPS.

The Protocol gives state parties two years to agree on setting up a process to regulate documentation issues and four years to come to an agreement on a regime for liability.

"The Protocol is very clear that (agreements between signatory countries – Canada and Mexico – and non-signatory ones, the United States) can’t be below the standards adopted by the parties … except as we’re in the early days of the Protocol, there are no strict standards on documentation," added Darier.

"It’s like a Trojan Horse. They’re going to use the bulk trading of grain to de facto introduce into the market … and potentially into the environment, GMOs without having to label them."

"Five percent contamination could have severe consequences anywhere in the agriculture of the South … by then it would be too late," Darier said.

But a Canadian official said the five percent threshold is "kind of an industry standard, an internationally recognised sort of standard … each country has its own views on what the appropriate threshold would be", added Blair Coomber, director general of international trade policy at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.

The expert says the trilateral agreement "does seem to make a mockery" of the Protocol. "There needs to be some threshold because of the possible of accidental contamination."

According to Darier, "it’s pretty clear that what the U.S. and Canada wanted out of the deal was that there would be no disruption of trade".

But Coomber told IPS that is only one objective of the accord, which he said tries "to respect the objectives of protecting biological diversity by informing importing countries when a product may contain LMOs, but at the same time (gives) clarity to importers and exporters so that shipments aren’t stopped or trade disrupted".

Darier says opponents of the trilateral accord believe the signatory countries and other exporters like Argentina will pressure smaller nations into signing such ”threshold” deals "that would tie their hands when they come to negotiate a multilateral agreement".

Third World Network’s Chee says the trilateral deal also worries developing countries. "It is actually playing out the way we all had feared it back five years ago. That is, (these agreements) will undermine the standards that were set up under the Protocol".