GREENPEACE HITS UNDP REPORT FOR BLIND BIOTECH BIAS

10 July 2001

London/Manila/Mexico City - Greenpeace today deplored the ill-advised pro-biotech prescriptions of the newly released Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), stressing that the report presents as facts the unsubstantiated promises of the genetic engineering (GE) industry while dismissing the environmental risks and ignoring the real challenges of agriculture in developing countries.

"While the report in general follows the UNDP's highly respected tradition of providing hard facts and a critical view on major development issues, its assessment of Agricultural Biotechnology suspiciously reads as if it had been written by a Public Relations agency to promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," said Von Hernandez, Campaign Director for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia.

The UNDP report claims that GMOs would increase yields and nutritional properties and provide solutions for complex agricultural challenges such as pest control and drought. However, no single GMO on the market fulfils such promises and is of any relevance to the pressing needs of agriculture in developing countries.

"The UNDP of all agencies should know that complex problems of hunger and agricultural development will not be solved by technological 'silver bullets'. The real crisis is the obvious neglect of research and investment in the further development and spread of sustainable and ecological agriculture technologies," added Hernandez.

Support for agriculture has decreased dramatically during the last 10 years. Overall technical co-operation in the field of agriculture, forestry and fisheries from all OECD donor countries has been halved from more than 7 billion US Dollars in 1989 to less 3 billion in 1999. The cut in support for agriculture has been particularly dramatic by the multilateral institutions like UNDP and the World Bank from 3.5 billion in 1989 to less than 500 million in 1999. (1)

"For UNDP to promote GMOs in developing countries as a solution after giving up any substantial role in supporting agricultural development is extremely hypocritical and does not help the credibility of UNDP in any way. Instead of naively advocating the export of ill-devised and unsafe GE technology in the South, agencies like the UNDP should concentrate on the dissemination and promotion of proven and sustainable methods to improve agricultural practices," added Hernandez. (2)

Furthermore, Greenpeace considers the report's approach to the environmental risks associated with the release of GMOs into the environment and to their potential health risks to be frivolous. It ignores the general agreement among the scientific community that especially long-term environmental risks of GMOs cannot be assessed by present scientific means and that a lot of additional research would be needed to even properly assess the food safety of such varieties. (3)

"The reality is that GMOs are facing increased resistance in all industrialised countries and the global agrochemical and GE companies are dumping these questionable technologies on developing countries. To claim that the growing concern in the South was exported by Northern conservationists is an insult not only to hundreds of southern non-governmental groups working on this issue, but also to the majority of Southern governments, who have fought hard against industry and US attempts to prevent an International Biosafety Protocol, which has been adopted last year and clearly advocates a precautionary approach in agricultural biotechnology," said Hernandez.

Greenpeace fully supports access to new technologies for developing countries, including those of biotechnology (4). Developing countries must urgently be in a position to identify GMOs imported into their territories and should be enabled to devise their own and proper approach to apply new insights from molecular biology. The most promising applications of these technologies do not require risky releases of GMOs, but improvements of present breeding technologies, e.g. by use of genomics.

"The Northern Industry hype about GMOs will not feed the world but could put entire ecosystems at risk thereby posing greater threats to global food security," concluded Hernandez

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Von Hernandez, Campaigns Director, Greenpeace South East
Asia, Mob: +639175263050;
Benedikt Haerlin, Co-ordinator, Greenpeace International Genetic
Engineering Campaign,
Tel: +493030889912.
In Mexico City, Raul Benet, Executive Director of Greenpeace
Mexico, Mob: +5273289629,
Tel: +5285905645; Greenpeace Mexico Press Office, Cecilia
Navarro, Mob: +52 73289629;
Greenpeace International Press Office, Teresa Merilainen, Tel:
+31205236637

(2) A study commissioned to Prof. Jules Pretty by Greenpeace Germany and Bread for the World, and supported by the UK Development agency recently presented more than 200 cases all over the world that showed sustainable and productive farming practices are possible in the most different environments. The report is available at: http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/ResearchProgrammes/CESOccasionalPapers/SAFErepSUBHEADS.htm

A recent case of contamination of food with a potentially allergenic corn variety in the United States illustrates the inadequacy of risk management tools available in this country. Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the company Aventis, who caused the contamination, recently admitted that it was unable to fully recall their "Starlink" corn and that it had contaminated up to 20% of the entire corn production of the USA. In Europe there is a moratorium on any new commercial GMO releases as member states deem the present safety system inadequate.

(4 ) The single most important obstacle to proper access to these technologies are Intellectual Property Rights, which are designed to allow private property claims over single traits of varieties as well as entire plants and animals. Companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Aventis or DuPont are carefully constructing and tighter and tighter net of dependency and total control not only over genetically engineered organisms but ultimately over any useful genetic traits and varieties, thus usurping the common heritage of global diversity, most of which is located in developing countries.