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Biotech Can Help The Poor

CGIAR conference wraps up in Washington

A two-day conference on biotechnology wrapped up Friday in Washington with a strong sense of the enormous potential the new and fast moving field holds for alleviating global poverty.

The conference, entitled Can Biotechnology Help?, was convened by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the US National Academy of Sciences.

It explored some of the most pertinent risks and concerns in the biotech field, including the risks to health and the environment, ethical challenges and communications. Different sessions also allowed participants to benefit from country-specific knowledge and examples.

Biotechnology, Swaminathan said in an interview with DevNews, will be a major determinant of the future of agricultural biotechnology for the next century and has an important role to play in the production of crops that are tolerant to drought and to other possible environmental consequences of global climate change, so necessary to maintain food security in an ever more populous world. But he stressed that the technologies of the future should be a blend of the best of traditional knowledge and wisdom and frontier technology.

Only by blending genetically modified strains with locally adapted varieties can environmental sustainability be realized, he said. Finally, he emphasized the critical need for an internationally agreed code of conduct and set of guidelines for biosafety and bioethics, to safeguard producers and consumers in areas such as intellectual property rights, patents, and food and health safety.

Underlining the urgency in addressing these issues, Swaminathan said that multi-stakeholder consultation between the government institutions, the private sector, civil society, farmers and NGOs was the only way that all agendas and voices were included and heard, as the field rapidly evolves.

The CGIAR, established in 1971, is an informal association of 58 public and private sector members that supports a network of 16 international agricultural research centers. The World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are cosponsors of the CGIAR.