Description
Concerns
have been raised that multilateral trade policies and rules are increasingly
constraining countries' space to put in place adequate biosafety and
trade policies. The Biosafety Protocol goes some way towards addressing
these concerns by providing a broad framework for decision-making on
biotech imports. How the Protocol will fare vis-à-vis WTO rules,
and in particular its broadly applied precautionary approach, remains
open for debate. What is certain, however, is that trade-related concerns
are going to underlie and impact negotiations on documentation requirements
for LMO commodity shipments at MOP-2 and beyond, and will determine
the willingness of biotech exporting countries to sign on to the Protocol.
At
the WTO, the ongoing dispute against the EU's alleged de facto moratorium
on the approval of new GMOs, brought by the US, Argentina and Canada,
has also placed these issues under the spotlight of public debate. As
the dispute drags on, questions continue to be heard whether the WTO
is really the place to discuss biotechnology-related issues and what
implications the outcome will have on spaces for domestic biosafety
policy-making, in particular in developing countries. At the same time,
negotiations on the relationship between MEAs and WTO rules under the
Doha mandate could impact on countries' flexibility to implement the
Biosafety Protocol.
These and other developments in this area raise a number of urgent questions:
