“The science is there, it’s happening,” said Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “There may be times when GMOs can be tested and introduced into the environment with caution and ethics.”
She said the new framework represents a “historic step” and that the measure could allow conservationists to think about new ways to address the risks of climate change or test new ways to suppress diseases.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature – a large group of conservation organisations, governments and indigenous groups with more than 1,400 members from about 160 countries – meets once every four years. It is the world’s largest network of environmental groups and the authority behind the Red List, which tracks threatened species and global biodiversity.
This year’s meeting was held in Abu Dhabi, and the positive vote on what is known as “synthetic biology” was a new framework for evaluating genetic engineering projects and their potential implementation in the wild. The measure calls on scientists to evaluate such projects on a case-by-case basis, be transparent about the risks and benefits of potential actions and take a precautionary approach to genetic engineering, among other principles. The decision applies to a range of living organisms, including animals, plants, yeasts and bacteria.
A separate measure, a proposed moratorium on the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, failed by one vote.
IUCN decisions have no legal implications, but approval carries symbolic weight and has the potential to advance policy at the international level, said Jessica Ollie, professor and director of the environmental law program at the University of Miami.
“IUCN is a strong and recognized force in conservation. People listen to them and governments listen to them. They are key players in some of the treaties,” she said. “You can think of it as a precursor to the language that you might see become law.”
Organizations that wanted a moratorium on releasing GMOs into the wild say there is not enough evidence that it can be done safely and responsibly.
“I’m disappointed,” said Dana Perls, food and agriculture program director for the nonprofit Friends of the Earth. “We need to focus on contained research that does not make our environment a living experimental field experiment.”
For example, she indicated the possibility of this Genetically modifying mosquitoes so they can resist malaria parasites. The disease kills more than half a million people every year, and in order to reduce the death toll, scientists have proposed pushing this resistance to malaria to become more widespread among wider mosquito populations – a practice called gene drive.