Genetically Modified Diplomacy: The Global Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment (review)

Innovation is often viewed as the cornerstone of enhanced firm performance and economic growth. Such a premise is certainly so within the food and agricultural industries, where significant research and development expenditures have led to development of many novel products and processes. In recent years, development of these novel products and processes has occurred in parallel manner with development of recombinant DNA technologies and the biotechnology revolution.

Nevertheless, concerns emerged that application of agricultural biotechnologies will have a number of unintended consequences. Ultimately, such concerns led to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, the process by which concerns voiced by different stake-holder groups led to a multilateral treaty providing governance of the trade of living modified organisms was not trivial. Fortunately, Peter Andrée’s new book, Genetically Modified Diplomacy, sheds new light on the efforts that led to the Cartagena Protocol.

The book’s introduction provides background to the CBD and an overview of the analysis that follows. The book’s primary focus concerns the why and how questions related to establishment of the CBD, as well as what implications the CBD holds for the agricultural biotechnology revolution. The secondary focus concerns Canada’s “place in the global politics of biosafety” (p. 6). Given the reliance of Canada’s agricultural sector on international trade, both foci carry significant weight given the central role of innovation in recent Canadian agricultural policy (e.g., the Agricultural Policy Framework and GrowingForward).

In Chapter 1, Andrée focuses discussion on a comparison of Gramscian and Foucaultian approaches to analysis. Andrée then draws upon both approaches to develop an integrated framework that takes account of three important concepts related to analysis of the CBD: organizations, ideas, and capabilities. At the intersection of these three concepts lies what Andrée terms the biotech block. Loosely speaking, the biotech block is made in reference to the actors and organizations that advocated the use of biotechnology in agriculture. Chapter 2 examines the development of the biotech block in more detail and unpacks its role in the context of the emerging global economy in a post-GATT/WTO environment.

Chapter 3, entitled “The Ideational Politics of Genetic Engineering,” explores the notions of the gene, environmental governance, liberalism, and the politics of risk as they relate to genetic modification/engineering and the CBD. These issues are then brought together in the context of intellectual property rights and the regulation of novel intellectual property embodied in agricultural biotechnology. The latter half of this chapter provides a profoundly important overview of important issues related to intellectual property, regulation, and biotechnology and could serve as required reading for anyone interested in the regulation of innovations emerging from the agricultural biotechnology revolution.

Chapters 4 to 6 then address the heart of the matter: the emergence of biosafety concerns and development of the Cartagena Protocol under the CBD. The chronology of events summarized in Chapter 4 aids in contextualizing the original positions taken by various actors in the debate (discussed in Chapter 5) and sub-sequent negotiations that led to the Protocol (discussed in Chapter 6). Chapters 5 and 6 are rich in detail and analysis and aid greatly in illustrating how and why initial positions changed over time. One strength of the discussion in these chapters is their reliance on material Andrée obtained from 26 in-person interviews conducted in support of his analysis; indeed, this material helps bring these chapters to life.

Another strength of Chapters 5 and 6 is the discussion of the Canadian position related to biosafety and its malleability at the culmination of negotiations in Montreal in January 2000. Indeed, it is this analysis and discussion that helps the reader see the process by which policy positions are formulated. Lastly, Chapter 7 provides a synopsis of the outcomes and consequences arising from the Cartagena Protocol. This chapter touches on a number of important aspects related to...