From risks to rights: challenges for biotechnology policy

This paper looks at the issues emerging within a rights approach to biotechnology regulation. Increasingly consumers and farmers are challenging dominant frameworks which focus on the containment of risk through science based assessments and pay little attention to the broader social, cultural, development or rights concerns.Drawing on experience from Zimbabwe, this briefing illustrates how an emphasis on rights has influenced thinking about property, consumer, livelihood and development rights: <B>Property rights, assuring the rights of farmers:</B>Zimbabwean activists lobbied to get the OAU (now the African Union) to adopt a model law as a guide to help African countries develop national legislation to protect community and farmer rights. The model acknowledges the connection between livelihood, property and social-cultural rights. The rights of farmers, breeders and local communities to their biological resources, traditional knowledge and technologies are protected over individual and corporate rights<B>Consumer rights, allowing for informed choice:</B>consumer organisations have effectively lobbied for labelling regulations to be adopted, not only on the grounds of safety, but also to ensure that food choices remain consistent with cultural and other belief systems<B>Rights to livelihoods and development:</B>this emphasises the right of citizens, together with governments, to choose technology futures that support locally-defined livelihood needs and do not undermine or foreclose livelihood and development options. Several initiatives in Zimbabwe focus on local rights. Recently an NGO led grouping has begun a deliberative process where farmers and other community members actively engage with scientists, corporations, government officials and others in defining technological futures consistent with their livelihood vision.Challenges for the future include:making local participatory rights real through supportive legislative provisions, these may include administrative justice provisions such as rights of access to information and rights to be given reasons for public decisionsother reforms may include rights to deliberate over potential socio-economic impacts of GM crops prior to commercialisation; priority-setting exercises, both by public and private sector agencies; and the development of codes of conduct, protocols and laws. Such provisions may be included in biosafety regulations.[adapted from author]