– From Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade and the Globalization of Hunger,
Burlington, VT: Toward Freedom, 2004.
Chapter 3
The World Bank, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary in 2004, has underwritten several of the most environmentally devastating projects ever undertaken in the name of progress and economic “development.” Wherever people are displaced and communities are undermined in the name of development, World Bank funds are almost always part of the mix. The Bank has supported deforestation, hydroelectric projects, and oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest; huge dams and oil and gas pipeline construction in Africa; and massive water diversion schemes such as India’s notorious Narmada Valley dam complex.1
Bank-funded projects have uprooted millions of people from their traditional lands, irrevocably destroyed fragile and unique ecosystems, and created footholds for transnational corporations throughout the so-called “developing world.” In the past decade, Bank officials have adopted the language of “sustainable development” and withdrawn funds from a few of the most notorious projects in their portfolio. But few advocates for the environment or the rights of indigenous peoples have any illusions that the institution’s priorities ever substantively shifted along with its rhetoric.
The idea of “sustainable development” emerged from policy discussions at the United Nations (UN) throughout the 1980s, and was popularized in the lead-up to the UN’s high-profile environment and development summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.2 Merging the language of long-term sustainability from the environmental movement with the “development” discourse of neo-colonialism, sustainable development became a rationale for advocating the continued expansion of capitalist market economies in the global South, while paying lip service to the needs of the environment and the poor.
The popular notion of environmental sustainability as an alternative to limitless economic growth was transformed into a rhetorical justification for economic growth in defiance of environmental and social limits. Almost imperceptibly, the discussion shifted from how to stem environmental destruction to finding new ways to sustain economic growth.3 Former US Defense Secretary – and Vietnam War planner – Robert McNamara introduced a focus on “poverty reduction” during his tenure as Bank president (1968-1981); since the mid-1990s, virtually every activity of the Bank, however controversial, has been justified in as aiding both “poverty reduction” and “sustainable development.”
In the agricultural sector, the Bank’s strategy has helped displace people engaged in subsistence and local market-oriented production, in favor of commercial production for global markets. In virtually every corner of the so-called “developing world,” the Bank has underwritten policies that diverted once independent farmers toward the chemical-intensive production of cash crops. Bank officials say their goal is to “broaden farmers’ rights and opportunities, and to help them create livelihoods of their own choice,” beyond the “single option” of subsistence.4
For marginalized farmers throughout the world, this has brought an increasing dependence on unstable world crop prices, rising indebtedness for costly equipment and chemical inputs and, often, the forced removal of people from traditional lands that have sustained their communities for countless generations. Rather than helping alleviate poverty, this kind of “development,” in the words of Japanese economist political analyst Ichiyo Muto, “has so far only transformed undeveloped poverty into developed poverty, traditional poverty into modernized poverty designed to function smoothly in the world economic system.”5
The Bank’s policy of shifting developing countries toward cash crop production began in the 50s, with an initial focus on specialty crops such as cocoa, rubber, and palm oil. With the development of the so-called “high yielding varieties” of wheat and rice in the 1960s, Bank lending was often limited to governments that promoted the use of the new seeds and accepted their dependence on mechanization and costly chemical inputs. Seeds were often given away and enterprising farmers were offered attractive loan packages subsidized by the Bank.6 These policies came to define the so-called “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and seventies.
While these new crops brought significant short-term increases in agricultural productivity, their use lowered water tables and severely threatened crop diversity. The dwarf characteristics of these non-indigenous crop varieties deprived farmers of important agricultural byproducts, including sufficient fodder to feed livestock. The virtually endless need for new equipment and other inputs buried farm families in unsustainable long-term indebtedness.7
World Bank lending for agricultural projects declined from 30 percent of the Bank’s portfolio in the 1980s to only 10 percent during the nineties, but still amounts to nearly $3 billion per year, the largest source of agricultural development funds in the world.8 Close to half of the Bank’s portfolio is in structural adjustment loans tied to specific changes in the host country’s economic policy; these are essentially identical in scope to the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed by the Bank’s sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Structural adjustment compels countries to reorient their economies toward the repayment of international debts, including IMF and World Bank loans, usually at the expense of public services, environmental protection, and local production for local needs.
In the case of agricultural lending, the Bank mandates debtor nations to shift agricultural production toward cash crops for export, liberalize agricultural trade, and remove public subsidies for staple food production, replacing fixed prices for staple goods with market-determined ones.9 Producers are shifted from subsistence food crops toward fruits, vegetables, and flowers grown for the world market. Under SAPs, credit is offered to individual producers and denied to traditional communal activities, destabilizing rural societies and encouraging unprecedented concentrations of individual land ownership. Loans are often tied to specific production methods, including the increased use of hazardous pesticides and other costly materials.
The Bank’s current support for biotechnology in agriculture has two aspects. The first encompasses technical assistance and “capacity building” for governments, aimed at facilitating the introduction of new biotechnologies and establishing biotech-friendly regulatory regimes. The second is direct support for biotech research. The Bank’s capacity building agenda has five main areas of activity:
* Evaluating the potential of biotechnology to address local problems, especially through the use of cost/benefit and risk analysis;
* Promoting partnerships between corporations, private funding sources and public agencies;
* Designing and implementing regulatory systems;
* “Educating” farmers and consumers; and,
* Promoting international cooperation in regulatory policy, financing, and technology transfer.10
The Bank also offers technical training, policy and management advice, analysis of countries’ regulatory systems, and consultations with representatives from various social sectors to discuss proposed policies and their likely impacts. As we will see, the underlying assumption is often that biotechnology is the wave of the future, and that rational public policy can only serve to facilitate its development.
The Bank has provided some $2.3 billion in direct loans for research, of which $50 million is for biotechnology.11 This includes some less controversial techniques, such as tissue culture and the use of DNA markers to assist plant breeders, but also genome mapping and transgenics. Less controversial pursuits are often viewed as “stepping stones” to more “advanced” applications, such as the development of new genetically modified crops. Over 80 percent of research funding is committed to six key countries: India, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Peru, and Ethiopia. Some $20 million – 40 percent of the total – is for projects in India, where the Bank supports development of insecticide-producing Bt rice, as well as genetically engineered (GE) varieties of cotton, pigeon peas, chickpeas, and various horticultural crops.12
Also in India, the Bank has provided assistance for a controversial project in which genes from amaranth seeds have been spliced into the DNA of potatoes to increase the potatoes’ protein content. This project was announced with great fanfare in 2003. While the protein content of the potatoes reportedly increased by nearly half, they contained a small fraction of the amount found in whole amaranth, or even wheat and rice.13 The peas, lentils, and other legumes that are an important part of traditional Indian diets – but have been marginalized in cash crop-oriented agricultural development projects – provide even more protein. As with the $100 million effort to develop a GE “golden” rice containing increased beta carotene (a Vitamin A precursor), biotechnologists are promising a high-tech “cure” to hunger, while ignoring far more realistic and readily available solutions.
In Kenya, the Bank has provided support for a project largely financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), along with Monsanto and a number of other private donors. The stated aim is to offer GE varieties of sweet potatoes, a staple crop in rural areas that rarely attracts the interest of corporate researchers. After 11 years of research, which created a very high public profile for the Monsanto and USAID sponsored Kenyan researcher Dr. Florence Wambugu, only one local sweet potato variety has been genetically modified, imparting resistance to a virus that farmers routinely fend off by far less invasive means.14 Under field conditions, this potato failed to demonstrate any significant virus resistance.15 Indeed, more than 20 years of Bank agricultural projects in Kenya have failed to meaningfully assist poor farmers, according to the Bank’s own analysts.16 In most other countries, Bank-funded biotechnology research is largely directed toward technological capacity building, genetic analysis, and research support for the regulatory sector.
Promoting the “Next Green Revolution”
The World Bank’s interest in biotechnology emerged in the 1980s, just as corporations such as Monsanto were beginning to shift their research priorities toward developing new transgenic crops. It began funding agricultural projects with distinct biotechnology components in 1982, and commissioned a study in 1988 to “assess the contribution that biotechnology might make to agricultural productivity, and to identify the socioeconomic, policy and management issues that might impede its successful application.”17 The study culminated in an international seminar in Canberra, Australia, in 1989, as well as a report published in 1991. The advisory committee that reviewed the final report included Val Giddings, now vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and Gabrielle Persley, who has continued to advise the Bank on biotech policy, while serving on the board of the industry-sponsored International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA-see below), and also as the executive director of the AusBiotech Alliance in her native Australia.18
In many ways, this report defined the Bank’s biotechnology agenda for the next decade and beyond. The focus then, as now, was on facilitating the adoption of biotech methods in the so-called “developing world,” with an emphasis on tissue culture and advanced diagnostics, but also on genetic engineering and gene mapping. The report predicted that biotechnology would bring “modest but continued increases in productivity of the major crops,” and help small farmers survive in an economic climate that favors the concentration of farmland ownership.
Not only has genetic engineering failed to produce long-promised yield improvements, but the Bank’s lending policies continue to further concentrate land ownership. Nonetheless, the Bank seeks to minimize the social and economic costs of adopting biotech methods, aid in the development of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs; i.e., patent and licensing) regimes for seeds and plants, offer expertise in risk assessment and biosafety procedures, promote and support research on non-commercial staple food crops, help integrate biotechnology into existing national research programs, and promote public-private partnerships to advance biotechnology.
The implementation of these strategies came into sharper focus following the publication of a 1997 report and a subsequent series of international meetings, which crystallized the earlier discussions into the development of a more focused biotechnology strategy.19 The latter report offered a far more measured and realistic assessment of the state of biotechnology research, balancing this with a broad overview of the known environmental consequences of GE crops. It also proposed a substantially broader agenda, aimed at developing scientific and regulatory expertise to assess and identify potential problems, as well as research on new crop varieties through the existing Bank-supported agricultural research centers in various countries. Numerous consultations and international seminars that followed the report’s publication proposed an even broader pro-biotech focus, however, emphasizing the protection of IPRs and the development of public-private partnerships promoting biotechnology.20
During the same period, the Bank was increasing its collaboration with the agrochemical industry, even while outwardly promoting concepts such as sustainability and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) reviewed Bank documents describing over 100 agricultural projects approved between 1997 and 2000, and found a persistent focus on intensifying production and increasing farmers’ access to agrochemicals, despite a 1998 policy emphasizing IPM-based alternatives.21
PAN also uncovered an ongoing Staff Exchange Program, through which the Bank had entered into business partnerships with nearly all the leading pesticide companies, including biotech giants Aventis, Novartis, and Dow. “For public monies to support the placement of World Bank staff at these companies,” argued Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, coordinator of PAN North America’s World Bank Accountability Project, “constitutes a gross violation of the Bank’s pest management policy and its business partnership guidelines. It is also antithetical to the Bank’s commitment to sustainable development and a misuse of public funds.”22
The Staff Exchange Program involves 189 corporations, governments, universities, and international agencies, including leading transnational companies involved in agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, petroleum, mining, timber, and banking.23 The Bank trades staff members with various partner institutions for periods of up to two years, with a provision for adding additional years, and assignments are targeted toward mutual institutional needs. Exchanges with agribusiness/biotech companies were most active during the late 1990s and the beginning of this decade.
For example, an Aventis (now Bayer CropScience) marketing analyst spent nearly four years helping the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the largest and most visible Bank division, to develop its position on agricultural biotechnology, as well as strategies for leveraging financing from the private sector through the Bank’s International Finance Corporation. A Dow sales officer worked on projects in Africa and Mexico, and served on teams studying agrochemicals and biotechnology. Novartis’ (now Syngenta’s) head of public affairs spent a year working on outreach and communications strategies for the Bank’s rural development unit. Meanwhile, Bank officials stationed at Novartis and Rhone Poulenc Agro (now part of Bayer) in the late 1990s worked on biotechnology regulatory issues and rural development partnerships.24 Through these exchanges, the Bank adjusted its biotechnology strategies to better satisfy the leading biotech seed developers, and corporations gained access and influence over public policies in the global South.
Biosafety in India: A Model Project
In 1996, the annual Conference of Parties to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (a product of the 1992 Rio “Earth Summit”) launched negotiations toward an international protocol on the safe handling and transport of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). African nations, along with others concerned about how future imports of GMOs might threaten the integrity of indigenous plant and animal species, forged an international consensus requiring countries seeking to export intact, viable GMOs – such as live plants, seeds, and microorganisms – to obtain the consent of the importing country. Despite numerous obstacles imposed by the major GMO-producing countries – particularly the US, Canada, and Argentina – a full text was developed in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1999 and approved in Montreal in January 2000. The Pacific Island nation of Palau became the 50th country to ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in June 2003, bringing it into effect following a 90-day waiting period. As of March 2004, 89 countries had ratified the protocol.25
The Biosafety Protocol requires that countries seeking to export living modified organisms (LMOs) obtain “prior informed consent” from the importing country. Where organisms are intended for introduction into the environment (e.g., seeds), detailed information on their identity, traits, and characteristics needs to be communicated, and the receiving country may invoke the Precautionary Principle26 in deciding whether to allow the import. In the case of organisms intended for contained use, such as in laboratories, the exporter only needs to label the LMOs and specify rules for their safe handling and use.
GMOs intended for food, feed, or processing are largely exempt, but are required to carry the label, “May contain living modified organisms,” as well as a certification that they are not intended for environmental release. Pharmaceutical products regulated by the World Health Organization are exempted entirely. Countries that have not ratified this protocol – including the US, which hasn’t signed the Biodiversity Convention and, therefore, is not eligible to do so – are expected to trade with signatory states in a manner that is consistent with the document’s objectives, though there are no means to enforce this.
In March 2003, the World Bank approved detailed plans for a three-year, $3 million dollar project designed to help India fulfill its obligations under the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. The project is designed to enhance the capacity of various government agencies and research centers to implement the agreement’s provisions. In partnership with India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Bank will help build “technical capacity for risk assessment, management and monitoring”; establish the required database system and clearinghouse mechanisms for GMO imports; support the development of infrastructure for research, risk assessment, and monitoring; and strengthen laws, regulatory frameworks, and “communication strategies.”27 Some 1600 individuals will participate in a series of risk evaluation courses, with primary support for four existing biotech research centers in India.28
The Bank’s Project Brief reviews in some detail the agencies and facilities that are currently engaged in biotechnology regulation and research in India, and addresses ways to significantly expand the capacity of these institutions. The Bank assumes that, having ratified the Cartagena Protocol, India will inevitably see an “increased movement” of GMOs into and within the country.29 The proposal postulates an ever-growing need for researchers to identify and monitor laboratory research as well as field trials; ensure safe handling of GMOs; evaluate environmental risks such as pollen transfer and affects on “non-target” species; assess safety procedures and guidelines; evaluate the safety and nutritional composition of engineered foods; and monitor and regulate commerce in engineered organisms.30
An ever-expanding array of scientists and public officials will engage in the detection, tracking, and evaluation of GMOs. While some researchers may shift their priorities from the development of new GE organisms to the evaluation of their safety, this project entails a significant expansion in the capacity of Indian researchers to work with GMOs and promote their “societal acceptance.”31
Dr. Klaus Ammann, a Swiss biotechnologist enlisted by the Bank to evaluate this project emphasized the need to “avoid unwelcome frictions in the so-important process in modernizing [India’s] agriculture,” and raised a concern as to whether this project will be implemented “expediently enough.”32 He suggested that the work in India may provide a model for circumventing the political and regulatory problems that in his view have unnecessarily impeded the introduction of GE products in Europe, and proposed ways to streamline the project to further the acceptance of genetic engineering.
This analysis punctures the balloon of scientific objectivity that surrounds the project, and removes any ambiguities as to its intended outcome. Along with many European countries, India has been one of the world’s centers of opposition to genetic engineering and now, with the support of the Bank, will build a rather extensive infrastructure for the evaluation, testing, and development of new GE products. While regulation and testing have become essential to guard against the undesirable consequences of GMOs, the mobilization of this greatly expanded infrastructure could make it politically inexpedient to refrain from introducing an ever-increasing variety of GE products and GMO-related research activities into the country.
A Kinder Biotech Agenda?
Another cornerstone of the Bank’s involvement in biotechnology is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Created by the Bank in 1971, it was co-sponsored by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the UN Development Program. It brought together four privately funded agricultural research centers – the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, a maize and wheat research center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, and tropical agriculture centers in Colombia and Kenya – under a single umbrella.33 The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations were the primary supporters of these four original centers, which were seen as the flagship institutions of the “Green Revolution” during the 1960s and seventies.
Today, the CGIAR consists of 16 research centers, with focuses including livestock, fisheries, water management, and agroforestry. It also supports National Agricultural Research Systems in numerous countries, under the auspices of the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), and maintains at least 10 percent of the world’s gene banking capacity, housing more than half a million samples of both wild and cultivated plant species. In its first 25 years, CGIAR raised over $4 billion in support of agricultural research.34
As the Bank as a whole shifted its research goals during the 1990s toward an emphasis on “poverty reduction” and the conservation of biodiversity, so did CGIAR. “Biotechnology,” according to CGIAR’s website, “will be mobilized through research alliances to ensure that it can contribute to more sustainable agricultural growth in developing countries, with special care devoted to issues such as ethics, safety and the access of developing countries to biotechnology products.”35 This often translates into the promotion of biotech research for its own sake.
In a 1998 speech, former CGIAR Chairman and World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin proposed a more benign biotech research agenda for these centers. Seeking a “scale neutral” approach to biotechnology that would carry “no intrinsic bias against the smallholder farmer,” Serageldin suggested that the center’s biotech research focus on “environmentally friendly” approaches to disease and pest resistance, as well as tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought and salt, and the development of new livestock vaccines.36 To address the safety and ethical concerns that had already sparked widespread debate in Europe and elsewhere, Serageldin suggested that CGIAR focus on “low risk enabling biotechnologies” and traits that “do not involve weediness or a virus component.”
This approach would represent a significant departure from the research agenda of Monsanto and the other corporate developers of genetic engineering, where the imperative to introduce new commercial products clearly overrides all other considerations. On the other hand, Serageldin’s speech suggests a certain naïveté that risks can be avoided by simple departures such as limiting gene transfers to plants of the same, or closely related, species. The history of GE research demonstrates that the very process of genetic engineering introduces an array of uncertainties and disruptions to genetic regulation, regardless of the source of the introduced genes.37
A 2003 review by the World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department assessed CGIAR’s progress to date in fulfilling this agenda.38 Reviewer William Lesser of Cornell University reported that CGIAR has invested some $25 million per year in biotechnology research, ranging from gene mapping and transgenic crops to policy studies, with 11 of the 16 CGIAR Centers involved in some way in biotechnology.39 Previous reviews by the Group’s Technical Advisory Council had, on several occasions, criticized the centers for “under-investing” in biotechnology.
The most active of the 16 centers is the maize and wheat research center in Mexico (CIMMYT), with seven scientists working in an Advanced Biotechnology Center. A major focus is reported to be marker-based transfer of stress and disease resistance traits – essentially introducing DNA markers as diagnostics to better assess the outcome of conventional breeding experiments. Other emphases are functional genomics (using genetic sequence information to develop a better understanding of gene function) and apomixis technology (inducing seed formation without pollination), a project not without environmental consequences.
CIMMYT is also engaged in a partnership with Pioneer Hi-Bred, the world’s largest seed company (wholly owned by DuPont), to investigate genes and metabolic pathways associated with drought tolerance in corn, an effort that may be aimed at more invasive forms of genetic manipulation.40 CIMMYT, along with two other CGIAR centers, has also enlisted an IPR specialist, conducted an IPR audit, and led the development of a detailed IPR policy.41
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has been involved in the development of the so-called “golden” vitamin A rice – which author and New York Times commentator Michael Pollan accurately described as “the world’s first purely rhetorical technology”42 – and has engaged in stress resistance and genomics research. Other CGIAR centers have been involved in enhanced breeding methods, genomics, analysis of genetic diversity, and searches for exotic and novel genetic traits; the two tropical agriculture centers both support projects involving gene transfer technologies.43 The ISNAR assists developing countries to “increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their agricultural research systems,”44 and supports an Intermediary Biotechnology Service, which assists with policy and infrastructure development to further the adoption of new technologies.
In the policy realm, World Bank analysts have offered detailed analyses of possible institutional arrangements, licensing regimes for intellectual property, joint ventures, and technology transfer protocols in an effort to strengthen ties between the National Agricultural Research Systems and the private sector. A Bank senior economist and the former IRRI deputy director general described CGIAR as “a potentially important ‘bridge’ between advanced private and public research organizations and public research organizations in developing countries.”45
The 2003 review of CGIAR’s operations reveals considerable internal controversy surrounding the centers’ biotechnology involvements. One important development was CGIAR’s 1998 pledge to refrain from using Terminator-like technologies to produce sterile seeds. William Lesser describes this decision as “absolutist” and an undue politicization of the technology assessment process. “Moreover,” he writes, “such a step can increase future pressure by the vocal anti-biotechnology community to exclude technologies for political, not scientific reasons.”46
Clearly, politics is appropriate when it favors the aggressive promotion of biotechnology, but not when it imposes limitations on its development and diffusion. CGIAR stepped into far deeper political waters in 2002 when it invited the Syngenta Foundation to join its list of sponsors. Syngenta is the world’s largest producer of herbicides and, after Monsanto, the largest developer of GE plant varieties. This invitation led the group’s advisory committee of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to freeze its relationship with the organization, alienating other major donors and threatening a significant curtailment of the group’s research activities.47
Meanwhile, there are institutional pressures to devote greater CGIAR resources to the ownership and protection of patents and other forms of IPRs. Lesser described two opposing tendencies on a 1998 CGIAR assessment panel, with those who saw biotechnology as central to the centers’ future mission seeking greater IPR protections and others favoring an emphasis on participatory research based on local knowledge. “The simple answer to such a future impasse,” Lesser argues, “is in the narrower selection of panel members,” suggesting a political agenda of simply marginalizing those who are critical of biotechnology.48
Greenwashing Corporate Agendas
Despite these clear institutional biases at the Bank and its numerous affiliated agencies, many analysts still believe that the Bank represents an alternative to the aggressive, commercially driven promotion of biotech products that is characteristic of the leading biotech transnationals. The more overt promotion of GE and other controversial biotechnologies is left to another organization, directly supported by the biotech companies, which maintains close institutional ties to the World Bank. This is the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).
Long-time Bank advisor Gabrielle Persley, formerly biotechnology manager of the Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department, serves as the director of programs on ISAAA’s board, and Clive James, a former CIMMYT deputy director general, played key roles in ISAAA’s establishment during the early 1990s. While some Bank officials have disavowed any direct link to the ISAAA, the history of institutional ties between the two organizations is quite compelling, and the ISAAA’s regional operations in Africa and Asia are based at two of the leading CGIAR research centers. The ISAAA is directly supported by Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Pioneer, Cargill, and other corporate biotech leaders, along with the Rockefeller, McKnight, and Hitachi Foundations, among others. Its stated goal is “to bring together institutions from national programs in the South, and from the private sector in the North, into partnerships to transfer biotechnology applications.” 49
The ISAAA boasts programs in Africa (Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda) and Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), has initiated projects in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico), and offers fellowships to scientists engaged in technology transfer activities. Researchers at Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) describe the ISAAA fellows as an emerging “advocacy elite,” often maintaining a strong and lasting identification with their corporate benefactors.50 Recent projects include manipulation of virus resistance genes in potatoes and papayas, development of diagnostics for maize diseases, genetic engineering of cassava and sweet potatoes, cell culture techniques for the propagation of commercial tree species, and the assessment of Bt corn technologies for Asia.51
The ISAAA’s history in Asia, began with a 1996 meeting of its board at the International Rice Research Institute headquarters in the Philippines.52 Ongoing research and technology transfer projects in Asia, and around the world, follow the general pattern of Bank-funded efforts but are much more heavily tilted toward the development of new transgenic crop varieties. These include efforts to develop GE virus resistant potatoes in Mexico, tomatoes in Indonesia, and papayas in Malaysia.
As with similar Bank-supported efforts, these research priorities reflect little regard for local crop diversity or actual on-the-ground agronomic problems. Large sums are committed to the development of GE varieties that aim to do what local farmers can often accomplish by far less invasive means, while introducing new problems often more serious than those they are purported to solve.53 The ISAAA also seeks to help developing countries circumvent the biotech industry’s maze of IPR rules by facilitating licensing arrangements that give researchers easier access to new, proprietary technologies. While Monsanto spends $10 million a year suing and harassing US farmers to strictly obey their “technology agreements” and other IPR rules,54 their goal in the global South is clearly to promote the rapid acceptance of new GE crops at all costs.
The main vehicle for direct links between the World Bank and the private sector is the Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), with an explicit role of leveraging financing from the private sector for international development projects. In the late 1990s, the IFC developed a $30 million Biodiversity Enterprise Fund for Latin America, which aimed to encourage “sustainable uses” of that region’s biodiversity. The Fund encouraged investment in questionable activities including bioprospecting, elite forms of ecotourism, and establishing tree plantations as “carbon sinks” to relieve the climate burden of methane production from cattle ranches.55
Today, more than 15 Biodiversity Enterprise Funds exist worldwide under the umbrella of the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA). Two World Bank officials serve on the steering committee of this organization, along with staff from the Nature Conservancy, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Conservation International, and other organizations dedicated to “free market” approaches to environmental problems.56
These Funds pledge to provide needed capital to mostly small, locally based enterprises in regions of high biodiversity, while offering investors opportunities to simultaneously satisfy financial, social, and environmental goals. The CFA’s examples of “proven sustainable finance mechanisms” include user fees for tourism, payments for bioprospecting, debt-for-nature swaps (trading small portions of a country’s debt for reallocation of particular lands for conservation),57 conservation trust funds, and “carbon investment projects.”58 Many of these measures have indeed reaped financial rewards for investors – and public relations points for cooperating NGOs – at the expense of indigenous peoples and the ecosystems upon which they have traditionally relied.59 The CFA’s online guidebook cites some seemingly admirable projects: encouraging small farmers in Central America to grow organic cocoa, for example. But it also promises returns on investments of up to 30 percent,60 a goal that appears quite incompatible with the mission of supporting human-scaled, ecologically sustainable practices in rainforests and other fragile ecosystems.
In an investment climate where corporations routinely shut down plants that fail to produce ever-increasing profit margins, and “socially responsible” investment funds sustain their bottom lines by investing heavily in Coca-Cola and Microsoft, the goal of encouraging conservation through investment appears to be yet another capitalist fantasy. As corporations and the largest international NGOs collaborate in ever-more elaborate schemes to sustain the myth that extracting profits and sustaining the environment can be made compatible, it is clear that the World Bank will continue to play a key role in advancing and legitimizing this dubious agenda, at the behest of global agribusiness and other corporate interests.
Notes
1 For an up-to-date overview of World Bank policies and practices, see “More World, Less Bank,” a special issue of the New Internationalist, Number 365, March 2004.
2 Sustainable development was introduced to a non-specialist public with the publication of the World Commission on Environment and Development’s landmark report, Our Common Future, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
3 See, for example, Jim McNeill, et al., Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
4 Kevin M. Cleaver (Director, World Bank Agriculture and Rural Development Department), letter to the Pesticide Action Network North America Regional Center, July 30, 2002.
5 Ichiyo Muto, “For an Alliance of Hope,” in Jeremy Brecher, et. al., eds., Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order, Boston: South End Press, 1993, p. 148.
6 See, for example, “Investing in Destruction – The World Bank and Biodiversity,” Barcelona: GRAIN, November 1996, available at http://www.grain.org/publications/bio8-en.cfm.
7 See Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, London: Zed Books, 1988, esp. Chapter 4, and The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991.
8 Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, et al., “Trouble on the Farm: World Bank projects undermine sustainable agriculture,” Pesticide Action Network North America, 2000.
9 Christine Lee, “All Pain, No Gain: How Structural Adjustment Hurts Farmers and the Environment,” Global Pesticide Campaigner, Vol. 11, No. 1, April 2001.
10 Eija Pehu, “Biosafety Capacity Building: A World Bank Perspective,” in M. A. Mclean, et al., eds., “A Framework for Biosafety Implementation: Report of a Meeting,” ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research) Biotechnology Service, February 2003, pp. 27-30.
11 Ibid. p. 28.
12 Ibid.
13 “Providing Proteins to the Poor: Genetically Engineered Potatoes vs. Amaranth and Pulses,” New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, January 9, 2003, archived at http://www.gene.ch/genet.html.
14 Aaron deGrassi, Genetically Modified Crops and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Assessment of Current Evidence, Third World Network/Africa, June 2003, pp. 6-10.
15 Gatonye Gathura, “GM technology fails local potatoes,” Nairobi, Kenya: The Daily Nation, January 29, 2004, at http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/Supplements/horizon/current/story290120041.htm
16 Aaron deGrassi, Genetically Modified Crops and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa, op.cit., p. 8.
17 “Agricultural Biotechnology: The Next “Green Revolution”? World Bank Technical Paper Number 133, January 1991. As of this report, the Bank had already committed $93 million to biotechnology research efforts in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Africa and central Europe (page 33).
18 Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), “ISAAA in Asia: Promoting corporate profits in the name of the poor,” Barcelona: GRAIN, October 2000, at http://www.grain.org/publications/isaaa-en.cfm.
19 Henry W. Kendall, et al., Bioengineering of Crops: Report of the World Bank Panel on Transgenic Crops, Washington DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank, 1997.
20 See, for example, Stas Burgiel and Lynn Wagner, “Workshop on Agricultural Biotechnology and Rural Development Priorities for the World Bank,” Sustainable Developments Vol. 26, No. 1, June 1999, at http://www.iisd.ca/download/asc/sd/sdvol26no1e.txt
21 Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, “Pesticides and Pest Management,” in Marketing the Earth: The World Bank and Sustainable Development, Washington, DC: Friends of the Earth and Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Halifax Initiative, 2002, pp. 27-32.
22 Ibid. p. 30.
23 Details and individual participant profiles are at http://www.staffexchange.org.
24 Ibid.
25 Convention on Biological Diversity website, http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/ratification.asp
26 The Precautionary Principle has become a central concept in international environmental policy since the 1990s, with greatest acceptance in the countries of the European Union. A major international conference on the principle in 1998 defined it this way: “When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” (“Precautionary Principle FAQs,” at http://www.sehn.org/ppfaqs.html). The key idea is that scientific certainty should not be a precondition for taking measures to protect human health and the environment.
27 World Bank Project Brief Number GE-PO-79865, “Capacity Building for the Implementation of the Cartagena Protocol,” March 27, 2003.
28 Ibid. pp. 22-25.
29 Ibid. p. 17.
30 Ibid. p. 19.
31 Ibid. p. 36.
32 Review by Dr. Klaus Ammann, ibid. pp. 39-40.
33 “Who We Are: History of the CGIAR,” at http://www.cgiar.org/who/wwa_history.html.
34 Statement by CGIAR Chairman Ismail Serageldin, at http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/publications/mtm97/isopen.pdf.
35 CGIAR, “Who We Are,” op.cit.
36 Ibid.
37 A simple early experiment with pigment genes in petunias demonstrated, for example, that genetic engineering can result in the silencing of neighboring genes: rather than producing brighter flowers by doubling the amount of pigment gene, researchers found that many of the resulting flowers had no color at all. See Ricarda Steinbrecher, “Ecological Consequences of Genetic Engineering,” in Brian Tokar, ed., Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering, London: Zed Books, 2001. See also Mae-wan Ho, “Unstable Transgenic Lines Illegal,” London: Institute for Science in Society, March 2003, at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/UTLI.php
38 William Lesser, The CGIAR at 31: An Independent MetaEvaluation of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research: Thematic Working Paper: Review of Biotechnology, Genetic Resource, and Intellectual Property Rights Programs, Washington, DC: The World Bank, June 30, 2003.
39 Ibid. p. 17; also Derek Byerlee and Ken Fischer, Accessing Modern Science: Policy and Institutional Options for Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries, World Bank Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems Thematic Team, November 3, 2000.
40 Ibid. p. 20.
41 Ibid. p. 54.
42 Michael Pollan, “The Great Yellow Hype,” New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2001. Pollan cites the finding, confirmed by other independent analysts, that a child would have to eat 15 pounds a day to meet his or her requirement for vitamin A, and would still require a sufficiently functioning fat metabolism to transform beta carotene into vitamin A, a serious obstacle for those experiencing malnutrition. A wide array of cheaper, more sustainable solutions to vitamin A deficiency is readily available. See, for example, Vandana Shiva, “Genetically Engineered “Vitamin A Rice”: A Blind Approach to Blindness Prevention,” in Brian Tokar, ed., Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering, London: Zed Books, 2001; also Chapter 7 of this book.
43 Lesser, The CGIAR at 31, op.cit., p. 19.
44 Ibid.
45 Byerlee and Fischer, Accessing Modern Science, op.cit. p. 23.
46 Lesser, The CGIAR at 31, op.cit., p. 5.
47 Devinder Sharma, “Bill Gates’ Rescue Package,” ZNet Commentary, November 5, 2003, at http://www.znet.org.
48 Lesser, The CGIAR at 31, op.cit., pp. 51-56.
49 “ISAAA in brief” at http://www.isaaa.org/Flyer.htm.
50 Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), “ISAAA in Asia,” op.cit. ref. 16.
51 “ISAAA in brief,” op.cit.
52 “ISAAA in Asia,” op.cit.
53 Ibid.
54 Peter Shinkle, “Monsanto reaps some anger with hard line on reusing seed,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 2003.
55 “Investing in Destruction – The World Bank and Biodiversity,” op.cit. On the myths of “carbon offset forestry,” see Larry Lohmann, “The Dyson Effect: Carbon ‘Offset’ Forestry and the Privatization of the Atmosphere,” Corner House Briefing No. 15, Dorset, UK: The Corner House, July 1999.
56 Conservation Finance Alliance, Conservation Finance Guide: Introduction, pp. 4-5, at http://guide.conservationfinance.org.
57 On the frequently problems with debt-for-nature swaps, see Brian Tokar, Earth for Sale: Reclaiming Ecology in the Age of Corporate Greenwash, Boston: South End Press, 1997, pp. 165-168.
58 Conservation Finance Guide: Introduction, p. 2.
59 Brian Tokar, Earth for Sale, esp. Chapter 8; Vandana Shiva, “Biopiracy: The Theft of Knowledge and Resources,” in Brian Tokar, ed., Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering, London: Zed Books, 2001; Bill Weinberg, “The Battle for Montes Azules: Conservation as Counterinsurgency in the Chiapas Rainforest,” Native Americas, Spring 2003, pp. 40-53.
60 “Universe of BEFs,” at http://guide.conservationfinance.org.
