Hyderabad, Oct 2 (IANS) Voicing its concern over ‘unbridled’ field tests of genetically modified (GM) crops in the country, civil society groups have asked the government to immediately put in place a legal framework on liability and redress.
Claiming that the GM crops had put the nation at risk, the Coalition for GM-free India and Centre for Sustainable Agriculture said the firms introducing GM crops should be made liable for the damage their proprietary technology is causing to biodiversity.
The representatives of the groups were Tuesday addressing a press conference here on the sidelines of the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP MOP 6).
Delegates from 150 countries attending the five-day meet are discussing ways to ensure the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) and the implementation of Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress.
LMOs are organisms that are genetically modified through the application of biotechnology.
India signed the supplementary protocol last year but is yet to ratify it. Fifty-one countries have so far signed the instrument but only three of them have ratified it.
Shalini Bhutani, a legal researcher from Delhi, said under the Cartagena Protocol, India need not wait till the supplementary protocol comes into force to make its own legislation on liability and redress.
She pointed out that the supplementary protocol acknowledged that LMOs can cause damage and it laid down rules by which an operator of LMOs will be held accountable if there is damage to biodiversity.
While claiming that they were not against use of technology, she said adequate safeguards and a mechanism for liability and redress should be put in place.
“It is not just a technology discussion. There are environmental, social, economic and justice issues involved,” she said while pointing out that the protocol itself says import and use LMOs should be in the context of socio-economic conditions of the concerned country.
Sridhar Radhakrishnan, convenor, Coalition for GM-free India, said civil society urged global leaders to follow the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in letter and spirit so that biodiversity is not sacrificed at the altar of risky and irreversible technologies like genetic engineering in agriculture.
He said the resistance to GM crops was growing across the world and it was best reflected in countries like India and China. Radhakrishnan said the controversial GM crop cultivation was introduced in India a decade ago and the reviews, both from public sector institutions as well as the civil society, had broken the myth around Bt cotton, the only GM crop commercially grown in India.
“Studies have shown that it has not only failed to increase yields or reduce pesticide usage as claimed by the biotech seed industry but has increased the cost of cultivation of cotton thereby pushing the cotton farmers into further distress. The situation is particularly acute in the rain-fed regions in the country, which comprises 65 percent of the area under cotton cultivation,” he added.
