Outline

  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Material and Methods
  • 3. Results
  • 3.1. Efsa & the Socio-Cultural Dimension of Ecosystem Services
  • 4. Discussion
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Financial Disclosure
  • Acknowledgments
  • References

رئوس مطالب

  • چکیده
  • کلید واژه ها
  • 1. مقدمه
  • 2. مواد و روش ها
  • 3. نتایج
  • 3.1. EFSA و ابعاد اجتماعی و فرهنگی خدمات اکوسیستم
  • 4. بحث
  • 5. نتیجه گیری

Abstract

One of the most divisive debates in modern agriculture concerns the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In Europe, the policy debate over GMOs has been met with a persistent attempt to retreat into “sound science” as a potential unifying force. However, environmental risk assessment as an aid to regulatory decision-making is inherently entangled with questions of environmental ethics. This is particularly manifested in the setting of environmental protection goals. For the risk assessment of GMOs, the European Food Safety Authority has presented an inconsistent position on environmental protection goals. There is, however, an emerging trend for biodiversity conservation to be enfolded within an ecosystem services frame, and for ecosystem services to be reduced to biological terms. How environmental protection goals are understood, articulated and used to define risk assessment and shape regulatory decision-making is a significant factor in the entrenched debate over the regulation of GMOs in Europe. In negotiating this territory, I suggest that the attempt to enforce a strict divide between nature and culture or social and ecological systems in Europe’s risk assessment of GMOs is emphatically counter-productive, for both robust science and considered ethical action.

Keywords: - - - - -

Conclusions

This commentary has drawn attention to the way in which the European Food Safety Authority presents an inconsistent position on the environmental protection goals it uses to define and shape the process of assessing the environmental risks posed by GMOs. Despite this inconsistency, the commentary has argued that there is an increasing trend for biodiversity conservation to be approached from within an ecosystem services frame and that this sidelines the view of biodiversity having intrinsic value. Furthermore, the commentary has shown how within the GMO panel of EFSA, ecosystem services are consistently narrowed to exclude cultural services and has shown how this fails to recognize the particular cultural significance of agroecosystems and works to marginalize public participation in decision-making. Arguing that all of these factors are only working to amplify rather than resolve the entrenched debate in Europe over the cultivation of GMOs, the commentary concluded by suggesting that there is a need to overcome the perceived boundary between nature and culture in the regulation of GMOs. Finally it was suggested that this could in the first instance be advanced through a shift in language and orientation away from environmental protection goals towards socio-ecological promotion aims and the operationalization of these by EFSA through, for example, their existing commitments to furthering integrated pest management and sustainability in agricultural systems. Unless the interaction between social and ecological factors can be recognized and directly addressed in the regulation of GMOs, either through embracing and further articulating the cultural services dimension of the ecosystem services frame more clearly or recognizing its limits and developing an alternative frame more able to embrace non-instrumental values, it seems likely that unproductive stalemates in Europe’s GMO debate will continue.

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