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FANRPAN/IFPRI Regional Policy Dialogue on Biotechnology, Agriculture, and Food Security in Southern Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa
April 25-26, 2003
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Tobias Takavarasha
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Joachim von Braun
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Biotechnology, like climate change or the construction of large dams, falls in the ever-increasing category of policy disputes characterized by multidimensionality and complexity. By their very nature, these disputes are centered around politically charged issues of allocation of rights to resources and distribution of the benefits and costs of changes in technological change. They typically involve a high degree of scientific uncertainty, long time horizons and decision-making at multiple jurisdictional levels. Such disputes are therefore apt to pose exacting challenges. They involve a wide range of political, economic, social and scientific considerations. Their satisfactory resolution therefore requires multi-stakeholder participation in a process of finding and maintaining a dynamic balance between political and technical priorities. In this process, civil society can provide much of the expertise and creative thinking that is required to identify needs, generate innovative policy options and implement agreements, while governments retain their preeminent functions of ultimate decision-making.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) recently embarked on a multiple stakeholder initiative aimed at raising awareness, promoting dialogue, and catalyzing consensus-building mechanisms toward improved institutions and policies governing biotechnology in agriculture and its implications for food security in Southern Africa.
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John Mugabe
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The primary motivation for the initiative is the food emergency currently facing Southern Africa. Inadequate, poorly timed, or inappropriate policy responses to low domestic food supplies have combined with and low human, infrastructural, and organizational capacity in domestic markets to leave millions of people at risk of starvation in the region. Twelve years ago, in 1991, similar interactions among poor weather, policy failures, and market failures left millions of Southern Africans similarly exposed. But the food emergency of 2002-03 is different from that of 1991-92 in one crucial respect. Thousands of tons of food available to help cover shortages in Southern Africa contain unspecified amounts of genetically modified (GM) grain (specifically, Bt maize) and are thus considered suspect-or even poisonous-by some governments unsure of the implications of GM food for human health and the environment. Efforts to accommodate that uncertainty have pitted erstwhile partners in national and regional food relief against one another in an increasingly heated political environment.
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Martha Kandawa-Schultz
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A two-day meeting was convened in Johannesburg on April 25-26 2003. The meeting participants (PDF 71K) included high-level policy makers, senior representatives of a range of stakeholder agencies, and respected scientific leaders. As outlined in the concept note (PDF 132K), this was the first in an integrated series of multiple stakeholder roundtable discussions on biotechnology, agriculture, and food security in Southern Africa. A carefully managed but highly participatory process is envisioned. Several background papers were presented and discussed. A Steering Committee (PDF 65K) was appointed from among the participants. The Committee will determine format, content, and participation at future meetings. Strategic links were established with the Biotechnology Advisory Committee recently created by the SADC Council of Ministers for food, agriculture, and natural resources (SADC-FANR), and with the proposed NEPAD African Panel on Biotechnology (APB).
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