Jim Thomas, Friends of the Earth US
At the Contact Group on Synthetic Biology on Monday night a potentially dangerous line was crossed for the wider integrity and trust in CBD decision-making. Despite two agreed previous COP decisions on he need for and establishment of a broad and regular horizon scanning, assessment and monitoring process on Synthetic Biology, an unnamed party insisted on adding new text to “disestablish” this important process.
“Disestablish?? We’ve never heard that language in the CBD before” expressed more than one surprised participant as nervous laughter broke out in the room . Indeed it’s not a term that has ever surfaced before in decision text. Apparently for this party and its industry allies it’s not enough that parties spend tens of thousands of people-hours working together day and the night towards delicately balanced decisions through accountable processes of negotiation and consensus. Now it seems disgruntled parties are claiming an
entitlement to cast that aside and ‘disestablish’ - to
relitigate and pull the rug out from CBD processes that they happen to not like.
The process in question - established in decision 15/31 at COP15 is known as the “Broad and regular Horizon Scanning, Assessment and monitoring process on new developments ion Synthetic Biology”. It was established after long and difficult negotiations in order to help parties and non-parties see what new technical developments are occurring in the rapidly moving field of synthetic biology and to support assessment and monitoring of the positive and negative impacts of these new developments. This could help states better regulate, oversee and potentially support such technologies. The process is seen as an innovative substan-
tiation of the Precautionary approach (also enshrined in the Convention - shall we disestablish that too?). An online open forum and a multidisciplinary AHTEG (mAHTEG) made mostly of party experts worked tirelessly across the intersessional period to design in detail such a process and to road-test its assessment approach.
The fact is, the party in question simply didn’t like the outcome of the mAHTEG’s expert discussions. Just like a certain US presidential candidate who has threa-tened to dissolve institutions that make difficult with his policies, so the small group of biotech friendly countries would rather ‘disestablish’ hard-fought and agreed COP decisions and processes rather than engage with the substance of what experts have to say.
This ‘disestablishment’ ploy is dispiriting and unsettling for all who have worked this past 15 years to come to meaningful multilateral agreement on synthetic biology but it’s also potentially a wider existential threat as a precedent for other COP decisions and processes. If a party can - in a cavalier fashion - insist on ‘dis-establishing’ a process because its conclusions are inconvenient to its industry, where else might that
entitlement be wielded and with what damage? Shall we expect that at any moment a party with poor humans rights might decide to disestablish the Working Group on 8j or to disestablish the Kuala Lumpur Protocol on Liability and Redress to grant biotech
industry’s impunity? Introducing this new tactical tool in an item under the convention is to start to unravel the integrity of any and every other COP decision.
We hope that the biotech industry-directed parties using this tactic to destabilize the important precautionary “horizon scanning , assessment and monitoring process” are brought to realise the wider instability their stunt is opening up - and that the rest of us who believe in multilateral processes can insist on antidisestablishmentarianism remaining as the prevailing civil norm of proceedings.