Regulating biotech trade: the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

* It has long been recognized that any successful sustainable development strategy has to strike a balance between the interests of trade and concern for the environment. However, these sometimes conflicting imperatives have been, and remain, a potential source of conflict in international political economy. The World Trade Organization (WTO), often accused of insensitivity to environmental problems and the new reality of global environmental governance, has for many years been investigating ways of reconciling trade and the environment. However, failure to introduce a formal environmental mandate into the international trade regime and the collapse of the 1999 WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle could hardly have highlighted more sharply, or more publicly, the contentious nature of the trade–environment relationship. One area in which environmental concerns have recently clashed with the trading interests of states and corporations is that of biotechnology. The burgeoning trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been met with growing consumer and regulatory resistance in a number of countries, most notably in Europe, where stringent rules on the release of GMOs into the environment have led to accusations by GMO-exporting countries of unfair trade restrictions. The United States, the world’s largest exporter of biotechnological products, has repeatedly attacked the European Commission for its reliance on the precautionary principle in regulating GMOs, seeing it as in direct conflict with the WTO’s science-based risk-assessment methods. In the light of these developments, the adoption of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety earlier this year, only two months after the debacle of Seattle, represents a significant achievement in trying to reconcile the respective needs of trade and the environment. The Protocol establishes international rules for trade in genetically modified organisms and reinforces the right of importing nations to reject GMO imports on environmental or health grounds. While recognizing the