If there is one lesson from the experience of national and international negotiations on agricultural biotechnology to date, it is that the public does not take kindly to being excluded from decision-making processes or being presented with policy decisions on issues considered important. What we eat and how our food is produced are such important issues. This was most clearly demonstrated in 1999 when imported products containing GMOs provoked a storm of protest in the UK regarding the acceptance of a technology for which the public — and debatably the regulatory system — was unprepared.
Rushed acceptance of a technology provokes strong reactions even in the most desperate of circumstances, as was witnessed in Ecuador and Zambia in the case of GM food aid. Here, even the most fervent advocates of the technology, such as biotech firm Monsanto, were forced to concede that a measure of arrogance surrounding the benefits of the technology had blinded governments and firms alike to the sources of public anxiety and distrust about its use. The long-term damage to trust in the technology has been incalculable.
A second lesson gained from global experiences with agricultural biotechnology policies is that public trust established under democratic contexts is essential to gaining support for regulation. The benefits associated with getting the process right in the short term far out-weigh the costs that result from getting it wrong: that is, outright rejection of the technology and the system of regulation that is seen to support it. As much as those that assert biotechnology’s incredible potential to benefit the poor and produce favourable environmental outcomes may be frustrated by the need to keep innovation and regulation in line with societal expectations about where need lies and where ethical boundaries operate, the costs of excluding and antagonising the public are far greater to regulatory and technology development.
Article 23 (Public Awareness and Participation) of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety makes clear the need for governments to establish mechanisms of public participation and consultation and to engage in efforts to raise awareness about biosafety issues as a pre-requisite to effective public engagement. This inclusion is unsurprising given the level of political conflict present at the time that the protocol was negotiated. In this article, I draw a few key lessons that remain relevant today based on work I undertook as part of a team commissioned in 2003 to review countries’ efforts to implement Article 23 of the Cartagena Protocol.1
Contexts matter
There can be no universal prescription or formula on ‘how to do’ public participation in different national contexts. What works in some places is not going to work in others. Countries need to consider the sort of processes that are useful in achieving the overall goals they have identified (see Box 1). These objectives need to reflect the political and resource constraints they face. In Denmark, for instance, there is a strong tradition of extensive participation at all levels of society with the resources and capacity to match. This is reflected in the in-depth consultative activities carried out by the Danish Board of Technology. In Kenya and Zimbabwe, on the other hand, while there have been concerted attempts to engage civil society in the development of biosafety frameworks — reflecting traditions of participation in these countries — the resource and capacity constraints are serious issues. Public participation processes must therefore account for the different situations, capabilities and stages of development in each country.
‘Participation’ is often interpreted to mean providing information to the public
Countries are generally focused more on awareness-raising and educational activities than on enabling participatory consultations and inclusive decision-making. Information sharing is an essential building block of participatory processes but if all the stages of these processes are to be designed, facilitated and sustained effectively, information-gathering is also needed. To know what sort of information must be provided, in which format and to whom, a government needs first to know who the interested public is, what its concerns are and what access it has to different kinds of information or media.
There is a range of participatory techniques and approaches for gathering information, though not all are equally accessible to every interested party or participant. Access to informationtechnology communication, for example, is very limited for most people in large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In other countries, there is a plurality of information sources but their neutrality and independence is often questioned. Governments should therefore take a proactive role in widely distributing strategic information to the public about their rights as citizens and consumers and how to exercise them, as well as basic background information on relevant policy issues — in this case, biosafety and biotechnology.
The role of ‘experts’ in participatory processes, though important, has to be managed carefully
When experts occupy leadership roles it can make it difficult for other stakeholders and interest groups to independently evaluate or define issues that concern them. Moreover, despite the frequent separation between public participation and risk assessment, it is clear that one cannot be neatly detached from the other. For example, even seemingly technical questions about what counts as a risk implies a political and social challenge of establishing who defines the risk and how the risks are excepted to be distributed. These are not narrowly defined technical problems reserved for only experts but political questions that have to be treated as such.
There are many purposes, processes and outcomes of participation
As opposed to consensus, there are often entrenched and irreconcilable conflicts between a public with contrasting interests. Uncovering differences, however, helps to make clear the trade-offs and costs involved in choosing one option over another (see Box 1). Therefore, an open, transparent and inclusive process can still achieve broad legitimacy and acceptance, even if some parties involved do not agree with the eventual outcomes.
The sole intention of public inclusion in policy-making is not to obtain consensus; public participation can serve different purposes. In the case of biosafety and biotechnology, it can enable a ‘market-research’ function to ensure that biotechnologies are accepted by a sceptical and worried public or it can deepen a democratic process in which citizens are entitled to know about the impact of technologies on their economy, society and environment and to make their views known.
In any public participation process, it is important to determine and communicate the purpose and expected follow up – that is, how decisions will be taken forward or acted upon. Clarity and honesty are necessary to avoid a situation in which people are asked to lend credence to decisions that, in reality, have already been made. The purpose of public participation shapes what approaches are likely to be most useful. For example, opinion polls about the adequacy of biosafety regulations give a snapshot picture of whether there is public trust in a regulatory system, but they do not involve the public in how decisions are made.
It is vital that actors convening participatory processes take into account all the relevant stakeholders. Yet, identifying stakeholders is more complex than commonly imagined. There is no simple, proven method for stakeholder analysis in the formulation and implementation of policy. It is necessary to consider how stakeholders are identified and by whom; the heterogeneity of interests and knowledge that stakeholders bring to the process; the fact that different stakeholders will want or need to be involved at different stages in the process; and that it is probably neither desirable nor feasible for all stakeholders to be involved at all stages.
The expectation is that the governments lead participatory processes. Some countries have a law of public participation, such as in Bolivia. Laws on the right to information, as in Norway or the Aarhus Convention, make it easier for the public to be meaningfully involved in decision-making about biotechnology. Spaces or opportunities for public participation, however, can also be created in a complimentary fashion by other actors such as NGOs. For example, citizen juries as we have seen in India and Brazil can be very effective at identifying the concerns of groups — such as poorer farmers — that are often overlooked in government-led consultations.
A Final Word
Given the potential risks and benefits associated with agricultural biotechnology, it is important to put decisions within a broader context of public policy debate about the future of food and agriculture, especially in developing countries. As consumers, employees, parents, producers and citizens, the public has a right to be involved in decisions that have the potential to profoundly affect the way they live. While all governments have an obligation to encourage public consultation and participation in the design of biosafety policies under the Cartagena Protocol, unfortunately only a few have used the opportunity to launch a wider public debate about agricultural futures in their countries in which biotech may, or may not, have a key role to play. Using a variety of methods of public participation tailored to national needs and resource constraints, governments can seek to weigh the pros and cons of different agricultural strategies, moving from questions about whether to adopt biotechnology to critical questions about what economic, social or environmental needs biotechnology can and cannot address. Though particularly focused on the ways in which the public can be brought into biosafety decision-making, these tools, strategies and lessons can, for the most part, also apply to decision-making around related trade, intellectual property and broader agricultural issues.
Peter Newell is Professor of Development Studies, University of East Anglia and James Martin Fellow, Oxford University Centre for the Environment.