Recent content

Este estudio de caso ilustra los desarrollos recientes en la biología sintética que podrían impactar el mercado de 22 mil millones de dólares de especias, saborizantes y fragancias y los sustentos de los productores de materias primas de las cuales se derivan. Sin embargo, la biología sintética no es la única tecnología emergente que se espera ocasionará distorsiones en el mercado. Los retos provienen de otras tecnologías emergentes incluyendo la nanotecnología. Las partículas nano escalares ya se están agregando a los comestibles y las bebidas para alterar los sabores y los perfiles nutricionales, para extender la vida de anaquel y tal vez para reducir los requerimientos de materias primas. Algunos de los más importantes procesadores también exploran métodos de nano-encapsulación que podrían ofrecer alimentos y bebidas “flexibles”, es decir, que un producto puede ser alterado en la nanoescala para exhibir diferentes sabores u otras propiedades. Un argumento importante para que Naciones Unidas establezcan un organismo para la evaluación de las tecnologías es que los países productores necesitan un sistema confiable, de alerta temprana, que les permita responder a los riesgos, oportunidades y alternativas antes de que las exportaciones se alteren o la especulación afecte los precios. El Convenio sobre Diversidad Biológica es el foro más adecuado para discutir el tema nuevo y emergente de la biología sintética.

So-called “green technology” is now a major feature of the Rio+20 “green economy” vision. G-77 countries are, understandably, focused on facilitated access to useful technologies that can contribute to sustainable development; the best way to make sure the right technologies are transferred to the right places in the right way is to subject them to meaningful assessment. An emphasis on the positive potential of new technologies requires a concomitant emphasis on a strengthened global, regional and national capacity to monitor and assess technologies. Anything less will incite distrust and invite disaster. Powerful new technologies (such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology and geoengineering) are being proposed and promoted without prior evaluation and no regulation. If technology assessment is deemed too costly or time-consuming, we are likely to find that the cost of not assessing technologies is even greater.

Rio +20 can call for a UN-level technology facility (either combining or separately addressing the need for technology transfer and technology assessment), the details of which can be scheduled for final negotiation in the follow-through to the conference. Grounded in the Precautionary Principle, the facility would have the institutional capacity to identify and monitor significant technologies, including an evaluation of the technologies’ social, economic, cultural, health and environmental implications. Assessments would be completed before a new technology is released.

An efficient, transparent pathway for technological advancement would save national governments time and money while reducing risk. Those proposing new technologies and their backers seek to minimize risk. Especially, re-insurers and investors welcome steps that make government intervention and/or public responses predictable.

It is said that no one can predict the past but had the UN maintained its monitoring capacity over the last two decades – and had civil society been vigilant – the world might have saved itself billions of dollars, millions of lives, and much time. Find in this briefing some post-Rio (1992) examples…

This case study illustrates how a key pharmaceutical ingredient, shikimic acid – traditionally derived from star anise cultivated by Chinese farmers – can be rapidly replaced by a new technological production process. Using synthetic biology, shikimic acid is now being produced commercially in drug industry fermentation tanks. The transition took less than a decade. Shikimic acid is just one example of a raw material that may be affected; it is conservatively estimated that at least 50% of today’s commercial pharmaceutical compounds are derived from plants, animals and microorganisms. No inter-governmental body is addressing the potential impacts of synthetic biology on the conservation and use of biodiversity and on the livelihoods of those who depend on agricultural export commodities (including high-value flavors, fragrances, essential oils, etc). The Convention on Biological Diversity is the most appropriate forum to address this new and emerging issue.