No to GM trees.

• Author: Burcher, Sam
• Position: Plight of Forests

Some 400 genetically modified (GM) birch trees (Betula pendula) in a single GM field study situated in Punkaharju, Finland have been either ripped up or cut down by unknown parties at an estimated cost of 1.21 million euros in June 2004.

After the attack, the researchers at Finnish Forest Research claimed that their purpose was to examine the environmental risks of horizontal gene transfer. When they originally applied for permission for the field trial in 2000, however, it was to study the carbon-nitrogen processes of GM trees.

Protests against GM trees greeted the 4th UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) in Geneva in May 2004 because of the "decision" to draft plans for GM tree projects made at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP9) in Milan in December 2003.

GM trees have been included in the Kyoto Protocol as a means of generating carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism. Carbon credits sold in this way are not subject to the trace-ability legislation that applies to all other GM imports into Europe and therefore countries hosting GM trees will have no way of knowing whether their credits are GM free or not.

The hopes pinned on GM trees include slowing the progress of climate change and ameliorating the effects of mercury vapors in the atmosphere caused by fossil fuels and medical waste burning.

The plan is to "phyto-remediate" land by planting GM trees that take up ionic mercury or organic mercury and convert it to less toxic elemental mercury, which can then be expelled into the atmosphere where it is supposed to become less harmful. But what this will achieve is to relocate soil mercury from contaminated soil sites in the south and redistribute the mercury to the north. Also, the mercury expelled to the atmosphere will go back to the land through precipitation, and convert to its original toxic state in the soil. This poses threats to animal and human health as well as problems of cross-contamination of native plants.

It is thought that reducing lignin in trees will make wood easier and cheaper to pulp and paper, especially soft woods, as well as creating faster growing trees. But a forest of slow-decaying trees is a major carbon sink whereas fast-decaying forests will result in carbon dioxide being returned to the atmosphere too rapidly.

The US Department of Agriculture has issued more that 300 permits for open GM tree trials since 2000, and officials are expected to grant permission to grow GM trees commercially by...