When northern elephants fight over GMOs.

• Author: Egziabher, Tewolde Berhan Gebre
• Position: Thinking Economically - Cancun World Trade Organization summit 's international agreement on genetically modified organisms

As the world's attention was focused firmly on the Cancun World Trade Organization summit in September 2003, an important international agreement quietly made its entry on the world stage, holding out immense implications for developing countries.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which aims to regulate trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs), came into force on 11 September after five-year-long negotiations over trade advantages and disadvantages--intractable North-South issues that are set to continue to bedevil the Protocol's implementation.

This is highlighted most forcefully by the US move to take the European Union to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism over the EU's insistence that US exporters clearly label all GM food sold to Europe.

One of its main complaints is that Europe's stand makes Africa reject GM. The elephants that are Europe and the US thus fight, and the grass that is Africa gets trampled. The WTO Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which would have had direct or indirect implications on the case, collapsed on September 14, 2003, largely because the South, and especially Africa, refused to accommodate the elephants.

Is this a foretaste of the implementation of the Biosafety Protocol as well? Why do I foresee future difficulties? The reasons are many.

The US, which is unlikely to be a party to the Protocol, and the 60 parties to the Protocol start from opposing premises.

The US starts from the premise of "Substantial Equivalence," which says GM crops are as safe as non-GM ones unless proved otherwise. The EU and the developing world support the "Precautionary Principle" embodied in the Protocol which states that a GM crop is to be considered possibly risky unless proved to be safe.

From these perceived differences flow implications for implementation.

The Cartagena Protocol requires a country to allow the importation of a GMO only after it has obtained all the necessary information about it and carried out a risk assessment to evaluate the likelihood of harm to human health, to agricultural systems, to its environment and to its socioeconomic conditions.

The country of import is first informed by the exporter or by the country of export of the intention to export the GMO.

The country of import, after a risk assessment, then informs the exporter or the country of export in writing whether or not it will allow the import.

In the case of GM commodities intended for food, feed or for processing, the intention...