Biotechnology and Biosafety

This chapter analyzes global policy approaches to ensuring safe use of modern biotechnology in agriculture. Biosafety is analyzed here as an anticipatory governance challenge, one where the nature and extent of the problem remains both uncertain and contested. The chapter compares two dominant global policy approaches to ensuring biosafety: the science-based harmonization of domestic risk decisions promoted by global trade agreements, versus the deference to context-specific diversity in risk decisions promoted by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It analyzes central elements of, and possible conflicts between, these two approaches, and their interaction with domestic policy choices. The chapter sheds light on whether harmonization or policy diversity dominates in multilevel biosafety governance. It also analyzes the contours of a science-society contract herein, given the centrality of science-based decision-making in this policy domain. It concludes by drawing out implications of current policy pathways for future biosafety governance options and scholarship.