The Biosafety Protocol

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N-KL 2010 Liability Prot
Yajima PhD thesis t&e
Protocole de Carthagène
WTI Liability & Redress
MOP-3'06 Curitiba, Brazil
MOP-1 R Falkner RIIA
Socioeconom Asia WRI
IUCN Biosafety Pr Guide
Cullet Biosafety Pr Intro
LBC UPT et al RSDI'00-4
TWN'00 BP Ten articles

 

 

 

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in January 2000 in Montréal and ratified in September 2003. A Multilateral Environmental Agreement, it regulates trade in so-called Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), i.e. primarily genetically modified crops. Its primary objective is the protection of biological diversity from threats resulting from imported GM seeds, pollen or other organisms. This protection consists in giving an LMO importing country - which otherwise as a WTO member would be obliged to import them under the provisions of the WTO agreements - stronger regulatory instruments that may take into consideration precautionary measures. Risks to human health and socio-economic considerations due to the importation of LMOs are also included in the text of the Protocol but the precise legal meaning of these two additional objectives are presently quite unclear. This unresolved problems refers particularly to questions of liability and redress. Perhaps a more important immediate problem are the facts that the major producers of GM crops, especially the US, are not parties of the agreement, and that the relationship with the WTO agreements is very complex and presently uncertain (Badr Zerhdoud)