The Guardian 23 July, 2008
Culture and Life
by The ETC Group
Patenting the "Climate Genes"
and capturing the Climate Agenda
The world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are stockpiling hundreds of monopoly patents on genes in plants that the companies will market as crops genetically engineered to withstand environmental stresses such as drought, heat, cold, floods, saline soils, and more.
BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called "climate ready" genes at patent offices around the world.
In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviours.
The focus on so-called climate-ready genes is a golden opportunity to push genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change. But patented techno-fix seeds will not provide the adaptation strategies that small farmers need to cope with climate change.
These proprietary technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research, and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds.
The Gene Giants are staking sweeping patent claims on genes related to environmental stresses — not just those in a single engineered plant species — but also to a substantially similar genetic sequence in virtually all engineered food crops. Beyond the US and Europe, patent offices in major food producing countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico and South Africa are also swamped with patent filings.
Monsanto (the world’s largest seed company) and BASF (the world’s largest chemical firm) have forged a colossal US$1.5 billion partnership to engineer stress tolerance in plants. Together, the two companies account for 27 of the 55 patent families (49%) of those identified by ETC Group*.
Farming communities in the global South — those who have contributed least to global greenhouse emissions — are among the most threatened by climate chaos created by the world’s richest countries.
The South is already being trampled by the North’s super-size carbon footprint. Will farming communities now be stampeded by climate change profiteering? The patent grab on so-called climate-ready traits is sucking up money and resources that could be spent on affordable, farmer-based strategies for climate change survival and adaptation.
After decades of seed industry mergers and acquisitions, accompanied by a steady decline in public sector plant breeding, the top 10 seed companies control 57 percent of the global seed market.
As climate crisis deepens, there is a danger that governments will require farmers to adopt prescribed biotech traits that are deemed essential adaptation measures. Will governments be pressured to give biotech companies carte blanche to use genetic engineering — and sidestep biosafety rules — as the last resort for tackling extreme climate?
Governments and the UN bodies must suspend the granting of all patents on climate change-related genes and traits. There must be a full investigation, including the social and environmental impacts of these new, un-tested varieties. Given the global state of emergency, ETC Group urges inter-governmental bodies to identify and eliminate policies such as restrictive seed laws, intellectual property regimes, contracts and trade agreements that are barriers to farmer plant breeding, seed-saving and exchange.
Restrictions on access to germ plasm are the last thing that farmers need in their struggle to adapt to rapidly changing climatic conditions. Farmer-led strategies for climate change survival and adaptation must be recognized, strengthened and protected.
*The ETC Group — the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and?Concentration — is dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. To this end, the ETC Group supports socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalised and it addresses international governance issues and corporate power. ETC Group’s strength is in the research and analysis of technological information (particularly but not exclusively plant genetic resources, biotechnologies, and [in general] biological diversity), and in the development of strategic options related to the socio-economic ramifications of new technologies.