Julius Mugwagwa

1
Collaboration in biosafety why should African
countries worry about those that are
technologically weak?

• Julius Mugwagwa
• The Open University
• DSA Conference, 2-4 Sept 2009

2
Structure of presentation

• Sub-Saharan Africa, food security challenge and
  the role of technologies
• Need for, and emergence of cross-national
  regulatory systems for biotech theory and
  practice
• Divergent contextual realities
• Overcoming the contentions multilayered
  convergence
• Conclusions

3
Preamble unequal footprints

• Instead of thinking about policy as a routine
  engagement between certain public officials and a
  settled retinue of established interests, we are
  now forced to consider how a single system is
  constructed from semi-independent institutions
  and actors linked by resource agreements, joint
  agreements, joint projects and cross-border
  engagements it is really composed of pads of
  unequal size, each contributing to a
  characteristic policy footprint (Considine,
  2005127).

4
Sub-Saharan Africa

• Appreciable progress has been realised in many
  areas literacy, health, governance, environment
  management, industrial manufacturing capacity etc
• But weighing these through the barometer of the
  MDGs reveals a lot of work still to be done,
  especially following reversal of some gains by
  the economic crisis (UN MDGs report, 2009)
• Also, through the eyes of the ordinary person,
  change has only resulted in more of the same

5
Food insecurity a fluid challenge

• One of the current and persistent challenges for
  the African continent
• Causes are seen to be as much environmental/ecolog
  ical as they are political, economic,
  technological and social
• Responses to this have continually caused
  anticipation and anxiety alike both spiralling
  to/from arenas as diverse as those known to be
  fuelling the problem

6
Southern Africas shrinking food basket

• For 12 geographically contiguous countries and 3
  island states of the SADC region, the 2002/03
  food emergency was a familiar script
• Only one additional actor suspected GM maize in
  the food-aid
• Tensions created, regulatory uncertainty exposed
• Sparked a series of reactions at various levels

7
Cross-national biotech governance

• One issue that emerged strongly from the 2002/03
  food crisis was the need for regional
  harmonisation of biosafety regulations
• Even before, the regional policy platforms were
  awash with calls for cooperation, coordination,
  integration, coherence, regional frameworks,
  removal of cross-national barriers among other
  aspirations
• Many players have sought to champion this
  emergence of a regional framework including
  SADC, NEPAD, African Union, some civil society
  organisations, academics and even the private
  sector
• A number of reasons were advanced as to why
  harmonisation would be desirable e.g.,
  reducing regulatory costs, building economies of
  scale, the imperative of shared histories and
  borders, among others
• All this in the backdrop of different levels of
  use and capacities for biotech development and
  governance

8
Overview biotech crop planting and biosafety
systems

• Biotech commercial
• South Africa -corn, cotton, soybeans
• Burkina Faso Bt-cotton
• Biotech on trial
• Zimbabwe cotton, corn
• Kenya - cotton
• Egypt cotton corn

Egypt
Burkina Faso
Kenya
Malawi

• Lack of biosafety regulations viewed as the
  biggest limitation to biotech growth
• Obtaining accurate information on status is a
  challenge

None Trials Commercial Laws, no trials
South Africa
9
The study

• Seeking to understand whether and how the
  cross-national governance agenda was/not emerging
• A two-level case study of the SADC region and
  three supranational organisations (representing
  some of the key actors behind this agenda)
• A multi-method approach was used in data
  gathering ... including document reviews,
  interviews and participant observation

10
Theoretical perspectives and data analysis

• Study employed a three-factor conceptual
  framework/model advanced by Busch and Jorgens
  (2005)
• Framework recognises policy convergence as
  resulting from cooperative harmonisation
  (supranational law and obligation), coercive
  imposition or diffusion of practices
• The study was informed by multiple theoretical
  perspectives, including governance, general
  systems theory, innovation systems, networks,
  sociology of expectations

11
Some early illusions (with hindsight!!)

• Positive about being able to find out whether, to
  what extent and how the SNOs were influencing
  cross-national policy convergence
• Region well-defined, simple, invariant,
  unproblematic, indivisible
• Sustained and accepted harmonisation agenda
• Unchartered and apolitical terrain
• Policy on sheet of blank paper
• Clear and uncontested boundaries
• This was the rhetoric in the formal space and in
  documents

12
Some inconvenient realities unfolding ...

• 14 then 15 countries, 6 other regional economic
  communities, 3 major international languages,
  different socio-economic and political challenges
  and opportunities
• Different levels of utilisation of the technology
  regulations
• No room for novices proven habits and customs
  at play
• New policies in margins of previously-negotiated
  commitments
• Different sectoral boundaries and policy fields

13
Realities turning to fears and skepticisms

• Fluctuating identities and strengths of
  motivating factors
• State roll-back ---gt regulatory free-market
• Fallacy of composition countries are in reality
  competing, nothing possible for all
• Prisoners dilemma and information asymmetries
• Clashes of interests at various levels, including
  threats to relationships
• Limited control over processes and outcomes
• Fatigue from talking biosafety lone rangers
  and without the technology
• Familiar story told removed from our context
• Chicken and egg quandary between technology and
  policy
• Race to the bottom or to efficiency?
• The intensities of these realities differed
  among countries, raising the stakes for the
  regional agenda

14
Its the grass which suffers ...

• Inescapable that the battle is about creating the
  right environment for regulating the technology
  (risk regulation deriving benefits)
• Strong feeling that countries have no choice but
  to have the technology either way
• Quote Its the technology dictating the terms
  here. We are told we need it to be able to
  ensure the safety of what we eat, and in order
  to remain viable. The voices for alternatives
  seem to be crowded out. Its all about this new
  technology, really (emphasis added) (MM,
  regional biosafety organisation, May, 2007)
• One pro-biotech activist The problem is that
  this regulation agenda has been hijacked by
  non-scientists, and therefore you cannot expect
  it to proceed smoothly (July 2007)
• Determinism? Inevitability? Techno-utopianism?
• And what does this do to the reality of food
  insecurity, geographical contiguity,
  border-spanning cultures, weak technical and
  policy capacities?

15
Lose-lose situation?

• A further reality is, the differences among the
  countries are the imperatives for developing a
  transnational governance system from the
  rationalist perspective problems creating
  incentives for their solution (Haas, 2004)
• How inevitable is a regional framework in this
  context? At what levels?
• Or are the countries attempting to heroic feat of
  making omelette without breaking their eggs?

16
Multilayered convergence proposed

• A harmonised cross-national biosafety framework
  for the SADC, where all countries face the same
  obligations, would be difficult and could spawn
  divisive tensions.
• A multi-layered harmonisation or 'convergence'
  framework being proposed
• The layers could group countries by their
  development and use of biotechnologies could be
  time-bound, or issue bound.
• This would not be unproblematic because of some
  unpredictable realities within the context, hence
  there may be need to combine layers
• See role for SNOs in promoting cross-boundary
  learning

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