Chapter 3 - Safeguarding agricultural biodiversity: the role of precautionary principle and Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

Abstract

This chapter explores issues surrounding the implementation of the precautionary principle particularly in the context of agricultural biodiversity conservation and global environmental protection. Precautionary principles provide a moral and legal justification for acting on weakly understood causes of potential catastrophic or irreversible environmental damages and potentially costly policy interventions. The chapter traces the evolution of the precautionary principle in environmental jurisprudence within the meta-theoretical framework of sustainable development and the debates surrounding its application in relation to the commercialization, the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, and their transboundary movement specifically in the area of agriculture. It further analyzes the provisions of Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention of Biological Diversity on the trade of living genetically modified organisms, which reaffirms the precautionary approach for ensuring that development, handling, transport, use, transfer, and release of living modified organisms are undertaken in a manner that prevents or reduces the risks to biological diversity or human health. The discussion also includes the implications of the Protocol for developing nations.