Democratising biotechnology?: Deliberation, participation and social regulation in a neo-liberal world

There is now significant policy and academic interest in the governance of science and technology for sustainable development. In recent years this has come to include a growing emphasis on issues of public understanding of science and innovative processes of deliberative and inclusive policy-making around controversial technologies such as nuclear power and agricultural biotechnology. Concern with such issues coincides with rising levels of interest in deliberative democracy and its relationship to the structures and processes of global governance. This article connects these two areas through a critical examination of ‘global’ deliberations about agricultural biotechnology and its risks and benefits. It draws on an extensive survey concerned with the diverse ways in which a range of governments are interpreting and implementing their commitments under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety regarding public participation and consultation in order to assess the potential to create forms of deliberation through these means. The article explores both the limitations of public deliberation within global governance institutions as well as of projects whose aim is to impose participation from above through international law by advocating model approaches and policy ‘tool kits’ that are insensitive to vast differences between countries in terms of capacity, resources and political culture

The political economy of global environmental governance

This article develops a political economy account of global environmental governance to improve upon our understanding of the contemporary conduct of environmental politics and to clarify thinking about the potential for, and barriers to, effective environmental reform. By elaborating the key contours of a political economy account on the one hand and opening up to critical enquiry prevailing understandings of what is meant by ‘global’ ‘environmental’ and ‘governance’ on the other, such an approach is able to enhance our understanding of the practice of environmental governance by emphasising historical, material and political elements of its (re) constitution and evolution

Civil society in trade policy-making in Latin America: the case of the environmental movement

In recent years, and particularly perhaps since the ‘battle of Seattle’ in 1999, the issue of civil society participation in trade policy has attracted increasing policy and academic attention. Much of this attention has been drawn to the question of institutional access and channels of participation and representation within the WTO. The challenge is one that has faced other global institutions such as the World Bank and IMF for a number of years (O’Brien et al 2000). Improving the transparency of and access to decision-making in the context of up-scaling civil society participation is not exclusively a global challenge, however. There has been a great deal of activity at the regional level around trade negotiations and increasingly in Latin America with the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) following in the wake of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur). Few institutional reforms have been brought about without significant pressure from civil society, however. Some challenges are common to all movements attempting to participate and make their voice heard in the sensitive and traditionally closed arena of trade negotiations. But others are unique, and reflect distinct regional political histories, previous experiences of mobilisation and prevailing social and material realities. Given this, it becomes important to understand what can be learned from the experience of a globally significant region like Latin America about the possibilities and limitations of civil society participation in trade policy. By comparing the documented experiences of NAFTA with analysis of Mercosur and the evolving FTAA negotiations, in terms of the participation of the environmental movements, important insights may be gained about: who is participating in trade policy, how and with what effect and, equally importantly, who is not participating and what are the implications of this? The analysis will therefore attempt to identify key factors which shape these dynamics. These include; * key strategic issues within the movements and among groups themselves (diversity of strategies, politics of coalition-building, patterns of influence and engagement/non-engagement) * the organisation of institutional access (rights, representation, process, decision-making) * key economic and political regional dynamics which affect each of the above (differences between and within individual countries regarding key issues and attitudes towards participation) By comparing across different sets of trade negotiations and institutional arrangements it will be possible to identify what the key drivers and shapers of change appear to be. In other words, the extent to which these appear to derive from the nature of the institution or process itself, the strategies of the movement engaging with it, or more likely still, some combination of both these elements. The challenge is to account for diverse forms of engagement and non-engagement and, more importantly, to derive lessons from them about the possibility of constructing more effective, sustainable and transparent mechanisms of participation and representation in trade policy based on experiences to date in Latin America

The Kyoto Protocol and Beyond: The World After 2012

human development, climate change

The global political ecology of the Clean Development Mechanism

This article explores the ways in which the "global" governance of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) intersects with the "local" politics of resource regimes that are enrolled in carbon markets through the production and trade in Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs). It shows how political structures and decision-making procedures set up at the international level to govern the acquisition of CERs through the Kyoto Protocol's CDM interact with and transform national and local level political ecologies in host countries where very different governance structures, political networks, and state-market relations operate. It draws on literature within political ecology and field work in Argentina and Honduras to illustrate and understand the politics of translation that occur when the social and environmental consequences of decisions made within global governance mechanisms, such as the CDM, are followed through to particular sites in the global political economy. It also shows how the outcomes in those sites in turn influence the global politics of the CDM

Trasformismo or Transformation? The global political economy of energy transitions

What does IPE have to contribute to pressing policy and academic debates about the urgently required transition to a low carbon global economy? Despite the obviously global, political and economic dimensions of such a transition – often likened to the ‘great transformation’ or the Industrial Revolution in its magnitude – insights from IPE have yet to be brought to bear on the question of what form such a transition might take: the relations of power which will frustrate or enable it; the historical precedents for previous transformations in dominant structures of production, finance and technology in the global economy; and the potentially central role of the state and institutions of global governance. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of transitions grounded in different strands of literature from neo-Gramscian and historical materialist IPE and political economy more broadly. It focusses, in turn, on the role of the state in transitions; the ways in which the globalisation of the global economy structures the possibility and likely form of transitions; and the role of global governance institutions in key energy and economic domains. For scholars of IPE, it demonstrates the centrality of energy in linking power, production and world order and highlights the need to further engage with questions of transformation in energy systems that are central to the organisation of the global political economy. This throws up questions around production, finance, technology, governance and justice which IPE scholars should be well placed to speak to, while requiring that energy takes up its rightful place as a lens for understanding and revising orthodox comprehensions of political, economic and social processes

Domesticating global policy on GMOs : comparing India and China

This paper compares the way in which two leading developing countries in the global debate on biotechnology have sought to translate policy commitments contained in international agreements on trade and biosafety into workable national policy. It is a complex story of selective interpretation, conflict over priorities and politicking at the highest levels of government. It connects the micro-politics of inter-bureaucratic turf-wars with the diplomacy of inter-state negotiations and coalition-building. At the same time, the role of business and civil society actors, media and scientific communities, will also be shown to be key. It is argued that global commitments take on a fundamentally different shape once they have been refracted through domestic political processes. The analysis shows that competing policy networks that cut across the state and form part of global alliances seek to interpret international legal obligations in ways which help to consolidate their position within the bureaucracy. Working with allies in industry or among civil society groups, different government departments seek to domesticate loosely worded and often ambiguous obligations contained in trade and environmental agreements, such as the Cartagena Protocol, in ways which advance their political goals. This political manoeuvring takes on global dimensions when alliances are formed with international scientific, industry or activist communities to bolster positions adopted domestically. Likewise, domestic politics get played out in global fora as these agreements are being negotiated, where countries such as India and China have to adapt negotiating positions to a shifting sense of how the national interest is best served and navigating a course which is likely to be acceptable to key domestic constituencies when the agreement comes to be implemented. Each country also has a sufficiently clearly defined interest in biotechnology that international processes are regarded as an opportunity to “internationalise” domestic policy preferences and secure scope for discretion in national policy-making

Biotech firms, biotech politics : negotiating GMOs in India

This paper seeks to identify and explain the ways in which different firms affected by and involved in the debate about the role of biotechnology in Indian agriculture have sought to advance their interests. It is argued that the public positions of larger biotech and agro-chemical companies, seed enterprises and newer start-up firms and the associations they belong to relate to differences in their underlying corporate strategies. The extent to which these firms are involved in primary research, export their products or require protection for their products helps to determine their political affiliations to the leading industry bodies that are active on biotechnology issues. In turn, each of these associations has been shown to have distinct patterns of interaction with particular government agencies involved in the regulation of biotechnology products, as well as differing degrees of contact with global industry coalitions. Alongside this, individual firms, especially larger companies such as Monsanto, have adopted their own unique and changing approach to policy engagement. Assessing in precise terms the degree of influence that these industry actors have had upon the course of biotechnology policy in India is almost impossible. Nevertheless, it is clear that through a combination of material influence, in most cases high levels of institutional access, and in a context in which claims about the benefits of biotechnology are echoed and repeated in influential media, firms have played an important role in the evolving regulatory regime. Currently the policy agenda in Delhi appears to be far more influenced by a fairly close-knit policy network of biotech entrepreneurs from larger multinationals and successful start-up firms with good national and global connections. Whose influence runs furthest will ultimately rest on government perceptions regarding the role of biotechnology in India’s development trajectory, decisions about which forms of biotechnology development are considered to be most consistent with the national interest, and choices about the appropriate role in this development of foreign investors as opposed to domestic enterprises. Given the enormity and economic and global significance of these choices, we can expect to see continued intense engagement with the policy-process by all actors with a stake in the issue