Genetically engineering wild species — IUCN at crossroads

Mar­seille, France, 6 Sep­tem­ber 2021 - Thou­sands of sci­en­tists, con­ser­va­tion­ists, and civ­il soci­ety mem­bers are gath­ered at the World Con­ser­va­tion Union (IUCN) Gen­er­al Assem­bly this week to nego­ti­ate on the most con­tro­ver­sial envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion gov­er­nance poli­cies in its 70 year his­to­ry. Among the most con­tentious debates is about new and emerg­ing genet­ic engi­neer­ing and the risks this entails to con­ser­va­tion of nature.

Ali Tap­so­ba, Direc­tor of Terre a Vie, a con­ser­va­tion group in Burk­i­na Faso:

The IUCN must not let syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy dev­as­tate Africa’s ecol­o­gy, as the export of GMOs
to Africa has done in many coun­tries, includ­ing my own, Burk­i­na Faso, in the past. I urge all
mem­bers of IUCN to help ensure that nature con­ser­va­tion is not put in dan­ger by the
pre­ma­ture accep­tance of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy.

The draft res­o­lu­tion pro­pos­es guide­lines on how to reg­u­late syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and on estab­lish­ing a posi­tion on the use of genet­ic engi­neer­ing for con­ser­va­tion pur­pos­es. This IUCN World Con­gress is meet­ing in advance of the upcom­ing UN Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty (CBD) COP in May 2022, which leads the world’s debate about new genet­ic engi­neer­ing meth­ods such as gene dri­ves, risks assess­ments and inter­na­tion­al gov­er­nance.

Dr. Ricar­da Stein­brech­er, sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor for IUCN mem­ber ProNatu­ra:

There are obvi­ous eco­log­i­cal risks and con­cerns regard­ing genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of wild
species. IUCN should not be endors­ing the use of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy in nature con­ser­va­tion, ahead of under­stand­ing its irre­versible eco­log­i­cal impacts, eth­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic con­se­quences. The IUCN must make sure that the pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple is inter­pret­ed in the way it was intend­ed, to pre­vent harm from risky tech­nolo­gies.

Dana Perls, IUCN mem­ber Friends of the Earth Switzer­land:

At this moment of bio­di­ver­si­ty col­lapse and cli­mate chaos, we need sus­tain­able and safe
con­ser­va­tion mea­sures, not gene dri­ves. IUCN should sup­port an imme­di­ate glob­al mora­to­ri­um on the envi­ron­men­tal release of gene dri­ve organ­isms.

IUCN del­e­gates will vote on the con­test­ed res­o­lu­tion on syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy at the end of the week. Crit­ics denounce the vote as incom­plete and inequitable, giv­en the trav­el and finan­cial chal­lenges which pre­vent­ed key mem­bers from the glob­al south to attend.

Back­ground:

Res­o­lu­tion 075 aims to define IUCN prin­ci­ples on syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion, and will serve as the basis for the devel­op­ment of an IUCN posi­tion on the issue.

In 2019, IUCN mem­bers and non-IUCN civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions open­ly crit­i­cised the IUCN’s attempt to sup­port syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and gene dri­ves as tools for con­ser­va­tion, and the lack of sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing about the risks and con­cerns asso­ci­at­ed with the tech­nolo­gies. The 2016 IUCN res­o­lu­tion was amend­ed and in 2019 man­dat­ed that an IUCN appoint­ed task force write the IUCN report “Genet­ic Fron­tiers for Con­ser­va­tion”.

What is syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy?

The term syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy refers to the appli­ca­tion of biotech­nolo­gies that attempt to engi­neer, redesign, re-edit or syn­the­size bio­log­i­cal sys­tems. There is no clear dis­tinc­tion between genet­ic engi­neer­ing meth­ods used in past decades, and new­er syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy approach­es, includ­ing so-called ‘genome edit­ing’. Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy can be applied to cells, organ­isms or even whole pop­u­la­tions. It is main­ly being devel­oped for three types of set­tings 1) ‘con­tained use’ set­tings, 2) open agri­cul­tur­al set­tings and 3) late­ly also in non-domes­ti­cat­ed, wild pop­u­la­tions.

What are Gene Dri­ves?

Gene dri­ves (genet­ic forc­ing tech­nol­o­gy) are one extreme form of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy. They are designed to genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer, replace or even erad­i­cate a wild pop­u­la­tion or entire species of ani­mals or plants. A gene dri­ve over­rides the rules of inher­i­tance and quick­ly increas­es the pres­ence of spe­cif­ic genes or traits in a wild pop­u­la­tion over just a few gen­er­a­tions. Traits select­ed by humans – such as delib­er­ate infer­til­i­ty or the selec­tion to only pro­duce a sin­gle sex — as well as the genet­ic engi­neer­ing mech­a­nism itself will be passed on to the off­spring at an artif­i­cal­ly high rate.

Gene Dri­ve devel­op­ers pro­pose to use this genet­ic forc­ing tech­nol­o­gy to con­trol, sup­press or erad­i­cate wild species that are con­sid­ered to be agri­cul­tur­al pests, have become inva­sive species or car­ry infec­tious dis­eases.