COP16 – Ensuring precaution, equity and balance

In the past two COPs, Par­ties have com­mit­ted to pur­su­ing a care­ful gov­er­nance for Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy: estab­lish­ing a ‘broad and reg­u­lar’ process for the hori­zon scan­ning, assess­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of new devel­op­ments in Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy sup­port­ed by a Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Ad Hoc Tech­ni­cal Expert Group. This care­ful­ly designed process is crit­i­cal to iden­ti­fy­ing key pri­or­i­ty top­ics for the CBD to address on a pre­cau­tion­ary basis.

At COP16, Par­ties should reaf­firm this process and agree on the next steps in the CBD’s
Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy pro­gram. We are ask­ing Par­ties to:

1 — Ensure Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Knowl­edge in Assess­ment and Mon­i­tor­ing Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy. The mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary nature of the mAHTEG should be affirmed, extend­ing its man­date and autho­riz­ing it to ana­lyze these devel­op­ments to guide care­ful, informed and thought­ful pol­i­cy deci­sions.

2 — Exer­cise pre­cau­tion: Hori­zon scan­ning, assess­ment and mon­i­tor­ing. The cur­rent­ly brack­et­ed annexed text directs the mAHETG to under­take a deep­er assess­ment of three pri­or­i­ty top­ics: Inte­gra­tion with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, self-spread­ing vac­cines and gene dri­ves.

3 — Ensure any pro­posed “Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy Action Plan”is aligned with exist­ing deci­sions to sup­port pre­cau­tion, reg­u­la­tion, hori­zon scan­ning, assess­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy. This “Action Plan” is cur­rent­ly biased towards indus­tri­al and tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment of the field of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy.

4 — Ensure the pro­posed risk assess­ment guid­ance mate­ri­als on engi­neered gene dri­ves under­go an inde­pen­dent review. There should also be guid­ance on ‘LM fish and oth­er poten­tial LM aquat­ic organ­isms’ and con­sid­er­a­tion of fur­ther guid­ance for LM self-lim­it­ing insect sys­tems.

Read our full brief­ing here