Synthetic biology = Genetic engineering of wild species

Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy is not mere­ly a tool for con­ser­va­tion but rep­re­sents a par­a­digm shift that demands care­ful, thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion before appli­ca­tion.

Con­ser­va­tion and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, though both ground­ed in bio­log­i­cal sci­ence, are fun­da­men­tal­ly diver­gent. Con­ser­va­tion­ists focus on under­stand­ing the com­plex inter­ac­tions between nature and human activ­i­ty, empha­sis­ing ecosys­tem pro­tec­tion. In con­trast, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy is reduc­tion­ist, often lack­ing insight into ecosys­tem dynam­ics, and seeks to engi­neer or cre­ate new life forms.

While con­ser­va­tion works to main­tain or restore ecosys­tems, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy fre­quent­ly intro­duces changes that con­ser­va­tion­ists strive to mit­i­gate. As such, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy is not mere­ly a tool for con­ser­va­tion but rep­re­sents a par­a­digm shift that demands care­ful, thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion before appli­ca­tion.

Dri­ven by mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gists and often fund­ed by indus­tri­al or mil­i­tary inter­ests, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tends to focus on tech­no­log­i­cal fix­es rather than address­ing the root caus­es of bio­di­ver­si­ty loss. Its goals may con­flict with the long-term preser­va­tion of bio­di­ver­si­ty, neces­si­tat­ing a crit­i­cal reassess­ment of its role in con­ser­va­tion efforts.

Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy in the con­text of nature con­ser­va­tion is about genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing wild species. As this is a pro­found par­a­digm shift for nature con­ser­va­tion there is a need for an inclu­sive debate with­in the IUCN

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