Risk-appropriate regulations for gene-editing technologies

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the scope for the newly emerging technologies, based on gene editing (GE) contributing to addressing the global challenges that we face. These challenges relate to food security, climate change and biodiversity depletion. In particular, it examines the science and evidence behind the most appropriate forms of agricultural production to meet these challenges, the targets set in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed to at the end of 2022 and the possible role of GE technologies in contributing to meeting these targets. It then examines the most risk-appropriate regulatory environment required to best facilitate the adoption of GE technology, drawing on the experiences of the impact of regulatory systems for other innovations used in agricultural and food production systems such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

KEYWORDS:

• Gene editing
• Regulation
• GMOs
• Global Biodiversity Framework
• risk appropriate
• evidence based
• Sustainable Development Goals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^a The full document is available at: https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/cop-15/cop-15-dec-04-en.pdf.

^b. Digital agriculture refers to the use of digital technology to accelerate and scale up the use of new or improved production techniques after storing, analyzing and sharing data. Precision farming refers to the use of satellite positioning data and remote sensing to optimize farm management decision taking and the use of inputs.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.