www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

Wars have been fought over politics, economics, territory, ethnic origin,
race, religion and national pride. We may soon have to add a new reason:
water, which is in increasingly short supply -- and increasingly sought
after, September 2006 by Henry I. Miller.

More than a third of the world's population lives in regions where water
is scarce, and unless we take radical action, in 50 years half will be
living with shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines and
groundwater. This could lead to violent confrontations over sources of
water, according to a study published last month that was sponsored by
several international groups, including two United Nations organizations.

Waste and inadequate management are the main culprits behind growing water
shortages, particularly in poverty-ridden regions. The study proposes ways
to reduce by half the amount of water that will be needed to grow food in
rain-fed and irrigated areas for an additional 2 billion to 3 billion
people.

But the proposals amount to no more than vague, sweeping, pie-in-the-sky
remedies typical of U.N. agencies -- "reform the state to improve the
governance of water," and "deal with tradeoffs and difficult choices," for
example. Certainly they provide no roadmap for how to get from here to
there. And, not surprisingly, the report ignores the fact that U.N. agencies
themselves have made workable solutions more elusive.

Conspicuously absent from the analysis is any mention of the need for new,
gene-spliced crop varieties, which are thought by agricultural scientists to
be critical to meeting water shortages. Irrigation for agriculture accounts
for roughly 70 percent of the world's fresh water consumption -- even more
in areas of intensive farming and arid or semi-arid conditions -- so the
introduction of plants that grow with less water would allow much of that
essential resource to be freed up for other uses.

Especially during drought conditions -- which currently plague much of
Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and the United States -- even a small
percentage reduction in the use of water for irrigation could result in huge
benefits, both economic and humanitarian. However, during the past decade,
various U.N. agencies, including the two that sponsored the current report
on water usage -- the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Convention
on Biological Diversity -- have created major regulatory obstacles to the
use of gene splicing, sometimes called genetic modification.

Gene splicing offers plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants do
spectacular new things. In the United States and at least 17 other
countries, farmers are using gene-spliced crop varieties to produce higher
yields, with lower inputs and reduced impact on the environment.

Plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water utilization that
can be transferred into important crop plants. These new varieties are able
to grow with smaller amounts or lower quality water, such as water that has
been recycled or that contains large amounts of natural mineral salts. Where
water is unavailable for irrigation, the development of crop varieties able
to grow under conditions of low moisture or temporary drought could boost
yields and lengthen the time that farmland is productive.

Aside from new varieties that have lower water requirements, pest- and
disease-resistant gene-spliced crop varieties also make water use more
efficient indirectly. Because much of the loss to insects and diseases
occurs after the plants are grown -- that is, after most of the water
required to grow a crop has already been applied -- the use of gene-spliced
varieties that experience lower post-harvest losses in yield means that the
farming (and irrigation) of fewer plants can produce the same total amount
of food. We get more crop for the drop.

But research is being hampered by resistance from activists and discouraged
by governmental over-regulation -- including by the U.N. agency that sets
international food standards, and by onerous, unscientific regulation of
field trials under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In addition, a technical working group of the U.N. Environment Program is
considering whether to recommend a moratorium on all field testing and
commercialization of gene-spliced trees. That would be a devastating blow to
efforts to preserve biodiversity and to prevent deforestation worldwide.

The United Nation's periodic warnings of dire, impending shortages of water
belie its actions, which not only are harmful to health and exacerbate water
shortages, but also make a mockery of the organization's overblown
Millennium Development Goals. The most ambitious objective, "to eradicate
extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015, certainly cannot be accomplished
without innovative technology -- which, in turn, cannot be developed in the
face of bans and excessive regulatory barriers.

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization calls on one hand for greater
allocation of resources to agriculture, and then makes those resources
drastically less cost-effective by gratuitous, unscientific over-regulation
of the new biotechnology.

The secretary-general of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization
announces that "integrated water-resources management is the key to
achieving the Millennium Development Goals of securing access to safe water,
sanitation and environmental protection," while a veritable alphabet soup of
other U.N. agencies are making virtually impossible the development of
gene-spliced plants that can grow with low-quality water or under drought
conditions.

The regulation of gene-splicing (among other critical technologies and
products) is a growth industry at the United Nations, one that regularly
defies scientific consensus and common sense. The result is vastly inflated
research and development costs, less innovation and diminished exploitation
of superior techniques and products -- especially in poorer countries, which
need them desperately, as the most recent U.N. report makes clear.

Journalist Claudia Rosett has questioned "whether in this age of fascist
movements, terror tactics and weapons of mass murder, we can afford the
indulgence of coddling as our leading global institution this sorry excuse
for what was meant to be an honest forum for free and peace-loving nations."
We cannot.

[www.sfgate.com]

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