Resumen de The Lilliput Strategy in the Struggle for an International Biosafety Protocol
There is an Ethiopian saying, "When spiders get together, they can tie down a lion." I believe this is an apt metaphor for a process of global networking and strategic coordinated activity that Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello in Global Village or Global Pillage have called the "Lilliput strategy." The struggle for an international biosafety protocol is one very significant example. It has involved a complex process of risk communication in a wide spectrum of forums via a diverse set of networks to tie down a powerful global biotech industry alliance and their government sponsors. The Ethiopian metaphor is particularly relevant because Third World delegates and civil society organizations have played the leading role with the head of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Authority as their chief spokesperson. The perceived threat to Third world biodiversity, food security, and livelihoods posed by introduction of genetically engineered seeds, crops, processed foods, animal feed, and pharmaceuticals has been central to the struggle for the biosafety protocol. The article analyzes risk communication practices and networking of civil society organizations in both Third world and industrialized countries. It examines the roles played by molecular biologists and other scientists working with activists to explain genetic engineering and its inherent risks as well as their collaboration to utilize rDNA research tools to investigate the hazards to the environment and to human health. The paper will examine links between the watershed "battle in Seattle" over the WTO's undermining of national environmental protection and the struggle in Montreal to forge an international biosafety protocol regulating trade in genetically modified products. The conclusion will examine the dangers of a consumer rights movement for freedom of choice supplanting a more fundamental citizen rights movement for freedom from corporate imposition of inherently dangerous technologies.
