Coexistence, Genetically Modified Biotechnologies and Biosafety: Implications for Developing Countries

Several countries have implemented policies and regulatory frameworks to comply with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and to ad-dress consumer and producer concerns over genetically modified (GM) biotechnologies.1 Biosafety regulatory frameworks include laws and regulations to assess, manage, and commu-nicate the biosafety profiles of GM technolo-gies. Other countries have initiated discussions of production systems that could allow their producers to capture potential benefits derived from adopting GM biotechnologies. One such production system is Coexistence. Coexistence has been suggested for implementation in the European Union (EU) as a production sys-tem that allows the simultaneous cultivation of GM, organic, and conventional agriculture. As the EU is a major destination market for agri-cultural products from developing countries, the expectation exists that the issue of coexis-tence may be included in the policy discussions of developing countries. This article describes critical policy issues that economic models and analysis will likely need to address to assess the potential of co-existence systems in developing countries. As such, this article will be used to inform ongoing biotechnology and biosafety policy discussions in Africa and Asia. To accomplish this objec-tive we have purposely selected in this article a Jose ́ Falck Zepeda is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He is also a researcher of the Program for Biosafety Systems, a project implementing capacity building and strengthening activities in Africa and Southeast Asia. This article was made possible through the support provided for the activities of the Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS) by the