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Debates on Genetically Modified Crops in the Context of Sustainable Development

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Abstract

The paper discusses conflicts in perceptions of GM crops illustrating the complexities of GM debates and applications of the concept of sustainable development. The concept consists of three discourses that both opponents and supporters of GM crops refer to in their analyses: environmentalism, social and economic development and the two sub-issues of sustainable development—biodiversity loss and food security. This creates a unique situation when both proponents and opponents of GM food use the same framework of sustainable development to support their arguments and do not reach a common ground. This will be illustrated by a review of the arguments brought by these two groups.

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Notes

  1. The debate about GM crops also touches upon numerous aspects such as religious and cultural but the majority of the arguments in the debate accord well with the clear analytical structure of the traditional three dimensional understanding of sustainability, as described in the Brundtl and report.

  2. This bias has affected the whole discipline. Eugenics, except for the Nazi interpretation, has aimed at humanitarian causes such as reducing child mortality and improving the quality of human life, but since the Second World War associating with this branch of social philosophy has involved political risks (Bashford 2015).

  3. Losey et al. 1999, argued that Bt corn plants might cause higher mortality rates among larvae of the monarch butterfly. Other scientific research, however, has disproved the previous results and come to conclusion that 'the impact of Bt corn pollen from current commercial hybrid corn on the monarch butterfly population is negligible' (Sears et al. 2001).

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    Ksenia Gerasimova

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Gerasimova, K. Debates on Genetically Modified Crops in the Context of Sustainable Development. Sci Eng Ethics 22, 525–547 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9656-y

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