The head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation warned last week that critically low food supplies and high demand portend a crisis. With world food prices up 57% during the past year, "the reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf. He predicted that "people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react" by demanding food and even rioting. Almost simultaneously, the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) reported that wheat prices have risen by 130% since March 2007 while soy prices have jumped 87%.

The UN's calling attention to these dire developments is reminiscent of the arsonist who likes to watch the fire engines arrive. UN policies and programmes have played an active role in causing these disruptions by preventing the use of new, improved, high-yielding crop varieties that could help to supply more food, especially in poorer countries.

During the past two decades, various UN agencies and instruments, including the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), have created imposing regulatory obstacles to innovations in plant breeding that could have increased yields while reducing inputs.

Genetic modification offers plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants do spectacular new things. In two dozen countries, farmers are using genetically modified crop varieties to produce higher yields, with less use of chemical pesticides and reduced impact on the environment. Moreover, plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water utilisation 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 both boost yields and lengthen the time that farmland is productive.

Aside from new varieties that have lower water requirements, pest- and disease-resistant crop varieties also make water use more efficient indirectly. Because much of the loss to insects and diseases occurs after the plants are fully grown - that is, after most of the water required to grow a crop has already been applied - the use of genetically modified 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 FAO agency that sets international food standards, and by onerous, unscientific regulation of field trials under the UN's Cartagena Protocol (which was created under the auspices of the CBD). In addition, a technical working group of the UN Environment Programme is currently considering whether to recommend a moratorium on all field testing and commercialisation of genetically modified trees. That would be a devastating blow to efforts to preserve biodiversity worldwide, prevent deforestation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN's unscientific and discriminatory approach to genetically modified plants and microorganisms violates one of the fundamental precepts of regulation: that the degree of scrutiny should be commensurate with risk, a principle known as "proportionality".

The regulation of important technologies - of which genetic modification is only one - is a growth industry at the UN. Like much else that transpires at UN agencies, it regularly defies scientific consensus and common sense. The result is vastly inflated research and development costs, less R&D and innovation, and diminished exploitation of superior techniques and products.

Why, one might well ask, is there such condescension and relentless incompetence at so many agencies within the sprawling organisation? Why do we empower and lavish resources on regulator-wannabes who don't know designer genes from designer jeans?

First, the UN is essentially a monopoly. Inefficiency and incompetence are not punished by "consumers" of their products or services spurning the UN and patronising a competitor. On the contrary, it is not uncommon in these kinds of bureaucracies for failure to be rewarded with additional resources. In other words, it's not working so let's make it bigger.

Second, we need to recall economist Milton Friedman's observation that if you want to understand the motivation of an individual or organisation, follow the self-interest. Sadly, the self-interest of UN bureaucrats seldom seems to coincide with the public interest. UN officials are rewarded for making the bureaucratic machinery run - that is, for producing reports, guidelines and white papers, and for holding meetings - whether or not they are of high quality or make any sense at all. A related phenomenon is what the leader of a prominent national delegation to the Codex biotech task force called "glamour fever": the national participants become so enamoured of the trappings of the meetings - the formal and dignified proceedings, the simultaneous translation of the proceedings into various languages, and exotic venues - that they seem to forget why they're there. (And they certainly don't want the activity - and the opportunity for all-expense-paid, luxurious travel - ever to end.)

Third, there's no accountability - no House of Lords Select Committee, US Government Accountability Office or parliamentary oversight (recall the Iraq oil-for-food debacle and its cover-up at the UN), and no electorate to kick the UN reprobates out when they act contrary to the public interest. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that we see egregious examples of arrogance and corruption, let alone day to day featherbedding, laziness and incompetence in the thousands of individual UN programmes and projects.

Fourth, in the absence of accountability, UN officials feel little need for transparency of policymaking; and the PR offices simply spin, spin, spin. Several years ago I attended a major WHO event in Geneva at which the NGO I represented was denied accreditation because it was known to be an advocate of free markets and a critic of some of the UN's policies. You get to participate in the UN's marketplace of ideas only if there is official approval of what you're selling.

Fifth, there's the issue of the quality of the pool from which senior UN officials are selected. The country or region of origin of a candidate seems to be more important than his credentials and qualifications: No meritocracy there. Finally, ponder this factor related to the competence of the potential candidates: If you were a nation's president, or its environmental or health minister, would you give up your best and brightest people and send them to work for the UN?

We need to counter-attack the UN, the source of incalculable misery and wealth deprivation. National policymakers can provide the firepower by withholding funding and participation from UN agencies and programmes that are corrupt or incompetent. Better still, responsible countries should cease paying any dues at all until the entire organisation undergoes fundamental and genuine reform. That is the only language the international bureaucrats will understand.

Source:

Henry Miller (16.4.08). Gene therapy. The Guardian (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/henry_miller/2008/04/gene_therapy.html) (reproduced by permission of the author)

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