ABSTRACT
From China to South Africa to Argentina, developing countries are faced with a genetic revolution that has the potential to help combat problems ranging from human diseases to environmental degradation. Within biotechnology, the rapid innovations in genetic engineering and genomics are expanding the horizons of healthcare, industry, environment and agriculture. To fully reap the benefits of these developments, it is important to ensure that advancements in biotechnology are managed efficiently to minimize any potential risks to biodiversity and human health. Thus, to make biosafety an effective management tool for the sustainable use of biotechnology, developing required capabilities is an essential step. This is true for all practitioners of biotechnology and particularly so for developing countries. Due to a variety of internal and external reasons, developing countries lack adequate capacity for ensuring biosafety – or indeed for accessing and adapting new and useful biotechnologies for local priorities – and there is an urgent need to strengthen their endogenous capacities. To be effective, however, capacity building has to be considered in the context of overall technological development and not as an isolated event. Cooperative arrangements and partnerships offer a way, but first developing a critical mass of biotechnology expertise is crucial. The main thrust of the initiatives must be sustainable development of biotechnology through policies and practice.
