From Green to Gene Revolution? A Critical Human Security Perspective on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Abstract

The 2008 global crisis has placed food insecurity high on the international political and economic agenda. Since then, a veritable securitisation of global food production and consumption has been under way, reinforcing discursive linkages between hunger, sustainable development and the environment. Pressures to feed a growing global population and satisfy ever growing energy needs while protecting the environment, call for urgent action. More and more, the market-based “solution” to these complex problems is presented to us in the form of increased agricultural production through the use of genetic modification techniques driven by a handful of profit-seeking corporations. Analyzing the role that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) play in the current global agricultural restructuring, “from a green to a gene revolution”, and against the acute crisis of capitalism background, it is argued that the market-led technological approach to food insecurity fails to address its most fundamental causes: global inequity in access to resources and food distribution. Rather than challenging old assumptions and actors, GMOs help renew and re-legitimise them by inserting them into a new problematic. Most importantly, GMOs add a set of new challenges and risks to current crises that require not only expensive systems of monitoring and regulation, but also a fundamental rethink of the ways and institutions through which we pursue (human) security. Keywords: human security, food insecurity, genetically modified organisms (GMOs)