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Genetically Engineered Trees:
Some Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
May 10, 2008
Anne Petermann, Co-Director
Global Justice Ecology Project
globalecology@gmavt.net
The purpose of this paper is to provide accurate, independent and verifiable information regarding the
potential impacts of the commercial release of genetically engineered trees into the environment.
What is the Point of Genetically Engineering Trees?
As the world’s supply of wood from native forests is rapidly depleted, rapidly increasing demand for
wood products, not only for paper, but also for biofuels, is leading to a skyrocketing demand for raw
materials. This is providing the pulp and paper industry with the impetus to link up with the
biotechnology industry, the fuel industry and the chemical industry to engineer trees for traits that will
enhance the manufacture of these materials and increase industry profits.
Industry and their scientist allies are painting this new technology as the answer to many environmental
concerns, from forest decline, to pollution from paper mills, to the use of chemicals in forestry
plantations.1 As we shall see, however, GE trees are anything but “green” and in fact pose what many
consider to be the most serious threat to the world’s remaining native forests since the invention of the
chainsaw. Contrary to industry’s “green” assertions, the engineering of trees is about strictly about
speculative science and economic return.2
Will High-Productivity GE Tree Plantations Protect Native Forests?
Industry likes to argue that use of GE trees in high-productivity plantations will protect native forests
elsewhere. In many countries of the world, however, industrial timber plantations already compete with
forests for land. The growing incentive to develop tree plantations to feed the rising global demand for
timber will only exacerbate this competition for land between timber plantations and agriculture. In
addition, the massive new demand for wood generated by production of agrofuels from cellulose will
accelerate deforestation and illegal logging in forests all over the world, with serious consequences for
forest biological diversity, forest-dependent communities and the climate.
The takeover of land for tree plantations is also impoverishing indigenous communities.
, In the Lumaco District of Chile, for example, the expansion of pine and eucalyptus plantations is taking
over agricultural land used by indigenous Mapuche communities. Since 1988, plantations in this region
increased from 14% of the land to over 52% in 2002. This farmland conversion is forcing people off
their land and leading to escalating rates of poverty. In the Lumaco District 60% of the people live in
poverty, with one-third in extreme poverty. The government of Chile provides financial incentives to
encourage people to stop growing food and grow trees instead. Lucio Cuenca B., the National
Coordinator for the Observatorio Latinamericano de Conflictos Ambientales in Santiago, Chile
explains,
“
The response by the State has been to provide favorable legal and social conditions to enable the
forestry companies to fulfill their production goals and continue their expansion. One the one hand,
repression and criminalization [of Mapuche opposition], on the other … rerouting subsidies
formerly aimed at the large forestry companies towards the small farmers and indigenous land
owners [that] oblige them to convert to forestry activities. Thus the strategy for expansion becomes
more complex, operating through political and economic blackmail that leaves no alternatives.”1
The rising economic incentive to grow trees resulting from the enormous increase in demand for wood
generated by use of trees for cellulosic agrofuels will only worsen the conflicts between communities
who need land for food, and companies who want the land to grow trees.
Can GE Trees Contaminate Wild Forests?
Beyond the threats to food are the threats to forests. Richard Meilan, a faculty member at Purdue
University points out that “The genus Populus includes about 30 species that grow across a wide
climatic range from the subtropics in Florida to subalpine areas in Alaska, northern Canada and
Europe.”2 This raises a serious red flag concerning the potential genetic contamination that could be
caused by the commercial release of a GE tree that has such a large and widespread population of wild
relatives. According to The Economist, countries like Sweden are also considering use of GE poplars
for cellulosic agrofuels.3 Even the use of non-native tree species, such as GE eucalyptus in the southern
US, raises serious concerns about the impacts that the escape of genetic material from GE trees could
have on native forests.
Our understanding of the contamination potential from future plantings of GE trees is largely based on
known contamination incidents from GE food crops and experimental plantings of engineered grasses. 4
While there has not yet been a fully comprehensive study of crop contamination from GE varieties,
several well-documented incidents have alerted the world to the seriousness of this problem.
Two incidents of transgenic contamination of wild relatives have been studied in some detail - the
transmission of an herbicide-tolerance gene from oilseed rape (canola) to weedy wild turnip hybrids in
Canada; and the detection of herbicide-tolerant grasses up to 21 kilometers from a test site in the US
state of Oregon.
There have also been two attempts to systematically address the contamination potential of GE crops.
Since 2005, Greenpeace, in collaboration with GeneWatch in the UK, has maintained an online
database of GMO contamination incidents, known as the GM Contamination Register.5 Their 2006
report lists 142 publicly documented incidents, in 43 countries, since the introduction of commercial
GE crops in 1996. These include instances of contamination of food, seed, animal feeds and wild
relatives of crops, as well as illegal releases of unapproved GE varieties and documented negative
agricultural side effects.6 Also in 2006, the US-based Center for Food Safety released a report on the
1
Lucio Cuenca, Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales, presentation at the Vitoria Meeting Against
Monoculture Timber Plantations, November 2005, Vitoria, Brazil.
2
ibid.
3
Derek Bacon, “Woodstock Revisited”, The Economist, 8 March 2007.
4
While ‘contamination’ is the preferred terminology for this phenomenon in most non-technical literature, advocates of
genetic engineering have sought to replace it with the less familiar and more ambiguous term ‘adventitious presence’. The
research literature is mainly concerned with the ‘introgression’ of novel traits, ie the successful and inheritable incorporation of
transgenic DNA into the genome of a population of native organisms or non-modified crops.
5
http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/
6
Greenpeace International, GM Contamination Register Report: Annual review of cases of contamination, illegal planting and
2
