Articles

Richard Verma’s two-year tenure as U.S. Ambassador to India concluded last month with the new incoming presidential administration. During his time in New Delhi, Verma established himself as one of the most consequential envoys to ever occupy the prestigious post once held by such foreign policy legends as John Kenneth Galbraith and Frank Wisner. The first Indian American to serve in the role, Verma leaves behind a far-reaching legacy. He raised the U.S-India strategic partnership to unparalleled heights in virtually every arena of bilateral cooperation while serving as a skilled and talented public diplomat.

Despite widespread adoption of genetically modified crops in many countries, heated controversies about their advantages and disadvantages continue. Especially for developing countries, there are concerns that genetically modified crops fail to benefit smallholder farmers and contribute to social and economic hardship. Many economic studies contradict this view, but most of them look at short-term impacts only, so that uncertainty about longer-term effects prevails. The authors address this shortcoming by analyzing economic impacts and impact dynamics of Bt cotton in India.

"Muller argues that ethnonationalism is the wave of the future and will result in more and more independent states, but this is not likely. One of the most destabilizing ideas throughout human history has been that every separately defined cultural unit should have its own state. Endless disruption and political introversion would follow an attempt to realize such a goal. Woodrow Wilson gave an impetus to further state creation when he argued for "national self-determination" as a means of preventing more nationalist conflict, which he believed was a cause of World War I...."

"...it is a mistake to see high prices as a proxy for actual hunger. Most of the world's hungry citizens do not get their food from the world market, and most who rely on the world market are not poor or vulnerable to hunger."

"Efforts to introduce novel agricultural crops or foods are welcomed and supported by some politically important groups in the developing world, ignored by others, and at times opposed by a significant few. When considering the political actors on the landscape most likely to take active positions either for or against novel foods, there is little or no evidence of political resistance to any of the biofortified foods developed thus far using conventional crop-breeding techniques, yet resistance to GMO crops has been widespread for much of the past decade. Which actors on the landscape are opposing GMOs, how powerful are they, and will their opposition weaken if the current generation of GMO crops carrying improved agronomic traits is followed by a second generation of GMOs carrying improved nutrient traits?"

"This introductory essay explains how this new technology is being driven by the actors (multinational corporations), markets (large global markets) and rules (intellectual property) of globalisation."

Sustaining the bioeconomy will require the adoption of a governance regime for biotechnology that helps bring a large number of developing countries into the global trading system. Failure to do so will create a "genetic divide" among countries and likely will intensify public opposition to biotechnology that will be fueled by presumptions about possible market dislocation and apparent technological disparities among nations. 3 A global governance system will require improvements in market access, development of technological capabilities, access to technology, a favorable regulatory environment for biotechnology, and management of risks and benefits associated with its use.