PARIS: Dozens of scientists, experts and campaigners called for a ban on the release of genetically-edited organisms into the wild, in a statement Friday warning of potentially severe risks to the world's pollinators.
The appeal was launched at crunch biodiversity talks in Montreal, where delegates from almost all the world's countries were meeting to negotiate a strategy to halt human environmental destruction, which threatens the natural life support systems of the planet, reports AFP.
Supporters argue that they could help human health, agriculture and even species conservation.
But their use in the wild carries "understudied risks which could accelerate the decline of pollinator populations and put entire food webs at risk," according to the letter drafted by the French non-governmental organisation Pollinis.
The signatories -- including researchers specialising in insects, pollinators and agroecology -- called for countries party to the UN biodiversity talks to oppose the deployment of genetic biotechnologies in nature.
They said current scientific research was unable to provide "reliable and robust" risk assessments for potential harms to other species including pollinators and the plants, animals and whole ecosystems that rely on them.
"Pollinating insects are already facing an alarming decline due to external stressors, adding hazardous and unassessed genetic biotechnologies to this fatal mix will aggravate the stress on pollinators and may precipitate their extinction," the statement said.
One of the targets up for negotiation looks specifically at the potential risks of genetic biotechnology and the decision on this point could lead either to greater regulation or help facilitate their use.
Unlike genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which introduce an external gene into a plant or animal, new gene editing techniques directly modify the genome of a living being, without adding external elements.
One example is so-called gene drive technology, which uses tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 -- DNA snipping "scissors" that can insert, delete or otherwise edit genes.
