The ETC Century

Erosion, Technology Transformation and Corporate Concentration in the 21st Century 

Pat Mooney / RAFI / Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Development Dialog 1999:1-2 

Introduction

More than ten years ago, the Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation published The Laws of Life. Another Development and the New Biotechnologies, in Development Dialogue (1988:1 2). The journal probably offered most of its readers their first glimpse of biotechnology and its implications for Third World societies. Written by four staff members of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), The Laws of Life was also a report on the 1987 Bogève seminar on `The Socioeconomic Impact of New Biotechnologies on Basic Health and Agriculture in the Third World'. That seminar, co-organised by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and RAFI, brought together civil society organisations (CSOs) and academics from around the world for an intense political and philosophical debate on a number of socioeconomic issues associated with genetic engineering in health, agriculture, the environment and warfare.

This important meeting was `billed' as being timed to define the coming debate over biotechnology. We were wrong. In order to have framed the debate and mustered the resources necessary to confront industry and its allies in the research community, CSOs should have been at work at least since 1980, or even earlier. This highly exploratory volume of Development Dialogue is an attempt to ensure that we are not too late to address the new set of technologies on the horizon today.

Also, in ongoing discussions between the Foundation and RAFI, it has been concluded that CSOs' strong focus on biodiversity and biotechnology tends to obscure their view of new, upcoming technologies. A more comprehensive approach might be to focus more on Erosion (environmental and cultural), Technology (as future technologies transform society), and Concentration (of corporate power and class dominance) -in short: ETC.

Erosion includes not only genetic erosion and the erosion of species, soils, and the atmosphere -but also the erosion of knowledge and the global erosion of equitable relations. We are losing both our biological resources and our eco-specific knowledge of those resources. Ecological destruction increases the commercial importance of dwindling genetic `raw materials'. Paradoxically, this is occurring just when new technologies have the greatest need for (and capacity to utilise) the endangered biomaterials.

Technology means, in this volume, the Pandora's Box of new technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, informatics, and neurosciences. (Technology can certainly be defined much more widely than in this document; there are social and cultural techniques that must also be considered, but this would need a much longer discussion.) While some of these technologies lean heavily on biological materials, they also lend themselves to a widening array of old and new monopoly mechanisms. Nanotechnology, in particular, vitiates the relevance of biomaterials (but only for those in power) on the assumption that the world's needs can be met through an infinite supply of manufactured molecules.

Concentration describes the re-organisation of economic power into the hands of high-tech global oligopolies. The interplay between vanishing bioresources, new life-controlling technologies, and the emergence of privatised technocracies may drive tomorrow's social and political changes. The ETC combination could lead to a world of `Cyber-Cabbages and NanoKings', an entire world resembling - as the American writer O. Henry described Central America at the dawn of the 20th century-a banana republic. Were he with us on the cusp of the millennium, O. Henry might well call the coming world order the Binano republic.

In 1998, Jeremy Rifkin wrote The Biotech Century, arguing persuasively that the 21st century would be dominated by that powerful set of genetic tools known as `biotechnology'. True enough, humanity has never contemplated a more potent science - one capable of restructuring life. Nevertheless, our myopic focus on gene therapies, mammalian cloning, genetically modified (GM) crops and `Frankenfoods' have blinded us to the implications of other impending scientific tools. As we struggle to discern our decidedly `uncommon Future' it is important to remember the lessons of history. Perhaps the most important lesson is that we have consistently failed to anticipate the future accurately.

It was not so long ago that the letters `GM' appearing in a newspaper headline would have been assumed to stand for `General Motors', still the world's biggest transnational. It was hardly a century ago, in 1893, that Karl Benz, in Germany, and Henry Ford, in the USA, introduced their `horseless carriages'. Pundits predicted the coming of the `Automobile Age', likening the advent of the car to the impact of the key technological discoveries of the Bronze Age or the Iron Age in earlier millennia By the mid-1920s, however, the impact of the car had been equalled by that of the aeroplane, the radio, and even the lowly aspirin. Television and nuclear energy (the `Atomic Age') loomed tantalisingly on the horizon. As powerful as the automobile's impact was on the economy and psyche of the world, there was hardly an Automobile Age. It was at best the Automobile Quarter-Century. Likewise, those who isolate and concentrate on biotechnology to the exclusion of other sciences will shortly find themselves part of the Biotech Quarter-Century. The 21st century will witness the coming-of-age of nanotechnology, robotics, neurosciences, space technologies and other patent technologies that will unite with genetic engineering to control `life', not only in its physical sense but in its political sense as well. These new technologies are a central force in the coming ETC century.

Preludes 1977 to 2000: From seeds to ETC
From the Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation

The first time that the staff of RAFI and the staff of the Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation sat down together was over lunch in the temporary parliament buildings in Stockholm in 1981. But Pat Mooney reminds us that we almost met-should have met-in 1975 in New York at the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Development and International Cooperation. The specific occasion was a news conference presenting What Now: Another Development, the 1975 Dag Hammarskj6ld Report, which constituted the culmination of a major intellectual dialogue and exploration by the Foundation that has guided much of its work and the work of others ever since. Pat recalls that he was coming late into the briefing in the hope of meeting us just as we were dashing from the room to go on to other meetings.

We appeared to be traveling in different directions. The Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation was helping to shape and clarify the perspectives of a Third System-the Citizens perspective on society in contrast to those of the State and the Business Community -and to propose a global course of action on the whole panorama of development issues vital to the poor and powerless. At that time, before there was a RAFI, Pat was trying to focus down. He had resigned his post as founding Chair of the International Coalition for Development Action (ICDA) and was about to spend 14 months backpacking around the world. He was looking for roots and he came back with seeds.

By the time we sat down together in 1981, the gap between our wide and narrow perspectives seemed to have closed. At our invitation, Pat Mooney wrote The Law of the Seed: Another Development and Plant Genetic Resources (Development Dialogue 1983:1-2) and subsequently contributed to a 1985 edition of Development Dialogue with The Law of the Lamb. In 1987, the Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation and RAFI organized together the CSO consultation on biotechnology at Bogève, France, and in 1988, the results of the meeting were published in Development Dialogue.

About the same time, we began discussing the ETC (Erosion, Technology, Concentration) framework, first over dinners in North Carolina and then at the Dag Hammarskj6ld Centre in Uppsala. Other events intervened, however, and Pat wrote a new edition of Development Dialogue for us in 199698, titled The Parts of Life: Agricultural Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Role of the Third System, completing an exciting trilogy that summarized RAFI's `old' (but not discarded) agenda.

If there were ever any doubts about our common direction, The ETC Century should lay them aside. Over the years, RAFI may be perceived to have moved `down', from seeds to genes to atoms. Yet, in The ETC Century, RAFI shows how control of the small can mean control of the world. Certainly the issues of biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurosciences and the `Binano republic' are global.

So, we have come full circle. Twenty-five years after What Now we are embarking on yet another intellectual exploration, which will culminate, we hope, in a new global vision to be entitled `What Next?'. We are delighted to be able to offer The ETC Century as the first contribution towards the development of this new vision for the decades ahead. The meeting missed 25 years ago has led to a meeting of minds today.

This issue of Development Dialogue marks a transition. RAFI has always traced its birth to an international meeting of food activists, who were drawn together by RAFI staff members in Fort Qu' Appelle, Saskatchewan (Canada), in November 1977. Then, the issue was `seeds', genetic erosion, corporate concentration in pesticides and seeds, and intellectual property monopolies over life forms. The transition to include biotechnology began, with great reluctance, in 1981 but is best identified with the meeting of activists at Bogève in 1987. Now, the move from `seeds' to `ETC' (and seeds are by no means abandoned) is made with similar reluctance. RAFI will soon change its name in order to encompass the widening scope of work.

In 1993, RAFI became the first CSO to document the collection of indigenous genetic material and the patenting of human cell lines around the world. This research took us to places we never planned to go. It never occurred to us that we could venture further still. Then, the work on the political economy of seeds and on the collection of human cell lines drove us to study the implications for biological warfare. This in turn led to the review of a very unusual set of military technologies. Hope Shand's 1997 report on `BioSerfdom' in RAFI Communique directed us to `precision farming', including satellites and sensors. These new technologies posed surprising questions regarding the control of the world economy and, most profoundly, the control of democracy and dissent.

RAFI feels it is important to bring out this somewhat futuristic contribution to the discussion for three reasons: first, because it addresses a vitally important set of new technologies and corporate strategies that although related to biotechnology do not receive the consideration their impact demands. Second, while these new areas are developing very quickly, action by CSOs could change their direction. Third, the implications for the poor and for all of us - are just too fundamental to ignore.

Our concerns expressed here may be proven wrong - but we believe that RAFI's track record should give readers cause to consider this report seriously.

Although it may seem otherwise, this volume has been in the making for more than one and a half years and has benefited from much advice. Nevertheless, responsibility for the outcome rests solely with Pat Mooney. Everyone in RAFI has tried to improve the document along the way and it is not their fault if the author sometimes failed to heed their advice or to understand their comments. As always, Hope Shand has tried her best to spot the scientific and political errors, while Jean Christie, Julie Delahanty and Silvia Ribeiro have filled in gaps and added clarity where it was sorely needed. Kevan Bowkett, a highly valued RAFI volunteer, did a wonderful job of identifying and summarizing information and ideas on technology and society. Most especially, Beverly Cross has, on several occasions, rescued the entire text and functioned as both style and science editor while managing RAFI. To this end, she even dragooned her family into the act in order to meet ever-moving deadlines. Any errors that remain are solely the fault of the writer who kept changing words and paragraphs right up to the final moment of printing.

This text was written while we were all doing other things during the course of 1999. It began over the Canadian Christmas Holidays of 1998 99 at RAFI's `headquarters' in Winnipeg and it ended with the final edits in Sucre, Bolivia, in August 2000. During 1999, the work was moulded by four dialogues with CSO partners. The first took place in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at a meeting convened for the Global Forum on Agriculture by IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy). The second meeting was held in Lulea, Sweden, co-organised by the Dag Hammarskj6ld Foundation (DHF). Both these meetings were in early 1999. The third, in April, gave an opportunity to present a more extensive draft at the Dag Hammarskj6ld Centre in Uppsala, Sweden. Finally, the almost finished text was shared with biotech activists at Blue Mountain in upstate New York in October. Both these meetings and much of the thinking behind these pages were propelled by Kristin Dawkins and Mark Ritchie of IATP; Olle Nordberg and Niclas H9llstr6m of the DHF; Harriet Barlow of the HKH Foundation and Jon Cracknell and Chris Desser, who guided the Blue Mountain meeting along with Harriet. Wendy Davies and Gerd Ericson have edited and prepared for printing the manuscript with all its boxes, tables, charts and endnotes, a task which is not that simple but which they have solved in an excellent way. Jerry Mander, though he knows it not, forced us to re-think our ideas on technology and culture at several points during the last two years.

Upstaged

This work is dedicated to Sven Hamrell, RAFI's one and only (since our name will be changing) President. Sven first championed the ETC framework in 1988 and has been RAFI's eclectic inspiration ever since What Now. With his retirement from RAFI, the question for those of us throughout civil society who have relied upon his leadership in the Third System will be `who next?'

For the complete PDF file go to: http://www.rafi.org/documents/other_etccentury.pdf 5feb02