By Abdallah el-Kurebe
The Journalists for Social Development Initiative (JSDI) has called on stakeholders to ensure more public education on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Nigeria.
The group is a network of journalists and science communicators and focused on the promotion of awareness around sustainable development.
Coordinator of JSDI, Etta Michael who stated this at a stakeholder event held in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in Abuja noted that “the negative perception and unending hate campaign against the operations of biosafety regulations, as well as safe modern biotechnology practices particularly its application in agriculture, clearly reveal the urgent need for authoritative information platform to help build the right public knowledge and trust required to foster the acceptance of this technology in the country.”
The event with the theme: From Monologue to Stakeholder Engagement – building trust through science-based reporting also observed that various studies and stakeholder engagements attributed this crisis on poor public understanding and potentials of biotechnology in transforming economy and ensuring sustainable growth.
Michael highlighted that “hunger, malnutrition, poverty and sustainable agricultural growth disproportionately impact on Less Develop Countries (LDC) mostly in Africa due to the negative impact of climate change on food production,” while noting that “solutions-like biotechnology-are often inaccessible where there are mostly needed.”
While adding that biotechnology was at the heart of the discussion, inciting a debate that was fueled by misinformation and dominated by anti-GMO activists, he observed that those whose lives would be most impacted by advances in this technology were left out of the global dialogue.
“Stakeholders now must face the ambitious task of fostering constructive public dialogue and policy that employs biotechnology as a tool to solve these problems”, he said.
Speaking, the deputy head of mission, Jaime Campas said the government of the Republic of Ecuador strongly believed in science and would support any initiative that was technology-driven to foster sustainable development.
He commended JDSI for initiating a public education campaign and pledged the support of the Embassy to help her fulfill this humble assignment.
Other participants present at the occasion included the country coordinator of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), representatives of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) as well as civil society organisations.
