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42. Biotechnology will have major implications for the environment. The products of genetic engineering could dramatically improve human and animal health. Researchers are finding new drugs. new therapies. and new ways of controlling disease vectors. Energy derived from plants could increasingly substitute for non.-renewable fossil fuels. New high-yield crop varieties and those resistant to unfavourable weather conditions and pests could revolutionize agriculture. Integrated pest management will become more common. Biotechnology could also yield cleaner and more efficient alternatives to many wasteful processes and polluting products. New techniques to treat solid and liquid wastes could help solve the pressing problem of hazardous waste disposal.[1]
43. Advance in space technology, now the almost exclusive domain of industrial countries. also hold promise for the Third World, even for agriculture-based economies. Weather forecasting services provided through a satellite and communications network can help farmers in deciding when to plant, water, fertilize, and harvest crops. Remote sensing and satellite imagery could facilitate optimal use of the Earth's resources, permitting the monitoring and assessment of long-term trends in climatic change, marine pollution, soil erosion rates. and plant cover. (See Chapter 10.)
44. These new technologies and the Green Revolution blur the traditional distinctions between agriculture, industry, and services. And they make it possible for developments in one sector to more radically affect those in another. Agriculture has become virtually an 'industry' in developed countries. Agriculture-related services – especially for regional weather forecasting, storage, and transport – are becoming ever more important. New techniques of tissue culture and genetic engineering could soon generate plant strains able to fix nitrogen from the air, a development that would drastically affect the fertilizer industry, but that would also reduce the threat of pollution by agrochemicals.
45. The chemical and energy industries are moving increasingly into the seeds business. providing new seeds that meet specific local conditions and requirements but that may also need specific fertilizers and pesticides. Here research and development, production, and marketing need to be carefully guided so as so to make the world even more dependent on a few crop varieties – or on the products of a few large transnationals.
46. Yet new technologies are not all intrinsically benign, nor will they have only positive impacts on the environment. The large-scale production and widespread use of new materials. for example, may create hitherto unknown health hazards (such a the use of gallium arsenate in the microchip industry.)[2] Riskier research might be carried out and products manufactured safeguards are weak or where people are unaware of the dangers. The need for caution in introducing a new technology is reinforced by the experience of lbs Green Revolution, which,
- ↑ For a discussion of various possibilities for industrial application of biotechnology. see J. Elkington, Double Dividends? U.S. Biotechnology and Third World Development, WRI Papers, No. 2 (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1986).
- ↑ The 1986 annual report of the Japanese Environment Agency to the Parliament dealt extensively with this topic of the potential environmental impacts and risks posed by the new technologies. Quality of the Environment in Japan 1986 (Tokyo: 1987).
