Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

The ap­pli­ca­tion of (syn­thetic) gene dri­ves is a pow­er­ful tool to con­trol pop­u­la­tions of in­sects that are agri­cul­tural pests, vec­tors of dis­eases, or a threat to bio­di­ver­sity po­ten­tially lead­ing to the lo­cal or global erad­i­ca­tion of a species. The po­ten­tial use of gene drive or­gan­isms has trig­gered a heated dis­cus­sion re­gard­ing their en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts and reg­u­la­tory over­sight. How­ever, ex­pe­ri­ence ex­ists in as­sess­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of a num­ber of es­tab­lished agri­cul­tural pest con­trol meth­ods that re­quire the re­lease of liv­ing or­gan­isms, that pro­vide high lev­els of area-wide con­trol and that might be ir­re­versible. This in­cludes clas­si­cal bi­o­log­i­cal con­trol, the ster­ile in­sect tech­nique, the in­com­pat­i­ble in­sect tech­nique that is based on the cy­to­plas­mic in­com­pat­i­bil­ity caused by Wol­bachia en­dosym­bionts, and ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied in­sects con­tain­ing self-lim­it­ing traits. The dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies are de­scribed, the reg­u­la­tory prac­tice and ex­pe­ri­ence is sum­ma­rized and path­ways through which these con­trol tech­nolo­gies could harm val­ued ecosys­tem ser­vices are pre­sented. With a fo­cus on the ap­pli­ca­tion of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture, us­ing the in­va­sive Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophil­i­dae) as a case study we then dis­cuss to what ex­tent the ex­ist­ing frame­works could as­sist the risk as­sess­ment of in­sects car­ry­ing gene dri­ves. We sug­gest that draw­ing on ex­ist­ing prac­tices, ex­pe­ri­ences and leg­isla­tive frame­works will pro­vide a prag­matic and pro­por­tion­ate ap­proach to eval­u­ate the en­vi­ron­men­tal risks of novel so­lu­tions based on gene drive tech­nolo­gies.

Type

Journal article

Journal

Environmental Science and Policy

Publisher

Elsevier

Publication Date

29/02/2020