From disagreements to dialogue: unpacking the Golden Rice debate
From disagreements to dialogue: unpacking the Golden Rice debate
Annika J. Kettenburg 0 1 2
Jan Hanspach 0 1 2
David J. Abson 0 1 2
Joern Fischer 0 1 2
0 Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), Lund University , Box 170, 22100 Lund , Sweden
1 Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of Lüneburg , Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg , Germany
2 Handled by Osamu Saito, United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability , Japan
3 Annika J. Kettenburg
Transgenic Golden Rice has been hailed as a practical solution to vitamin A deficiency, but has also been heavily criticized. To facilitate a balanced view on this polarized debate, we investigated existing arguments for and against Golden Rice from a sustainability science perspective. In a structured literature review of peer-reviewed publications on Golden Rice, we assessed to what extent 64 articles addressed 70 questions covering different aspects of sustainability. Using cluster analysis, we grouped the literature into two major branches, containing two clusters each. These clusters differed in the range and nature of the sustainability aspects addressed, disciplinary affiliation and overall evaluation of Golden Rice. The 'biotechnological' branch (clusters: 'technical effectiveness' and 'advocacy') was dominated by the natural sciences, focused on biophysical plant-consumer interactions, and evaluated Golden Rice positively. In contrast, the 'socio-systemic' branch (clusters: 'economic efficiency' and 'equity and holism') was primarily comprised of social sciences, addressed a wider variety of sustainability aspects including participation, equity, ethics and biodiversity, and more often pointed to the shortcomings of Golden Rice. There were little to no integration efforts between the two branches, and highly polarized positions arose in the clusters on 'advocacy' and 'equity and holism'. To explore this divide, we investigated the influences of disciplinary affiliations and personal values on the respective problem framings. We conclude that to move beyond a polarized debate, it may be fruitful to ground the Golden Rice discourse in facets and methods of sustainability science, with an emphasis on participation and integration of diverging interests.
Cluster analysis; Disciplinary divide; Food security; Genetically modified crops; Problem framing; Sustainability science
Introduction
Sustainability is a contested and highly normative concept
(Dobson 1999; Christen and Schmidt 2012)
. The
solutionoriented field of sustainability science
(Miller et al. 2014)
has to address both the normative goals of sustainability
itself and the, often implicit, assumptions that underpin
different scientific traditions
(Schumpeter 1954; Funtowicz and
Ravetz 1993; Lélé and Norgaard 2005)
. Such normativity,
especially when not explicitly addressed, often leads to
conflicting, even polarized, discourses regarding what represents
an appropriate intervention for a given sustainability
problem. For example, polarized narratives in research
addressing the intersecting goals of food security and biodiversity
conservation are driven by the underpinning
conceptualization of the problem as either technical or socio-political
(Loos et al. 2014; Glamann et al. 2015)
. Similarly, the
narrative explaining food insecurity as a result of insufficient
production and population growth contrasts with
explanations based on unequal distribution of social power as well
as economic and physical resources
(Sen 1981; Legwegoh
and Fraser 2015)
. In the agricultural biosciences, calls for
gene patenting, corporate funding of public institutions and
public–private partnerships conflict with arguments that
seeds should be regarded as public goods
(Scoones 2002;
Stone 2015)
. Such polarization presents serious challenges
for sustainability science, not simply in terms of conflicting
policy prescriptions, but also in the perceived legitimacy of
the science itself (Bäckstrand 2003).
In this paper we use the example of the scientific
discourse around “Golden Rice”—itself a microcosm of the
broader debate surrounding the role of genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) in agricultural sustainability—as
a particularly emotive example of a polarized discourse in
sustainability science. Through a systematic, quantitative
(cluster) analysis of the scientific literature, we classify and
describe the polarized positions within the Golden Rice
debate. By viewing this discourse through an explicit
sustainability lens we seek to shed light on the role of problem
framing in shaping the Golden Rice discourse, and
suggest ways of shifting from such polarized debates towards
more constructive dialogues. In particular, we highlight
the importance of understanding and acknowledging the
sources of such polarization, to move beyond ‘siloed’
disagreements towards shared understandings and meaningful
solutions.
The severity of conflicts around the use of G (...truncated)