Sweden:
Research into GE trees risks irreversible damage to forests
Professor Ove
Nilsson is the star of genetically engineered tree research in
Sweden. Nilsson and his research team at the Umeå Plant Science
Centre won the race to identify the gene that controls plants'
flowering allowing them to produce genetically engineered trees
which flower in weeks, instead of years. In 2005, the journal
Science declared it one of the most important discoveries of the
year.
"Finding
the start button for tree flowering means that we understand the
underlying molecular processes. It means that we can press the
start button instead of awaiting the natural course of things.
In this way we can get trees to flower when we want them to,"
Nilsson explains in an interview with Eva Krutmeijer on the Linnaeus300
website.
Selective breeding
of trees takes many generations, especially with cold climate
trees such as spruce and aspen, which flower after 10 to 15 years.
One of the reasons that eucalyptus is so popular as a plantation
tree species is that it flowers in two or three years, allowing
rapid breeding for characteristics such as fast growth and straight
stems.
Nilsson's quick
flowering trees allow him to work on producing faster growing
trees for cold climates. Nilsson argues that faster growing trees
and trees which will grow in colder climates are needed to meet
increasing demand. Nilsson doesn't even consider the possibility
of reducing consumption. "The only way we are going to cope
with rising demand is increase forest productivity," he told
the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2007.
Nilsson isn't
really talking about increasing "forest productivity".
He's talking about increasing productivity from industrial tree
plantations. The fast growing eucalyptus plantations that Nilsson
admires have dried out streams and lowered water tables, leaving
local communities without water supplies in many countries in
the South. Faster growing trees in cold climates would also need
more water. Faster growing tree monocultures have already replaced
many native forests and other ecosystems in Europe and North America.
Growing GE trees for biofuel, another area of interest for Nilsson,
would require vast areas of land - land which is often already
in use for food production, for example.
In recognition
of his research, Nilsson will be awarded the Marcus Wallenberg
Prize in Autumn this year. The prize indicates who will benefit
from Nilsson's research - the pulp and paper industry and the
biofuel industry. The Marcus Wallenberg Prize was set up in 1980
by Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags, now pulp and paper giant Stora
Enso. The prize is named after Marcus Wallenberg, a banker, industrialist
and chairman of Stora's Board of Directors. While the Marcus Wallenberg
Prize claims a focus on "Sustainability of renewable resources",
it also "recognizes efficiency improvements, cost improvements,
the opening of new markets and the underlying research".
Nilsson isn't
worried about the risks of genetically engineered trees. He claims
that his GE fast-flowering trees will only be planted in sealed
greenhouses. Once he has produced high yielding trees, the flowering
gene can be bred out and the trees to be planted will not contain
any foreign genes.
But Nilsson's
activities are not limited to laboratory research. He is a board
member of SweTree Technologies, a Swedish biotechnology company.
The company specifically aims to provide products and technologies
"to improve the productivity and performance properties of
seedlings, wood and fiber" for the pulp and paper industry.
Also on the board of SweTree Technologies is Björn Hägglund, a
former Deputy CEO at Stora Enso and a board member of the Marcus
Wallenberg Foundation. Hägglund is the chair of the board of WWF
Sweden, which could explain why we don't hear much criticism of
GE trees from WWF Sweden.
SweTree Technologies
was formed in 1999 as a joint initiative of the Foundation of
Technology Transfer (Innovationsbron) in Umeå and the company
Woodheads AB. Innovationsbron aims to profit by commercialising
Swedish research and innovation. Woodheads AB was formed to handle
the intellectual property from 44 researchers at the Umeå Plant
Science Centre and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
SweTree Technologies' website boasts that it has "the right
to all innovations in plant and forest biotechnology emanating
from the members of Woodheads".
SweTree Technologies
is working on trees genetically engineered for increased biomass
growth, increased fibre length and to produce wood that is easier
to pulp (with more easily extracted lignin content). Three Swedish
forestry companies (Sveaskog, Bergvik Skog and Holmen) are part-owners
of SweTree Technologies. Clearly the GE trees developed by SweTree
Technologies will not remain in greenhouses. Once GE trees are
planted it is inevitable that they will cross with trees in forests.
The impacts are unknown and irreversible.
Nilsson has
a vision of the future: "Trees will be 'tailor-made', clearly
earmarked for their end uses. Examples of these are fast-growing
porous trees for the pulp industry, trees with long wood fibres
for the paper industry, slow-growing trees for furniture manufacture."
In reality this means vast monocultures of genetically engineered
trees. It has nothing to do with sustainability or concern for
the environment. It is about profit for industry.
By Chris Lang,
email: http://chrislang.org,
http://chrislang.org
