Sources: Pulp and Paper International, Asian Week, UNESCO

 
Genetically Modified Trees Enter the Scene    

Politically and institutionally, the genetic engineering of trees is directed mainly at shoring up this beleaguered tradition of giant-scale industrial operations, corporate power over the countryside, and biologically homogenized landscapes.

Two trends are in evidence. The first aims at industrial quality control at a new, molecular level. One example is from the pulp and paper industry. As long as papermakers were dependent on diverse types of wood waste for raw materials, they had to rely mainly on manufacturing processes to ensure uniform paper quality. With pulpwood plantations, however, variability in the raw material itself could be reduced through choice of species, site, inputs, spacing, provenance, hybridization, cloning, macro- and micro- propagation and DNA analysis. The genetic engineering of trees is merely another step in this standardizing "process of linking genes to tree, pulp and paper characteristics". Robotics systems developed by the Australian biotech company ForBio -- currently in liquidation -- provide a way of producing the large numbers of cloned GM trees necessary. Pulp and paper industrialists now envisage vast plantations not only of trees of single species, but of trees which have all been genetically modified in exactly the same way.

One of the most important targets of current research is lignin -- the strengthening and protective substance of woody plants. In the production of high-quality paper from cellulose fibres, lignin gets in the way and must be removed with a high expenditure of chemicals and energy. By manipulating the genes which instruct woody plants to manufacture the building blocks of lignin, biotechnologists hope to reduce the proportion of the substance in pulpwood trees, or change it to a less ‘troublesome’ type. Reducing lignin by as little as one per cent would result in savings of many millions of dollars for the industry and would also be useful environmental public relations, since less water, energy and chemicals could be used in pulp recovery. Several US patents have been taken out on GM low-lignin trees. (See TABLE: Selected Life Patents.)

Genetic engineers also aim to increase the wood density of trees destined for construction materials or paper pulp manufacture; to curb the tendency to branch in trees grown for furniture; to boost growth rates in fuelwood trees; and to engineer fruit trees for altered taste, different ripening characteristics or pharmaceutical production. One biotech company has been set up to market a caffeine-free GM coffee bush which is billed as a means of avoiding industrial processes of manufacturing decaf coffee.

The second tweak which tree biotechnologists give the monoculture tradition is to try to repair some of its inherent contradictions without questioning its nature or the power relationships that sustain it. For example, large monoculture plantations are notoriously vulnerable to insect and disease infestations, since they offer a gigantic feast all in one place to any insect or microorganism able to evolve to exploit them. Applying pesticides may ultimately make the problem even worse, since they cull the target organism’s natural enemies while simultaneously causing it to evolve resistance. Instead of addressing these problems at their root, however, genetic engineers apply the Band-Aid of trying to make trees manufacture their own insecticides (see discussion in section below). Among the first genes forest biotechnologists exploited were those encoding insecticidal toxins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt genes have been engineered into a wide range of species, including poplar, European larch, white spruce and walnut. Other genes that have been selected to confer insecticidal properties on trees include protease inhibitor genes (from rice and potatoes) that disrupt insect digestion. In order to counter diseases that cut into the yield of fruit tree plantations, meanwhile, biotechnologists are attempting to engineer resistance to plum pox and papaya ringspot viruses. Researchers are also exploring the possibility of creating GM trees that are resistant to fungal disease, such as leaf rust and leaf spot diseases that affect poplar and white pine plantations.

By the same token, genetic engineering is being applied to the problem of soil salinification associated with industrial plantations, particularly those in Australia -- not by undertaking to decrease salinification, but by adjusting plantation trees’ genomes in a way which allows them to survive on the spoiled land. One of the areas of greatest current interest for forest biotechnologists, finally, is the engineering of broad-spectrum herbicide resistance. Industrial tree monocultures are typically established by ploughing up existing vegetation – an expensive process which also results in soil erosion. If broad-spectrum herbicides could be used to clear land without affecting plantation species, and to keep it free of understorey, business could save an estimated US$975 million per year. Biotechnologists are thus racing to create herbicide-friendly plantation trees, particularly hardwoods, which are more vulnerable to herbicides commonly used in forestry than pines. Among the trees that have already been grown in field trials are chestnut, sweetgum and poplar engineered with genes to confer resistance to glyphosate, chlorosulfuron and glufosinate-ammonium (see TABLE: Releases of GM Trees in OECD Countries). A number of patents have also been taken out.

Promising to bypass the need for conventional breeding (a particularly long and costly process with trees due to their long life cycles), genetic engineering is also attractive to wood industries in that it extends the breeder’s palette to include a range of previously-unavailable traits from other species. Genes from bacteria, for example, can be used to boost trees’ resistance to insects, and genes from pine to increase nitrogen uptake and growth rates in poplar. This is another reason why genetic engineering is biased against biodiversity: it may make it appear that the need to conserve native genetic resources essential to breeders is less of a priority, and thus cut support for forest conservation. 

Following the Money    

A glance at who is instigating, funding, patenting and testing the genetic modification of trees confirms that the technology is strongly biased in favour of the conflict-plagued industrial monoculture tradition -- and against more progressive diversity-based systems of forest livelihood and stewardship.

Some research is being carried out directly by transnational corporations committed to the industrial plantation tradition. One of the biggest efforts toward making genetic engineering in forestry a reality was a US$60 million joint venture announced in April 1999 between Monsanto and pulp and paper manufacturers International Paper, Westvaco and Fletcher Challenge. The last three companies all have miserable reputations among environmentalists or affected people for their forestry operations, toxic releases, or both, while Monsanto is a well-known promoter of large agribusiness monocultures worldwide. The objective of their alliance was to make wood easier to pulp. Although Monsanto has now backed off, restricting its role in the deal to that of a technology provider, the other partners remain in the hope that the new "designer trees" will reduce mill costs. In January 2000 they were joined by the New Zealand company Genesis Research and Development (which specializes in pharmagenomic drug discovery and therapeutic vaccines as well as forestry genomics). Fletcher Challenge and Genesis have been in partnership for five years to develop herbicide tolerance in plantation trees such as eucalyptus, poplar and pine. The two firms have also been granted a US patent to alter the lignin content of trees. (See TABLE: Selected Life Patents.) Further north, Japanese paper and auto firms are also carrying out research into the genetic manipulation of trees. In addition, transnational corporations are stumping up money to pay university researchers in a number of countries to carry out investigations into tree biotech.

The bulk of basic research, however, is likely to be funded by corporate-friendly government agencies working together with industry associations and universities. This better suits the conservative orientation of many wood industries, who favour the time-tested corporate strategy of shifting research costs off on the public sector wherever possible. In the mid-1990s, for example, the American Forest and Paper Association, an industry group dominated by giant transnationals with control over vast areas of land, launched a "collaborative research effort" with the United States Department of Energy to increase US wood production. Under the scheme, the US government provides tax dollars to government laboratories or universities for genetic engineering research which the corporate sector can then take advantage of, with supplementary support from companies such as Georgia-Pacific, Rayonier, Union Camp and Westvaco. Researchers at the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative (TGERC) based at Oregon State University, meanwhile, who are responsible for researching and testing trees genetically modified for improved fibre production, herbicide tolerance and resistance to fungus and insects, receive funding from the US Department of Energy Biofuels Program, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Environmental Protection Agency; paper and timber companies such as International Paper, Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, Georgia- Pacific, Union Camp and MacMillan Bloedel; the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility industry association; other firms such as Monsanto and Shell; and Oregon State University itself. Providing technical and logistical support are the US and Canadian Forest Services, Mycogen, the University of Washington, and Washington State University. This wide collaboration, in TGERC’s own words, results in a "leverage factor of nearly 40-fold for individual industrial members".

Tree biotechnologists at Michigan Technical University, meanwhile, have benefited both from money from the state of Michigan and from collaboration with plantation companies such as Champion. Their colleagues at the University of Washington have received funding from not only the US Departments of Agriculture and Energy but also the National Science Foundation, as well as various wood corporations and universities. The Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation are also bankrolling research on genetic manipulation of organisms to alleviate global warming and a Plant Genome Research Program which could lay the groundwork for GM pines. In Canada, too, although a joint venture called Arborgen has been formed by transnational forestry companies to work on GM trees, the government is playing a central role in developing tree biotech through the Canadian Forest Service.

The more money is available for tree biotech research, of course, the less incentive foresters will have to study other areas -- a heavy irony, given that while the complexity of forest ecology and tree genetics is well recognised, they are poorly understood and starved of research funding. 

The Technofix Dilemma    

The genetic engineering of new traits into trees, in short, can be expected only to deepen the familiar environmental and social contradictions of the industrial monoculture tradition:

• Lignin-reduced trees are likely to have multiple deleterious effects given that lignin functions in forests in so many ways. Lignin reduction may weaken trees structurally, and some researchers have reported stunted growth and collapsed vessels, leaf abnormalities or an increase in vulnerability to viral infection. Because lignin protects trees from feeding insects, low-lignin trees are also likely to be more susceptible to insect damage, leading to pressures to increase pesticide use. Low-lignin trees will also rot more readily -- affecting soil structure, fertiliser use, and forest ecology -- and will release carbon dioxide more quickly into the atmosphere.

• GM trees that produce their own insecticide are virtually certain to cause non-pest species to evolve into pests as GM pesticides eradicate their competitors. The target insects themselves, meanwhile, will evolve resistance to the GM pesticide, leading straight back to the application of conventional pesticides. In addition, some newly-resistant insects could simultaneously evolve a capability to expand their feeding range to previously less-susceptible plant species. Unexpected pesticide contamination of ecosystems is also possible. The insecticidal Bt which certain agricultural crops have been engineered to produce, for example, has unexpectedly been found to be capable of being exuded through roots and binding with soil particles, persisting in the soil for 243 days and remaining toxic for very long periods. Non-target insects essential to healthy ecosystems may also be vulnerable to the GM insecticides. Finally, as long as they enjoy an advantage over trees susceptible to insect feeding, insecticide-producing trees will be able to invade wilder systems with ease, disrupting their insect population dynamics.

• Trees genetically engineered for resistance to disease, especially when deployed in simplified landscapes, are likely to cause fresh epidemics. For one thing, genetic diversity within stands is well-recognised as essential to tree health in sustainable forestry. Yet with the advent of cloned GM trees, genetic diversity will be lower than ever in commercial plantations. Extreme vulnerability is bound to engender extreme methods of disease control. Second, fungicide production engineered into GM trees to help them counter such afflictions as leaf rust and leaf spot diseases may dangerously alter soil ecology, decay processes and the ability for the GM trees to form mycorrhizal interactions essential for nutrient uptake and soil structure. Third, GM virus resistance may accelerate the evolution of new diseases. Biotechnologists have engineered several tree species, including plum and papaya, with genes from viruses which instruct the trees to make viral proteins. For reasons not fully understood, these proteins confer some resistance to infection by that particular virus and often its close relatives. Yet infecting viruses can acquire and use viral genetic information carried on some GM plant chromosomes in a process known as viral recombination. In the absence of genetic engineering, viral recombination will occur only on the rare occasions when two similar viruses have infected an organism simultaneously, but because every cell of GM virus resistant plants contains viral genetic material, any viral infection can be considered as in effect a simultaneous infection. Laboratory experiments have confirmed that viral recombination involving engineered viral genes in plants can indeed increase viruses' virulence and expand the range of hosts they are capable of attacking.

• Trees genetically engineered to be tolerant of herbicides will further entrench the use of the chemicals in corporate and state attempts to create wooded landscapes free of "extraneous" species. The consequences will be multiply detrimental. Broad-spectrum herbicides damage soil structure and fertility through changes in root systems, soil insect populations and soil food webs. As bacteria and fungi which promote soil health decline, vegetation-damaging bacteria and fungi move in. Ultimately, the use of other pesticides to combat fungal diseases may increase. Herbicides are also dangerous to birds and other animals that rely on a diversity of plants for food and shelter. Their use over prolonged periods diminishes food sources for the species dependent on them and provides ideal conditions for the evolution of herbicide-tolerant plants and the need for higher doses and even more hazardous chemicals. Herbicide use has also been shown to increase agricultural crops' susceptibility to disease. Despite manufacturers' claims of 'environmental friendliness', moreover, glyphosate, the active ingredient of favoured plantation herbicides (including Round-Up), binds to soils in the same way as inorganic phosphates and may remain undegraded for years, endangering, through runoff, aquatic life. Glyphosate also disrupts the healthy balance of soil life and kills beneficial insects including wasps, lacewings and ladybirds. GM glyphosate-tolerant trees have been grown in field trials throughout the 1990's, in USA, Europe and South Africa.

• Trees genetically modified for faster growth are likely to use up water even faster than the fast-growing trees currently used in industrial plantations, exacerbating problems of dryout and salinification which undermine the agricultural or fisheries livelihoods of people living on adjacent land. Such trees will also suck up nutrients at a higher rate, necessitating the application of an ever-increasing volume of chemical fertilisers. Hence fast-growing GM trees may speed up the process by which previously rich land is impoverished -- thus increasing, not reducing, plantations' demand for land and their threat both to agricultural livelihoods and to native forests. Trees genetically modified for fast growth will also be highly invasive of ecosystems for which they were not intended, quickly overtaking slower-growing non-GM trees in the competition for light and nutrients. They will thus threaten not only wild and endangered tree populations but also the plants, insects, fungi, animals and birds that have evolved to fill specialist niches dependent on those populations. For example, Swedish researchers engineered aspen with a gene from oats which controls the response of plants to day length. The resulting tree was able to grow in winter daylengths (with as little as six hours of daylight daily) as well as summer (when daylight may extend to 15 hours or more). Had the GM aspen not lost its ability to withstand cold, it would have had a huge advantage over other trees in extreme latitudes where day length limits tree growth. Fast-growing trees with improved ability to take up nitrogen compounds from soil can also be an invasive ecological threat. A (non-GM) nitrogen-fixing tree introduced to Hawaii provides one cautionary example. The tree has pumped a normally nutrient-impoverished lava ecosystem so full of nutrients that a number of diverse and specially-adapted native plant communities have been driven out.

Recent proposals by the US Department of Energy and others to use carbon-dioxide absorbing GM trees to counter climate disruption highlights in another way the complex connections between genetic engineering and the attempts of central authorities to re-engineer large landscapes for single purposes. At their most grandiose, such proposals call for genetically "manipulating" terrestrial ecosystems so that they can temporarily store several times more carbon than at present, in order to make possible "continued large-scale use of fossil fuels". One result could be the creation of vast plantations of trees genetically engineered for both faster growth (to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) and higher lignin content (for more stable storage of the sequestered carbon). The consequences would include not only the social effects associated with the seizure and degradation of huge areas of forest lands and their soils, but also the entrenchment of a wasteful energy economy elsewhere. If allowed to decay or used for fuel or paper, of course, the trees would quickly release the carbon they had temporarily sequestered back to the atmosphere.

Genetic Colonisation    

Nowhere are the contradictions of the GM "fix" clearer than in the controversy over how to prevent genetic modifications from spreading from industrial to neighbouring ecosystems.

The need to prevent GM trees and their genes from invading native ecosystems is clear. Low-lignin trees have the potential to disrupt the forest composting cycle responsible for unique soil structures and nutrient cycling systems. An influx of low-lignin trees vulnerable to damage from insects and other herbivores, moreover, could result in pest population explosions. Insect-resistant GM trees have the potential to disrupt insect population dynamics and also are likely to enjoy an invasive advantage over forest tree species. More generally, invasions of GM trees could threaten the diversity of the forest gene pool from which trees are selected for conventional breeding -- a reservoir already reduced by selective logging practices. Because trees are even more genetically compatible with their wild relatives than highly-bred agricultural crops, GM "escapes" are especially worrisome in forestry.

Although the need to keep GM and non-GM trees separate meshes neatly with industrial incentives for simplifying land use to a single species or variety of tree, the problem is that isolation is virtually impossible in practice. For one thing, plantations often border wild forest systems, and indeed are often set up on land cleared of old-growth forest. For another, tree pollen can travel vast distances. On the treeless Shetland Islands, pollen was found from forests more than 250 km away across the sea. In Northwest India, windborne pine pollen was found 600 km from the nearest pine trees. Crucial forest pollinators including flies, butterflies, ants, beetles, aphids, bumblebees and honeybees are also notably indifferent to posted boundaries between GM and non-GM domains. Seeds are equally difficult to limit to a single geographical area, some being carried around by fruit-eaters while others are wind-borne or water-borne. In fact, it is seed or vegetative fragments which feature in the best-documented cases of long-distance gene flow, for example the establishment of plants on new continents. Many trees can also spread through the distribution of broken twigs, while others send suckers up from their root systems. A single aspen in Utah, for example, boasts 47,000 trunks springing from its root system, and covers 42 hectares. Trees can also grow from stumps left after felling. In sum, trees may be even more adept at spreading their progeny than crops, and once in the wild, a single GM tree could survive for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years.

A Cascade of Higher-Order Technical Fixes    

One measure of the power of the tradition of industrial landscape simplification is that for each fresh contradiction created by attempts to "fix" one of its problems, there is always funding to research yet further, higher-order fixes. The result is a continuous cascade of ingenuity-absorbing technical tweaks fated to generate still further contradictions.

Thus one "solution" to the dilemma of genetic invasion is to attempt to engineer trees for sterility (see BOX: GM Sterility). Making GM trees sterile, the reasoning goes, will prevent gene flow. Predictably, however, this second-order fix leads immediately to difficulties requiring a third-order fix, and so on. GM sterility, for example, cannot be guaranteed to be permanent over generations and through environmental changes and disease stresses. Nor does engineered sterility prevent gene flow through horizontal transfer (for example to bacteria and fungi), or through vegetative propagation, such as twig and stump re-growth or suckers. Moreover, stands of sterile trees devoid of birds, insects or mammals that rely on tree seeds, pollen or nectar for food could disrupt population dynamics (pollinators are of particular concern), with severe repercussions for neighbouring wild systems. 

 
Current regulatory requirements for risk assessment constitute a further example of an attempt at a higher-order technical fix. This attempt, too, is quickly beset by its own limitations and dilemmas. For one thing, much of the data which adequate risk assessment of GM trees demands is unobtainable. For instance, in practice it is not possible to measure accurately to what extent GM plants or their genes might spread, simply because of the sheer size of the area which would need to be thoroughly examined for migrants. Studying small-scale, short-term experimental GM releases, moreover, holds few lessons for the large-scale, long-term releases to which GM forestry is committed, and long-distance migration and its effects will be different for every release. Second, serious risk assessment would exclude GM trees from precisely those uses for which they are being principally developed. For example, Professor Kenneth F. Raffa at the University of Wisconsin's Forestry Department suggests that risks connected with the evolution of insect resistance can be limited if large or homogenous plantations are avoided -- a recommendation inherently at odds with the requirements of the large-scale forestry industry. The team also recommends close monitoring of plantations for a rise in insect resistance, but such monitoring is expensive and difficult in the remote locations in which plantations are often established.

In addition, the long life cycles of trees and the range of seasonal and other environmental stresses that they have to withstand entail that any genetic modifications made to them may be unstable. This too militates against reliable risk assessment. Each stage of a tree's lifecycle is characterised by a cascade of previously unused genes or gene combinations -- those that act in concert to direct flower formation or fruit ripening, for example. Determining how these interact with the engineered gene could take several years to ascertain -- a timescale unlikely to be acceptable to shareholders or even many environmental risk assessors. Unforeseen results are common. Aspen, for instance, will usually not flower before its seventh year, and German authorities gave consent for a five-year open field trial of GM aspen trees on the assumption that they would not flower before the trial had finished. Unexpectedly, however, one of the GM trees started flowering in its third year, despite pre-trial findings hinting that GM aspen would grow even more slowly than non-GM aspen. Although all the trees were derived from the same gene clone, in other words, they did not all flower at the same time. Even in agricultural crops, engineered genes have been shown to be less stable than originally expected.

Given the threat to the development of forestry biotech which thoroughgoing and rational assessment would pose, it is small wonder that proponents such as Simon Bright of Zeneca Agrochemicals are driven on occasion to articulate the defensive and unscientific demand that questions about GM trees be "framed in a way that gets a positive answer, or that a positive answer is allowed". Fortunately or unfortunately, the agencies currently undertaking risk assessment of GM trees are often the ones with a vested interest in supplying just that "positive answer". Thus in Canada the Canadian Forest Service both promotes GM research and checks for risks, while Oregon State University's TGERC program, whose future lies in promoting GM trees, is precisely the body the US Environmental Protection Agency has chosen to assess the dangers of the technology. This pattern hardly bodes well for forest ecosystems and the people whose livelihoods depend directly on them.

Conclusion    

The processes through which genetically engineered trees are being developed are profoundly biased against social arrangements which promote and rely on biological diversity. These processes are also riven by dilemmas and destructive tendencies which chains of technical refinements, no matter how long, are likely to be powerless to overcome. Tackling the challenge GM trees pose means tackling the industrial and bureaucratic tradition which seeks the radical simplification of landscapes. That entails alliance-building with groups working against and outside that tradition.

In these respects, the issues raised by GM trees are similar to those raised by GM crops. Yet in many ways, genetic modification in forestry is an even more serious issue than genetic engineering in agriculture. Trees' long lives and largely undomesticated status, their poorly understood biology and lifecycles, the complexity and fragility of forest ecosystems, and corporate and state control over enormous areas of forest land on which GM trees could be planted combine to create risks which are unique. The biosafety and social implications of the application of genetic engineering to forestry are grave enough to warrant an immediate halt to releases of GM trees.