Inclusive and international risk assessment for gene drive
Understanding and promoting opportunities for engagement in gene drive risk assessment
Project goals
There is a lot of international effort focused on the development of risk assessment frameworks for gene drive organisms. Through the efforts of a small group of experts, an exclusive risk assessment framework is emerging and likely to be embedded into national contexts within a few years.
In response to international calls for opening-up gene drive governance, our interdisciplinary team addresses the urgent need to understand the different ways in which a risk assessment framework might be configured based on an inclusive and reflexive process before this window of opportunity closes.
Our aim is to understand how a risk assessment framework might reflect the multiple understandings of hazard and risk gathered from academic, professional and lay actors and include opportunities for participation in future risk assessments.
FUNDER
British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Call (2020)
What we are doing
This project is currently underway. At present, we are collaborating with Target Malaria and the European Food Safety Authority to collaboratively reflect on different gene drive risk assessment decisions as technology developers and regulators prepare for field trials of gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control. Together, we consider what role engagement does and could play in them.
We are in the process of interviewing a diverse range of experts in gene drive risk assessment to understand the difference aspects of inclusion and diversity in risk assessment.
Activities and outputs
Hartley S, Kokotovich A, Devos Y and Mumford J 2023 Engagement on risk assessment for gene drive mosquitoes by EFSA and Target Malaria Environmental Science and Policy
Connolly J. B, Mumford J.D, Glandorf B, Hartley S, Lewis O.T, Turner G, Beech C, Sykes N, Coulibaly M, Romeis J, Teem J, Tonui W, Evans S.W, Lovett B, Mankad A, Mnzava A, Fuchs S, Hackett T, Landis W, Marshall J, Aboagye Antwi F 2022 Recommendations for environmental risk assessment of gene drive applications for malaria vector control Malaria Journal, 21: 152
Hartley S, Kokotovich A and McCalman C 2022 Engagement in risk assessment: Prescription and practice in the international development of gene drive risk assessment guidelines (2014-2020) Regulation and Governance
Talk - ‘Making Gene Drive comfortable? Negotiating risk governance at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’ Sarah Hartley and Rob Smith (University of Edinburgh) 4S 2021 Toronto Canada October 2021
Talk - ‘Together is better: engagement in risk assessment’ Sarah Hartley, Plenary ONE – Health, Environment & Society – Conference Brussels, Belgium June 2022
Talk - ‘Guidelines for gene drive risk assessment as a key site of governance’ National Institutes of Health, Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC) meeting 9-10 November 2020 Session IV: Strategies for assessing risk and benefit for field releases
Workshop - ‘Inclusive and International Risk Assessment: Building a framework for Gene Drive organisms through collaboration’, held at the Institute for Practical Ethics, University of California, San Diego March 2022
Newsletter article - ‘The need for diversity in gene drive risk assessment’, by Adam Kokotovich and Sarah Hartley, published in the ARRIGE Newsletter, May 2022
Project Team
