How Controversies Start a New Life: GMO and Non-GMO soybean Sustainable Certification

• In Event: Frontiers of Climate Change and Extinction: Rendering Worlds Familiar and Strange

Abstract

This article is part of the Cosmo-climate project that was coordinated by the
late Ulrich Beck. In the domain of new low-carbon technologies addressing
the global risk of climate change. This recognition of risk is crucial for a
transitional turn in the economic sector in the direction of low-carbon
innovations. This can be understood as part of collective innovation networks
that may give rise to 'cosmopolitan innovations’. In the cosmopolitan order
eco certifications have become crucial for private business that operate at a
global scale in order to obtain legitimatization. We will focus in the
sociotechnical networks around animal feed innovations, where certified
genetically modify (GM) soy, a controversial innovation in itself, has became
the main ingredient. We follow the GM soy from producers, certifications of
low carbon emissions, European supermarkets, animal farmers, animal feed
companies and associations, scientists, regulators and also consumers. We
characterize this network as pragmatic, not free of criticism, formed
by heterogeneous social, political, economic and scientific actors. We go from
Brazil to the EU and China, mainly using documental research and interviews
with key actors. Finally we argue that there is a global process of selftransformation
of the rules of the markets, where environmental, scientific and
ethical values are at stake through the process of low-carbon technologies
and certifications.

Author

• Julia Silvia Guivant, federal university of santa catarina