Ecologists in Action and Madrid Agroecologico presented 300,000 citizen signatures to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, urging Minister Teresa Ribera to accelerate Spain’s stance on environmental policy. An international moratorium on technology for releasing organisms modified with gene drives (OIG) will be part of the discussions during the negotiations of the XV Conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity, scheduled for December.
During the signature delivery, participants highlighted perceived risks to human health and the environment posed by this new gene technology.
Activists bore a banner asserting that this form of genetic engineering carries an international moratorium and represents a danger to environmentalists.
This technique would bypass traditional inheritance rules by ensuring a genetic trait spreads to all offspring, even when it is lethal to the species. Gene drive experiments have so far occurred under controlled conditions, in laboratories or closed facilities, but OIGs are being prepared for potential release into the environment in the near future.
The intended use of gene drives would be to suppress populations of insects that act as disease vectors, invasive species, or so-called weeds and pests of industrial agriculture.
multiple threats
On one hand, the potential applications appear highly promising; on the other, they carry significant risks, as scientists caution. Once released into the wild, gene-driven organisms cannot be undone, and their evolution and spread may be uncontrollable.
Experts warn about deliberate modification and elimination of species, which could threaten ecosystem stability, sustainable farming, and human health, with outcomes that are hard to predict given current information.
Disappearance of one species might enable the spread of other, possibly more harmful species, or shift disease vectors to new regions. Conversely, many wild species, including those labeled as pests, perform important ecosystem services such as pollination.
Theo Oberhuber, spokesperson for Ecologists in Action, warned that a mutagenic chain reaction triggered by gene drive organisms could destabilize entire ecosystems and, in extreme cases, cause a collapse.
He cautioned that releasing gene drives—even for experimental purposes—could yield unpredictable and irreversible consequences for pollinators and the broader food web, which has already been stressed by climate change and high insect mortality.
Marian Simón, spokesperson for Madrid Agroecologico, added that organisms with gene drives do not respect borders and could spread globally.
Simón noted that the international community currently lacks sufficient knowledge and binding agreements to regulate such a fundamental and irreversible technology. He called for a global moratorium on gene drives as an urgent priority.
Finally, Ecologists in Action spokesperson Francisco Segura urged an immediate halt to species extinction, to bolster resilience and protect ecosystems, rather than playing evolution with what he called Russian roulette by genetically modifying wild species in many regions of the world.
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