We focus on alternative innovation pathways for addressing agricultural sustainability challenges in Odisha, India. The first pathway that we term as industrial, is focused on breeding new seed varieties in modern laboratories and test fields, ostensibly for climate resilience. It is driven by public scientific institutions and private corporations. The second pathway that we call agroecological, is grounded in saving and sharing of diverse local varieties, largely by Indigenous (Adivasi) smallholders and their allies in civil society. Using the pathways’ descriptions (...) as bases, we present perspectives of different professional groups who appraise how effectively each pathway addresses a range of sustainability issues. While all participants appraise the agroecological pathway to be clearly better performing for addressing agricultural biodiversity and cultural uses of rice, appraisals for issues of the economy, seed accessibility, stress tolerance, and nutrition diverged from each other. An overall picture in support of one pathway did not emerge. Embracing such ambiguities and uncertainties associated with appraisals, we argue for balancing political support between diverse pathways. Greater support for structurally marginalised agroecological pathways may be crucial to meet sustainability goals. This support can include the restitution of lands and other socio-ecological resources for marginalised pathways as well as guaranteeing autonomy of Adivasi (Indigenous) communities among whom the pathways thrive. (shrink)

As shocking as He Jiankui's genetic experiment resulting in the world's first gene‐edited babies may have been, a socioethical inquiry into this paradigmatic case of scientific misconduct reveals its deep roots in genetic and scientific nationalism, as manifested in the widely accepted practice of yousheng (superior birth or eugenics) in China and the country's authoritarian pursuit of science superpower status. Along with eugenics, bionationalism has long been an international phenomenon. A global sociobioethics or ethical transculturalism is thus necessary to adequately (...) investigate the macrolevel sociopolitical, historical, and transnational forces, such as bionationalism, that structurally shape bioethical issues and people's responses to them, causing the systematic undermining of essential bioethical norms and the instrumentalization of human life. (shrink)