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INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE & PATENT RIGHTS
source: www.crvp.org/book/Series02/
II-5/chapter_vii.htm
peopleandplants.org/
dp/dp2/issues.htm
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Patent rights, biotechnology, and biological material…- Some 40% of the world’s market economy is based on biological products and processes. In the rural communities of Africa, Asia and Latin America where the majority of the world’s people live, the dependence on biomaterials can run to over 90% of human survival requirements.
- In an increasingly urbanised world, it is difficult for those of us inside city gates to remember that 8 out of 10 members of the human family turn to community healers and medicinal plants for protection from illness.
- The question arises: is it ethically or morally right for research agencies from ‘developed’ countries to go to ‘developing’ countries, obtain valuable information crucial for research and manufacture of a precious drug that is likely to be inaccessible to the populations of the ‘developing’ countries, without the latter receiving any meaningful economic benefits for originally providing the knowledge that led to the discovery or development of that drug? As a corollary: will it be ethically or morally justified for ‘developing’ countries to protect their traditional herbal heritages by placing a total embargo on the exploitation of these medicinal plants?
Indigenous knowledge (IK) is now widely recognised as vital for ecological and social sustainability…- the economic contribution of IK to our ability to make sustainable use of biological resources is enormous: according to an estimate, the germplasm* from developing countries being used in the global pharmaceutical industry was worth at least US$32 billion a year in the early 1990s;
- companies and institutions from developed countries are using intellectual property rights (IPRs) to misappropriate the IK of local communities. In many cases, the wild plants are treated as resources available to anybody without controls. Moreover - with few exceptions - prices paid to local collectors are very low, and bear no relation to annual sustainable off-take.
- developing countries receive only a minute fraction of this for the raw materials and knowledge that they contribute to the growth of pharmaceutical industry. To make a living, commercial medicinal plant gatherers are often forced to ‘mine’ rather than manage these resources;
- if the international companies involved in this trade are to operate in a responsible manner, this situation needs to change to one of two alternatives: commercial cultivation or sustainable gathering from the wild.
* The protoplasm of the germ cells that contains chromosomes and genes.
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