UNESCO/ICSU World Conference on Science
<http://helix.nature.com/wcs/b21.html>http://helix.nature.com/wcs/b21.html
Africa splits over bar to plant patents
11 March 1999 (see Nature Volume 398, page 99)
[LONDON] An Africa-wide consensus to restrict the patenting of plant
varieties
by overseas companies appears to be in disarray following a decision by 16
representatives of French-speaking African countries to break ranks.
These countries have agreed instead to recommend the latest version of the
International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants,
known as the UPOV convention.
The decision was made two weeks ago at a meeting of patent office officials
from member states of the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété
Intellectuelle
(OAPI), the regional patent office for Francophone Africa. The meeting was
held in the Central African Republic.
Accession to the UPOV convention, which grants plant breeders
intellectual-property
rights over the commercialization of products such as seed, was also due to
be discussed this week by 14 English-speaking African countries at a meeting
organized by their regional patent office, the African Regional Industrial
Property Organization (ARIPO), in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe and Kenya, which have a large community of plant breeders, are
leading
the calls for ARIPO states to ratify the UPOV convention. But
environmentalist
organizations such as the Canada-based Rural Advancement Foundation
International are urging governments to stay out, on the grounds that
ratification
will prevent small farmers from saving seeds for re-use.
UPOV officials, however, point out that the convention allows subsistence
farmers -
those who grow crops to feed their families, but not to sell - and
state-funded
scientific research organizations to save seeds for replanting.
These developments will cast a shadow over an agreement reached in January
by
the heads of government of the 62-member Organization of African Unity (OAU)
to restrict patents on plant varieties until an Africa-wide alternative
system
to patents has been developed.
This system, which is expected to be published in draft form later this
month,
will aim to divide the intellectual-property rights of new plant forms
between
plant breeders and indigenous communities that might have contributed to
early
varieties.
Johnson Ekpere, secretary-general of the Scientific, Technical and Research
Commission of the OAU, says the decision by the organization's heads of
state
still stands. He says it was reached at a meeting of heads of government in
Lusaka, Zambia, attended mainly by representatives of foreign ministries.
But Ekpere admits that details of this decision have not filtered down to
science ministries and patent offices. "This is a case of the right hand not
knowing what the left hand is doing," he says.
He describes as "unlikely" any attempts to ratify the UPOV convention in an
African parliament. Mzondi Haviland Chirambo, director-general of ARIPO,
agrees, and believes that ARIPO member states are unlikely to follow the
lead set by OAPI countries.
Both Chirambo and Ekpere believe that African countries will want to delay
new legislation until the outcome of a review on the relationship between
TRIPS
-
a World Trade Organization agreement on intellectual-property rights - the
UN biodiversity convention and the UPOV convention. The review is expected
to be completed later this year.
All member countries of the World Trade Organization are required to frame
their patent laws around TRIPS, which says that countries that prohibit the
patenting of plant varieties must provide an alternative system of
protecting
the intellectual-property rights of plant breeders.
At the same time, however, the biodiversity convention is interpreted by
some
as
suggesting that the benefits - including commercial benefits - from
biodiversity
should not be restricted to plant breeders, but should include those who may
have contributed to a discovery in the past.
EHSAN MASOOD
Subject: [BIO-IPR] Africa splits over plant patenting
Resent-Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 03:21:50 -0800
Resent-From: bio-ipr@cuenet.com
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 19:17:44 +0800
From: GRAIN Los Banos <grain@baylink.mozcom.com>
To: bio-ipr@cuenet.com
--
BIO-IPR docserver
________________________________________________________
TITLE: Africa splits over bar to plant patents
AUTHOR: Ehsan Masood
PUBLICATION: Nature, World Conference on Science
DATE: 11 March 1999
URL: http://helix.nature.com/wcs/b21.html
________________________________________________________
AFRICA SPLITS OVER BAR TO PLANT PATENTS
Ehsan Masood
Nature, 11 March 1999
[LONDON] An Africa-wide consensus to restrict the patenting of plant
varieties by overseas companies appears to be in disarray following a
decision by 16 representatives of French-speaking African countries to break
ranks.
These countries have agreed instead to recommend the latest version of the
International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants,
known as the UPOV convention.
The decision was made two weeks ago at a meeting of patent office officials
from member states of the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété
Intellectuelle (OAPI), the regional patent office for Francophone Africa.
The meeting was held in the Central African Republic.
Accession to the UPOV convention, which grants plant breeders
intellectual-property rights over the commercialization of products such as
seed, was also due to be discussed this week by 14 English-speaking African
countries at a meeting organized by their regional patent office, the
African Regional Industrial Property Organization (ARIPO), in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe and Kenya, which have a large community of plant breeders, are
leading the calls for ARIPO states to ratify the UPOV convention. But
environmentalist organizations such as the Canada-based Rural Advancement
Foundation International are urging governments to stay out, on the grounds
that ratification will prevent small farmers from saving seeds for re-use.
UPOV officials, however, point out that the convention allows subsistence
farmers - those who grow crops to feed their families, but not to sell - and
state-funded scientific research organizations to save seeds for replanting.
These developments will cast a shadow over an agreement reached in January
by the heads of government of the 62-member Organization of African Unity
(OAU) to restrict patents on plant varieties until an Africa-wide
alternative system to patents has been developed.
This system, which is expected to be published in draft form later this
month, will aim to divide the intellectual-property rights of new plant
forms between plant breeders and indigenous communities that might have
contributed to early varieties.
Johnson Ekpere, secretary-general of the Scientific, Technical and Research
Commission of the OAU, says the decision by the organization's heads of
state still stands. He says it was reached at a meeting of heads of
government in Lusaka, Zambia, attended mainly by representatives of foreign
ministries.
But Ekpere admits that details of this decision have not filtered down to
science ministries and patent offices. "This is a case of the right hand not
knowing what the left hand is doing," he says.
He describes as "unlikely" any attempts to ratify the UPOV convention in an
African parliament. Mzondi Haviland Chirambo, director-general of ARIPO,
agrees, and believes that ARIPO member states are unlikely to follow the
lead set by OAPI countries.
Both Chirambo and Ekpere believe that African countries will want to delay
new legislation until the outcome of a review on the relationship between
TRIPS - a World Trade Organization agreement on intellectual-property rights
- the UN biodiversity convention and the UPOV convention. The review is
expected to be completed later this year.
All member countries of the World Trade Organization are required to frame
their patent laws around TRIPS, which says that countries that prohibit the
patenting of plant varieties must provide an alternative system of
protecting the intellectual-property rights of plant breeders.
At the same time, however, the biodiversity convention is interpreted by
some as suggesting that the benefits - including commercial benefits - from
biodiversity should not be restricted to plant breeders, but should include
those who may have contributed to a discovery in the past.
Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1999
_________________________________________________________
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Subject: [IKD] The focus of this discussion: message from the moderators
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 10:40:33 -0500
From: moderator1@worldbank.org
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
Dear IKD members:
In the past week, several members have posted messages responding to CJ
Patel's post criticizing the basic thrust of this discussion (we have
not, alas, heard back from CJ Patel.) They have echoed the argument
that this entire discusssion is wrong-headed since it doesn't include a
fundamental discussion of the nature of development and its
sustainability. To give examples of just a few of the comments (these
are EXCERPTS from a few messages submitted to the list; we have not
excerpted every message on this subject, and we apologize to the two
or three other members whose messages on this subject have not been
posted):
FROM WILLEM GEORG (edfnz@clear.net.nz)
In one of the early posts, the "role of knowledge in advancing economic and
social development" was mentioned. However, the sustainability of the
knowledge and of development deserves a place in the discussion.
If you allow me to make an analogy: I would not design and construct
further decks on a ship without checking whether the water is deep enough.
In our case environmental data clearly suggest that our present Titanic
economy has already run on the rocks in too shallow water. Soon (in one
generation or two) that water will be like a small trickle for a large
overload of people with our resource-intensive lifestyles.
It needs to be mentioned in all clarity that "development" virtually always
entails economic growth and increased resource depletion and wastes
production. But the Earth does not tolerate further development. We have
already overshot the Earth's carrying capacity by a large factor, mainly
brought about by economic development in a historically extremely short
time span of 9 generations (since 1775).
Therefore I would suggest that we discuss the question of how we can
acquire and apply knowledge and wisdom that will lead to a re-development
of the overdeveloped countries in order to accommodate to the requirement
of sustainability.
Willem Georg
<edfnz@clear.net.nz>
FROM ABU DAVIES (jdavies@Fedsources.com)
I may not subscribe to my Patel's approach or choice of words when
responding to this discussion, but certainly do identify with him in
substance. I can sense his frustration with the whole discussion, even
though it is a good idea. The point is that the issues discussed here are
very abstract and can only serve the purpose of those - mostly western
students who are in the process of writing capstones, or thesis papers in
defense of their academic degrees. It is a good resource for western
research but relates very little to what is happening in Africa at the
moment for instance.
FROM KEVIN LYONETTE (lyonette.bluewin.ch)
If the purpose of development is marketization -and, in many ways,
current practice points in that direction - then we are back to the
basic question which many of us raised some 2/3 weeks ago -what is the
nature and purpose of development ? There is a fundamental divergence of
view on this, I feel, which is not being addressed. Failure to address
it obviously reduces the usefulness and validity of any conclusions our
discussion may reach.
The Moderators face a quandary. We certainly agree that one cannot, at a
general level, discuss any development-related issue without having a
broader understanding of the nature of development. And we certainly
agree that these fundamental questions about the nature of development
identified by these and other participants are legitimate and interesting
questions. However, we had announced from the start that this list would
be a time-limited, focused discussion on a very specific set of issues,
and over 800 people signed up for precisely such a discussion. There
are countless other discussion lists addressing other issues of
development, and there is even a list currently running within
the World Bank's Development Forum (the "attackpov" list) focused on broader
issues of how to analyze, and address, the causes of poverty. To argue
that any discussion list on any development subject has to address
the entirety of development issues and the fundamental issues of the nature
of
development (and the global economy) strikes us as a bit limiting. We
respect the views of those who say that a discussion on issues of
knowledge and information for development is pointless without a broader
discussion of the nature of development, but we feel inclined to stick to
the commitment we made to the 800-plus subscribers to keep this list
focused on a particular set of topics.
We would propose, therefore, that we proceed with the announced weekly
topics
and come back at the end to a "wrap-up" discussion that will take into
consideration the larger issues pointed to by Patel and others. We will
post
the Introduction to Week 6 (information glut) and encourage you to keep
posting
on Indigenous Knowledge and other issues from earlier weeks also as
appropriate. Reiner Woytek of the World bank IK Initiative will post
some summary thoughts on the IK discussion today.
Thanks for your understanding, and your participation.
The moderators
Subject: [IKD] Information overload -- Introduction to Week 6
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:24:06 -0500 (EST)
From: panos@gn.apc.org (James Deane)
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
I'd suggest two sets of questions.
First, in an age of information bombardment, how do we sort the wheat from
the chaff?
Second, just how widespread is this information overload problem. For the
poor in particular, is there a problem at all, or is information scarcity
more widespread.
On the first, the rapid advance of ICTs and the proliferation of media and
other trends have transformed access to information. For many, we have
shifted from an environment of information paucity to information glut, from
a monopoly to a cacophony of voices demanding our attention. The issue is
not only the amount of information that is being produced on virtually all
topics, but also the quality, relevance, trustworthiness and credibility of
that information.
Information in these environments can be seen as increasingly a barrier to
effective decisionmaking. How can developing countries and the poor in
particular sort through all this information and make sense of it? What
role
do different institutions such as NGOs, the media, publishing, consumer
bureaux,
universities, schools and libraries have in helping to sort this
out? What have been successful experiences that perhaps can be built on?
On the second, is there a problem at all. One in three people on the planet
lack access to electicity let alone the internet. As we've already
discussed, the media often provides little or no information. For the vast
majority of people on the planet, is the problem one of information overload
or information starvation.
James Deane
===========================================================================
James Deane
Director, Programmes
Panos Institute
9 White Lion St
London N1 9PD, UK
Tel: +44 171 278 1111
Fax: +44 171 278 0345
e-mail: jamesd@panoslondon.org.uk
or panos@gn.apc.org
Web site: http://oneworld.org/panos/
===========================================================================
Subject: [IKD] Reply to Graham Dutfield
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:28:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Reinald.Doebel@t-online.de
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
Graham Dutfield's remarks are very much to the point. "Indigenous"
knowledge is not only "embedded" in specific cultural and ecological
environments, its distribution and use is also "regulated" by varying
local arrangements. These arrangements are fundamentally different from
the legal arrangements required for IPRs: they are not put into the
fixed form of universally applicable laws, rather they remain negotiable
according to situations. Which does not mean that there are no "rights
and obligations". This is probably the main difficulty in the suggestion
that policiy-makers should learn from these traditional arrangements:
There is at present simply no possibility to make binding legal
arrangements as flexible as "traditional" systems sometimes are.
This is not an argument for abandoning attempts to make some form of
locally negotiated compenstaion scheme legally binding!
The one point which Graham Dutfield does not stress is the changing
nature of "indigenous" knowledge through contact with "western
knowledge" and through indigenous "innovators". This is a point brought
our very clearly in the short description of "Shod Yatra: Exploring
science, creativity and ecological ethics in villages" which can be
accessed at the SRISTI-homepage (this direct-access-link was privided by
Prof. Anil Gupta on Friday, March 12). There are "innovators" who often
do not feel well recognized by their own communities and whose
self-esteem is boosted if "outsiders" show an interest in what they are
doing. As the group from the renowned Indian Institute of Management did
on their 250km footwalk to learn about indigenous innovations.
Similar observations are brought out clearly in Victor Crutchley's
"Inventors of Zambia - Portraits of Zambian Fundis" (Eggardon
Publications, 1996), observations which agree with my own both in
Malaysia and in Zambia.
Reinald Doebel
Institute of Sociology
University of Muenster
reinald.deobel@t-online.de
Subject: [IKD] Reply to Henryka Manes
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:32:12 -0500 (EST)
From: "M. Gordon Jones" <mgjones@cwix.com>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
I am sure there are others in the ongoing dialogue who will have experiences
relevant to the Manes contribution today. I would only point to an ongoing
involvement in Latin America by one Christian church grouping -- I have no
connection with them whatsoever, but once visited their headquarters at
Yarinacocha in the Peruvian jungle -- that does contradict the presumption
that such groups undermine local knowledge resources.
The group is the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Basing its involvement on
an obscure Biblical reference to getting God's message out in "all the
languages," it has done 3-4 decades of extraordinary work in translating
dialects and preserving small linguistic and cultural communities in remote
and inaccessible locations. The funding needed to do this culturally
worthwhile work evidently is substantial -- and no other grouping was or is
doing it, as I understand the situation.
Some could argue that proselytizing is a high price to pay (and some local
politicians have argued it -- even shutting down their activity in Ecuador
20 years ago), but the scientific work done by the Institute is regarded an
invaluable by Peruvian and other non-religious experts whom I have met. It
has been several years since I last heard of the Institute. They probably
have a Web site, if readers want to check on their current role.
M. Gordon Jones
Senior Associate
Global Business Access Ltd.
Washington, DC
mgjones@cwix.com
Subject: [IKD] Coping with ambivalence
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:34:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Sabine Grund <Sabine_Grund@public.uni-hamburg.de>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
Thanks to Chris Green for the fitting interpretations of the word
'discovery'! We urgently need to increase our awareness of ambivalences,
which the world is filled with.
1.) Knowledge always has origins, it results from prior work.
As Isaac Newton once said: "We are all standing on the shoulders of
giants."
Just too few people are willing to admit that. Our culture of
achievement is too narrow. Thus the problem of ascribing credit for
inventions/'discoveries' is a very real one, and always has been. Just
that we begin to acknowledge that more broadly.
Most multinational firms successfully exploit the legal loopholes, which
are created by our legal concept that whatever is not forbidden is
permitted, and whatever is undefined is free for grabbing by whoever
comes first.
(And even in cases of proven definable theft by multinationals, the
political will to pursue it is often lacking.)
2.) What conclusions do we draw from the fact that the ownership of
knowledge mostly is ambivalent?
Technocratic solutions don't lead us anywhere. Shekhar Patel's idea of
'metrics' assumes that we just need to recognize the metrics that exist,
and use them, "based on experiments such as peoples' participation".
Participation is precisely not an experiment, it should be considered a
basic right! We have a long way to go until this is generally accepted.
If we accept ambivalence and real diversity, we won't strive to avoid
"investing years in learning a foreign language", and rely on computer
translation instead. Rather we should all be encouraged to learn at
least one other language and its culture fluently. Such knowledge maybe
should be a prerequisite for holding public office...
Learning should become a two-way street. The supposed hegemony of
English is not the problem. It is relatively easier to use for the
majority than Russian, German, Chinese etc. as a world language.
Language does not unify, as the differences between Britons and
Americans testify.
If we followed the Western concept, we would have to define property
rights for IK and include those in our legal codes. That may be an
immediate step to help people defend their indigenous knowledge, but
that is insufficient. Rather we need to rethink our concept of diversity
and how we can incorporate a new one into a more encompassing
international culture.
Sabine E. Grund
Hamburg, Germany
Sabine_Grund@public.uni-hamburg.de
Subject: [IKD] Re: Info Overload
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 22:05:18 +0200
From: "Samantha Fleming" <ict@iafrica.com>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: <IKD@jazz.worldbank.org>
To introduce myself, my name is Samantha. I am developing a research
masters on the impact of ICTs on sustainable human development in rural
areas in South Africa.
Regarding James Dean's comments:
Given that rural populations make up nearly half of the world's
population, and that these populations most often do not have easy
access to the rapid advance of ICTs and other tools for electronic
information retrieval, I would estimate that information paucity is
still quite a problem. Perhaps more importantly, once individuals and
communities do have access to ICTs etc. what kind of information is
available to them??? more often than not, north-american dominated
information.
There is a need for communities at a grassroots level to take hold of
new technologies and use them for their own means - and to get their own
voices heard. This way the type of information available will become
more relevant to those of us on the ground, and more "indigenous
knowledge" will be widely spread. And once this kind of knowledge
becomes more available on the channels of the information highway, a new
market for ICTs will emerge as grassroots voices discover what ICTs can
do for them.
Samantha Fleming (ict@iafrica.com)
Subject: [IKD] RE: Indigenous Knowledge
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 18:04:33 -0500 (EST)
From: GLORIA EMEAGWALI <EMEAGWALI@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
CC: EMEAGWALI@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU
Are the IMF and the Worldbank on a collision course? How will
the present concern of the World Bank for indigenous technology
correlate with the objectives and general policy orientations of
its sister (or brother) organization the International Monetary Fund?
Indigenous technology implies empowerment, building national
esteem and economic/technical independence and self sufficiency.
Indigenous technology is people-oriented and grows out of the
experimentation, trial-and error accomplishments and technical
expertise of the various demographic entities in various regions
including Africa, Southeast Asia, the America's, the caribbean and so
on. Promoting indigenous technology implies empowerment and
self-sustained growth in the final analysis. My question is this:
How can these noble ideals coexist with IMF/World Bank policies
which in fact aim at diempowerment. The conditionalities of
the IMF are clear. They necessitate the removal of subsidies and
state assistance for major projects; they encourage the free-market
model, free-trade and liberalisation in the context of sweeping
influx and inundation of foreign products; and in fact undermine
self-sufficiency. Indigenous technology actually undermines
liberalization and provides alternatives to western products. This
is certainly not an objective of the IMF economic reform package.
So how does the World Bank plan to deal with these rival
objectives from a sister organization?
Am I missing something here? Is the World Bank really serious
about this initiative? I'll appreciate corrections.
Gloria Emeagwali
http://members.aol.com/afsci/africana.htm
African Indigenous Knowledge Systems
emeagwali@ccsua.ctstateu.edu
Subject: [IKD] INFORMATION OVERLOAD--WEEK 6
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:34:10 -0600
From: Alfonso Gumucio Dagron <agumucio@guate.net>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: "'ikd@jazz.worldbank.org'" <ikd@jazz.worldbank.org>
CC: "'James Deane'" <panos@gn.apc.org>,
"'James Deane (PANOS)'"
<jamesd@panoslondon.org.uk>
Here is a topic that concerns not only the developing countries but
everyone in the world: 1) the appearance of having too much information,
2) the practical impossibility of sorting the information that is really
useful and 3) the lack of technological access to it by the largest
percentage of people living in developing countries.
Radio is still the most important media -and often the only in the
developing world, but how can people "sort" the information received
through the waves?
I would like to refer mainly to the Internet, because its impact has
been grossly exaggerated in the past few years.
Let's start by the THIRD topic: how many people in the world have the
technological means to access information? As I don't have the figures,
maybe PANOS or the World Bank can provide the following:
- Percentage of people in developing countries that have electricity:
- Percentage of people in developing countries that have a telephone:
- Percentage of people in developing countries that have a computer:
- Percentage of people un developing countries that have Internet
access:
And then, we should establish for all the above questions, the
difference between people living in rural and urban areas. I'm sure many
will be very surprised to find at what point Internet has been mystified
and in reality is still irrelevant for the vast majority of people in
the developing world. Numbers must talk.
Let's continue with the SECOND topic: sorting the useful information.
Here comes another set of questions:
- Percentage of the total volume of Internet that is in English
language:
- Percentage of people that read & write English in developing
countries:
- Percentage of people that are literate in any language:
So, even supposing that people have access to electricity, telephone,
computers and Internet (four steps that we need to differentiate) it is
likely that when the screen pops up, it will make no difference to their
lives. I'm not even referring to computers skills which can be easily
learned by anyone. I'm referring to language -and along with language,
culture. Don't tell me for example that India or Nigeria are "English
speaking countries" and don't use it to blow up the statistics. We all
know that only a minority of the leading classes in those and other
countries speak English, and even less write or read.
I'm always very astonished to read in these Internet discussions how
postings from people that have English as their mother tongue -and
probably don't speak other languages, don't seem concerned at all by the
question of language in Internet. Some of them go as far as to say that
everybody else should learn English to join "the club". Cultural
dominance is taken as a very natural thing: take it or leave it. But even
if the current automatic translators could be perfected and
translate Internet pages to every other language in the world -several
thousands, in fact we should all be proud of that, how can people "make
sense" of it when most of the content transpires another culture, other
values, other needs?
This leads to the FIRST topic: is it really that there is an overload of
information? For whom? Put the Internet toys in the middle of a rural
community in the highlands of Guatemala or the north of Nigeria, what
can they possibly find in Internet that will help their development,
their culture or their community organization? How conscious of this
are those that produce the information for Internet?
The overload of information concerns mainly people in industrialized
countries, and yes, there is a big problem to sort it out. As James
Deane puts it so rightly: "a cacophony of voices demanding our
attention" and of course the issue of "quality, relevance,
trustworthiness and credibility of that information".
The above is not to say that Internet is not potentially a great
instrument for the future, but the great risk for the developing
countries is if it continues developing as television did in the past
two decades: total domination -thanks to "free market" policies, over
local and culturally appropriated contents. More than 80% of what you
see on TV in the Third World is US production, and mostly irrelevant to
our countries. Internet is just moving on that same direction, moreover
as computer and media technology are rapidly approaching to each
other. Unless the technology becomes cheaper and more accessible, and the
issue of language and contents is seriously discussed, I doubt
organizations in the developing countries will be able to make the
difference in the next years in order to transform the current Internet
in a more democratic, cross-cultural and horizontal communication and
information instrument for development.
Alfonso GUMUCIO DAGRON
gumucio-dagron@bigfoot.com
Subject: [IKD] Re: Indigenous knowledge
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:33:36 -0500 (EST)
From: "Angela C. de Siqueira" <acs4085@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
I completely agree with Elda Silva when she states that "international
developers should be able to support them [indigeneous people]the best way
we can, but avoid making decisions for them". I also agree with her proposal
to "start working locally with indigenous communities in each country with
eventual forums regionwide or nation wide that would allow different
indigenous groups to discuss with western international developers on
specific agenda issues for sustainable development."
This discussion and the other one about poverty are so important to be
closed to the internet in a world where only a few people have access to
computers, not top say to the internet, telephone, eletrecity, etc. In fact
I gave the same kind of sugestion to the moderator of the other discussion
group.
The fact is that "developers" when they go to a country they only met with
top governments officials, in closed meetings or only open to elite groups.
And most of time they have their own diagnosis and solutions for the
problems, without reading local papers, books and neither consulting social
organized movements, such as landless groups, street kids, indigenous
associations (not only the governmental ones). Dialogue with local
communities is even harder. Thus, most of proposal and projects are top-down
measure.
Moreover the gap among indigenous and western knowledge will not be
fulfilled in the sense that indigenous knowledge is seem as a collective
knowledge, to be shared, transmitted and actualized from generations; it
must be used to foster the well-being of the whole group and society. By the
other hand, most of the western knowledge is seem as a private property,
that must be acquired for those able to pay. In fact most of indigenous
knowledge can affect the possible capacity for making profits from those
that want to substitute the "free" one for the "acquired" one. They can
increase profits, if privately approprated and patented by some group; and
these indigenous knowledge and way of living can reduce profits, because in
their environmental relation with nature, they will not need modified seeds,
chemical fertilizers, canned foods, etc, that multinational corporations and
national groups are willing to sell.
As I stated in some prior message we need another model of development and
we have a lot to learn with indigenous people, instead of trying to "sell"
them the western, polluted, overcosumerist and destructive model...
Thanks for your attention,
Angela C. de Siqueira-acd4085@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
Subject: Re: [IKD] Information overload -- Introduction to Week 6
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:41:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Reinald.Doebel@t-online.de
Reply-To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
To: ikd@jazz.worldbank.org
James Deane wrote: in an age of information bombardment, how do we sort
the wheat from the chaff?
This is indeed a crucial question which the moderators - and all the
participants - even of this comparatively moderate list had to face
constantly.
The participants - in contrast to the moderators - could revert to the
"defense" which is appropriate to "bombardments": Duck and cover. Which
of course means missing information which might be "vital" to you.
But seriously: there is an apparent need for a kind of "indigenous
knowledge" of "information workers" - who are a "secondary human
resource" for all those who do not possess the skill to quickly decide
on the trustworthiness of information published electronically - or in
the public media.
In my own experience this skill combines the use of hints of people one
knows - and trusts - personally with an acquired trust in certain
organisations. Most likely these will be different ones for different
people: some will trust World Bank Publications more than publications
by the Worldwatch Institute, and for some it will be the reverse.
I do not see any "method" to avoid this kind of personal choice of who
to trust and who not to trust. And I would appreciate to hear about the
experience of other participants in this list: has it ever occurred that
you put some faith into a published "information" which turned out to be
misinformation? And does this not happen more easily especially with
electronic publications? - Unless they come from sources whose
trustworthiness has been tested in "real life" by meeting real people
whose trustworthiness has been established by personal judgement.
Thus, it becomes a very special skill to transfer this capacity for
personal judgement to handling electronic information - a skill which
already is and will be increasingly sought after by decision makers
worldwide. The peculiar thing is that this skill is very similar to
"indigenous KNOWLEDGE" in that it belongs to the person who has is and
who is able to pracise it.
This knowledge can not be transformed into "information" which other
people then can pick up an apply: this skill involves both personal
contacts and personal judgement. Both can to some extent be learned - in
personal contact.
Just as the Zimbabwean healer had to travel to China personally to learn
acupuncture and then go back home to incorporate it into his healing
practice. Similarly, I am afraid that it is impossible to separate the
wheat from the chaff of information through the application of rules we
could put together in this electronic discussion.
But who will trust this statement?
Reinald Doebel
reinald.doebel@t-online.de
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