Subject: SADC Regional Workshop on Biodiversity
Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 15:45:30 -0700
From: "Preston D. Hardison" <prestonh@home.com>
To: indknow@u.washington.edu
ECOFLASH
Newsletter for the Network of Environment and Sustainable Development
Issue No 1/99 January - February
http://www.africaonline.co.ci/AfricaOnline/nesda/agenda.html
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SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre and the Southern African Traditional
Leaders’ Council for the Management of Natural Resources Organised a
Regional Workshop on Understanding Biodiversity Related International
Instruments.
----------------------------------
SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre and the Southern African Traditional
Leaders’ Council for the Management of Natural Resources organised a
Regional Workshop on Understanding Biodiversity Related International
Instruments in Lusaka, Zambia from 11- 15 January, 1999.
The workshop aimed at developing a common strategy for Africa’s future
participation in development and implementation of both biodiversity
related international instruments and trade related international
instruments. The workshop brought together:
Government officials responsible for implementing the Convention on
Biological Diversity;
Government officials responsible for implementing Agreements of the World
Trade Organisation;
Government negotiators of the Revision of the International Undertaking of
Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture;
Lawyers;
Representatives of both Non-Governmental and Community Based Organisations;
Traditional Leaders.
The African Regional Workshop on Understanding Biodiversity Related
International Instruments covered the following:
Agenda 21
Biological Diversity and the Convention on Biological diversity;
FAO’s International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources;
Intellectual Property Rights and Traditional Knowledge, Innovations and
Practices;
Agreements of the World Trade Organisation and the Agreement on Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS);
Community Rights, Traditional Resource Rights and Farmers Rights;
OAU/STRC Draft Legislation on Community Rights and Access to Biological
Resources;
Synergy between the CBD, FAO-IU, GATT/WTO and IPRs;
Report on the CBD Workshop on Traditional Knowledge and Biological
Diversity and Decision IV/9 on article 8 (j) of the CBD Conference of the
Parties;
Strategies for the future participation of Africa in the development and
implementation of the biodiversity related international instruments.
Contact :
Dr. Godwin Yindoli Mkamanga
SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre
Private Bag CH6
ZA 15302
Lusaka, Zambia
Phone: +260 1 230515; 233391/2; 611114/5
Fax: +260 1 611031/ 260 1 290345
e-mail: spgrc@zamnet.zm
or
Dr. Mwananyanda Mbikusita Lewanika
Southern African Traditional Leaders’ Council for the Management of Natural
Resources
P.O. Box 30255
Lusaka, Zambia
Phone: +260 1 283402
Fax: +260 1 226200
e-mail: nyanda@zamserv.zamtel.zm
Subject: [BIO-IPR] Alarm over Kenyan IPR bill
Resent-Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 10:47:17 -0700
Resent-From: bio-ipr@cuenet.com
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 01:41:55 +0800
From: GRAIN Los Banos <grain@baylink.mozcom.com>
To: bio-ipr@cuenet.com
--
BIO-IPR docserver
________________________________________________________
TITLE: New Bill a Threat to National Food Security
AUTHOR: Gichinga Ndirangu
PUBLICATION: The Nation (Nairobi)
DATE: 27 May 1999
SOURCE: Africa News Online
URL: http://www.africanews.org/business/stories/19990527_feat13.html
TITLE: Industrial Property Rights Bill Runs Into Trouble
AUTHOR: Judith Achieng'
PUBLICATION: IPS News
DATE: 28 May 1999
URL: http://www.ips.org
________________________________________________________
NEW BILL A THREAT TO NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY
The Nation (Nairobi)
May 27, 1999
By Nation Correspondent
Nairobi - The Industrial Property Bill 1999, Kenya's attempt to domesticate
an agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, is
unwittingly skewed in favour of foreign control over local genetic
resources. Small-scale farmers' ability to grow food through seed saving
could be severely curtailed due to failure to protect traditional knowledge
systems, warns GICHINGA NDIRANGU.
A month ago, Parliament went through the first reading of the Industrial
Property Bill 1999. Few MPs took notice of this innocuous-sounding piece of
legislation whose title camouflages what it bodes for Kenya's food
sub-sector.
While the Bill does address industrial development issues from a tangent, it
is its possible serious implications on national food security that explain
the concern it is already generating. For the MPs representing the rural
populations, the Bill's implications call for more than a bare fleeting
glance.
In particular, small-scale farmers' ability to grow food through seed saving
could be severely curtailed due to failure to protect indigenous and
traditional knowledge systems.
On the contrary, the Bill - which is Kenya's response in domesticating the
agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights brokered
by the World Trade Organisation - is unwittingly skewed in favour of
advancing foreign corporate control over local genetic resources.
Yet, this places Parliament at a legal crossroads because by undermining
traditional and indigenous knowledge systems, the Bill contradicts Kenya's
obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which calls
for the protection of farmers' and community rights over biodiversity.
Parliament must ensure that the Bill is reconciled to the obligations
created by the TRIPS agreement and the CBD - both of which are
internationally binding and already ratified by Kenya.
What is more disturbing is that the Bill relegates Kenya's domestic
priorities to the periphery in favour of foreign corporate control over
genetic resources.
A Nairobi university law lecturer has already cautioned that the Bill would
undermine rather than promote domestic concerns emphasising caution over
domesticating international legal obligations with little or no regard to
the local environment.
Dr James Otieno Odek, who heads the department of public law at the
University of Nairobi, told a media symposium last week that "the salient
provisions of the Bill do not reflect domestic concerns."
He added: "Unless the issues at stake are understood at the national level,
input at the global level will be insignificant and the legal framework
created will be a superstructure with no relevance at the grassroots level".
If passed in its present form, the Bill will enhance the leverage of
biotechnology transnationals to introduce genetically modified seeds.
This at a time of growing international censure against biotech
transnationals, especially in Asia over the threat posed by these seeds to
small-scale farming and the environment in the absence of a clear legal
regulatory framework.
Yet, in the face of this growing censure - most pronounced in Brazil, India,
Thailand and Bangladesh - American transnationals who dominate the biotech
industry, have continued to exert pressure for stronger patent protection
for seeds in developing countries.
With 1.4 billion mouths to feed, the seed market in these countries makes
the food sector a lucrative chip for corporate profit.
Before November, most developing countries are expected to have put in place
strong domestic laws protecting patent rights. While this demand ostensibly
comes from the WTO, the real push is from the agro-based transnational
corporations keen on raking in high profits and controlling the world's food
supply.
It is a complex matrix under which, national food policies are becoming
increasingly irrelevant at the threshold of the next millennium as private
corporate influence becomes more entrenched in world trade.
With the rapid growth of biotechnology in the world's seed sector, the
utility of strong patent laws in the North is proving to be of limited value
to transnationals unless matched by parallel legislation in developing
countries. Hence the corporate push on the WTO to harmonise patent
legislation across different countries.
Besides securing global reach, uniform patent legislation is expected to
provide transnationals with greater economic control in new markets by
enhancing the protection of royalties and controlling access to seeds.
Yet, in most developing countries where small-scale farmers dominate food
production, such strong patent legislation will constrain food security.
Kenya's Industrial Property Bill 1999 opens up this gruesome possibility.
Parliament's singular duty must be to protect food production by small-scale
farmers by specifically excluding food and farming resources from patenting.
National food security is too important to be subordinated to international
agreements that further enhance the inequity of the North-South divide.
By providing scope for grant of patent rights over genetically modified
seeds, the Bill is a telling example of the extent to which national
priorities are being undermined by international corporate demands.
Action Aid country director Thomas Joseph last week urged Parliament to
adopt a sense of caution in debating the Bill. "We are not convinced that
the Industrial Property Bill safeguards the interests of our small-scale
farmers", he cautioned.
"In opening up scope for patenting products of biotechnological processes,
the Bill opens the doors to biotech transnational corporations to exercise
patent rights over seeds which will increase farmers' dependence on the
corporations and increase the cost of food production already under pressure
from a lack of domestic subsidy support", he added.
It is not an idle nor preposterous concern. Poor farmers, who produce 80 per
cent of Kenya's food will be further marginalised given their inability to
afford expensive seeds while they lose out their inability to save seed on
account of patent rights secured by transnationals.
By easing the acquisition of patents over Kenya's genes and crops by foreign
agro-based transnationals, the farmers' local knowledge of farm systems will
be severely undermined. Ultimately, the inequities of the international
trade system that underpin both hunger and poverty among the rural poor will
be further accentuated as local control over germplasm is increasingly ceded
to foreign biotech transnationals.
It is this gruesome prospect that underlines the need for Parliament to vote
against patent rights over food and farming resources under section 26(a) of
the Bill to secure the national interest.
There is also need to legislate against the introduction of the 'terminator
seed' whose genetic composition allows only a single reproductive cycle to
increase farmers' dependence on transnationals.
The terminator seed poses a clear threat to natural crops through
cross-pollination which could severely undermine food production. While
certain countries have already banned field growing of the terminator
alongside other genetically engineered seeds, Parliament must take cue in
debating the Bill.
Most importantly, the Bill must assert control over natural resources by
seeking benefit sharing between foreign transnationals and local communities
from whom genetic resources are sourced for industrial exploitation.
© The Nation 1999
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS BILL RUNS INTO TROUBLE
By Judith Achieng'
NAIROBI, May 28 (IPS) - Kenyan rights groups say a new Industrial Property
Rights (IPR) Bill, which has been drafted to conform with the requirements
of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), will be controlled by powerful
multinational corporations, if passed into law.
They say the bill, which has been read once and awaits two more readings in
parliament before it replaces the Kenya Industrial Property Act, would not
only erode the country's sovereignty by reducing the government's regulatory
powers but also threaten food security.
''We are not convinced that the Industrial Property Bill safeguards the
interests of our small-scale farmers,'' said Thomas Joseph, the director of
ActionAid, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), at a news conference in
the capital Nairobi recently.
Kenya, along with 100 other developing countries, has signed for membership
in WTO.
As a signatory to the 132-member body, the East African country is under a
binding obligation to implement its numerous trade agreements, which include
the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as part
of a binding code for its members.
IPR allows the patenting of parts of animal or plant products which come as
a result of biotechnological processes. Modification of any life-form, such
as hybrid seeds or cattle are patentable, under the Bill.
The Bill does not recognise the right of communities to their orally
preserved traditional knowledge of seeds and other natural resources.
The definition of a patentable bill drawn from TRIPS, has angered rights
groups. TRIPS demands that for an invention to be patented, it must be new,
involves an inventive step and industrially applicable.
Otieno Odek, a Kenyan human rights lawyer, says this definition, which
requires there has to be a clear inventor who can be identified, knocks off
indigenous people who have been using invented arts and technologies for
generations.
''This definition almost immediately dismisses the knowledge systems and the
innovations of indigenous people and farmers because they innovate
communally over time, and even inter generationally,'' he says.
Ironically, Kenya has also signed the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) which recognises indigenous rights to their resources, in
contradiction with TRIPS.
''We are keen on seeing that community rights over control of biodiversity
are clearly acknowledged, protected and rewarded so that legislation on
Intellectual Property Rights is not skewed in favour of official private
profit,'' says Joseph.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like ActionAid argue that food and
medicinal products are basic needs and should not be subjected to monopoly
pricing associated with patents and plant breeders rights.
''The truth is that the knowledge of farming and of plants, known to our
farmers for generations, is being appropriated with impunity by northern
Transnational corporations,'' says Joseph.
A Nairobi-based NGO, 'Econews Africa', says the change in patent protection
duration from the original seven years to 20 years in the new bill, would
virtually bring to a halt industrialisation process in most developing
countries like Kenya, which aims to industrialise by 2020.
Econews' Jagjit Plahe argues that 20 years of protecting a patent from
copying or readapting goes against the spirit of competition which the
globalisation process is all about. ''TRIPS violates all principles of
liberalisation. Its all about control, and making profits at all costs,''
she says.
Odek say the Bill, which remains vague on issues of national interests,
encourages technological dependency on developed countries.
For instance, out of the more than 400 patent applications made in the field
of biotechnology by 1991, less than one percent were filed outside developed
countries, a figure which shows that developing countries would have to pay
fees and royalties to their counterparts in developed nations if they need
results of these innovations.
''The developmental goals of a country cannot be left to a vague legal
regime,'' Odek says. ''A legal regime conducive to a country's
socio-economic development must be internal and national in outlook and must
provide incentives to its citizens and at least it should treat its
residents better than non- residents.''
However, all is not lost for Kenya's indigenous people, despite the little
time left, for it to domesticate TRIPS. After its adoption in 1994,
developed countries had one year within which to comply with the
requirements of TRIPS while developing countries were given a five-year
grace period. Least developed countries, like Kenya, were given six years.
Article eight of TRIPS permits members to insert in the national Industrial
Property rights regulations, measures to protect public health and nutrition
as well as promote sectors of vital importance to their economies, according
to Odek.
Under this provision, known as the 'Sui Generis Code', developing countries
could develop systems to protect their indigenous knowledge.
So far only the Philippines and South Africa have applied it in their
national constitution, to protect all their local patents and plant
varieties, and also protect through patents, their folklore and traditional
medicine knowledge. (END/IPS/ja/mn/99)
_________________________________________________________
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