(IN): NE needs to protect its biodiversity

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EDITORIAL

 

NE needs to protect its biodiversity

— R C Saikia

The North-East region has a rich forest cover and a long history of

herbal healing. A large segment of the region's population, like many

other parts of the country, relies on herbal medicine, as prescribed

by their family herbal specialists or traditional healers. The role

of traditional healers in rehabilitation and health service delivery

has been recognised both by the society and the governments. These

traditional healers have access to and information about more than

700 different types of medicinal plants found in the region. There is

reason to believe that the current trend towards privatisation,

commercialisation, bio-prospecting and bio-trade promoted through the

Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) under the World

Trade Organisation (WTO) regime could erode the local livelihood

system based on biological resources.

 

The need to use and protect our rich genetic diversity for local,

regional and national needs have constituted an area of concern in

the recent past. It has been established that there is a pressing

need for a comprehensive piece of national legislation, a national

statutory authority and a well co-ordinated regional community based

institutional frame work (such as a Community Technological

Development Trust) to regulate access to and ensure fair and

equitable sharing of benefits of biodiversity. Such a process of

regional and national consultation recognise the use of local

customary laws, norms and practices in the management of biological

resources. It calls for a number of commitments from the governments

to provide resources to communities, to help them build their own

local capacity and to protect their biological resources. Such a

legislation should also consolidate agricultural biodiversity for the

protection of community resource rights, and to protect farmers and

breeders from the negative influence of biotechnology.

 

North-East's access to food at all time for an active and healthy

life is currently provided through small farmers who practise

customary rain-fed farming of multiple cropping with farm-saved seeds

and on-farm crop selection. For most communities, locally produced

biological resources provide over 95 per cent of their requirement

for survival. A change in the system, as required by the WTO regime,

may be logical and necessary, but such change must be appropriately

planned and carefully implemented, consistent with local capacity to

absorb it. Biological diversity is essential for sustainable food

production and food security. Therefore, the loss of diversity could

make the local environment more ecologically unstable, affect

sustainable food production, local community control and access to

genetic resources. Both the Rio Declaration and Convention on

Biological Diversity (CBD) recognise biodiversity as the basis of the

livelihood of millions of people around the world. Damage to and

erosion of biodiversity threateneded the very life support system of

all human beings and the phenomenon that provides the ingredients for

food, medicine, shelter and comfort. Ironically, the TRIPS Agreement

does not recognise the knowledge, technologies, innovations and

practices of local communities as subject for protection under

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

 

Notwithstanding India's influence within the WTO negotiation, India

still represents a soft-target worth focussing on –to move the larger

US trade agenda forward. To merit this attention, India would

presumably have to move ahead liberalising agricultural trade which

is the US's single most important demand. The effect could be immense

for a country where subsistence oriented peasant agriculture and

locally produced biological resource are still the sole source of

livelihood for the vast majority.

 

It is felt thar if the NE region can come out with a model law for

protection of community rights over their biological resources,

protection of farmers and breeders, and their technologies,

innovations and practices as well as for the regulation on access to

genetic resources, and if it could become the basis for a national

law, it can thus challenge the interests of multinational companies

and developed countries. Many alarming cases of unfair and

unequitable use of genetic resources have been reported in the recent

past in many developing countries. These countries are losing huge

benefits from their biodiversity for lack of legal protection against

bio-piracy.

 

A case in point is the one involving the Hoodia cactus from the

Kalahari desert, which made headlines in that part of the world. For

generations, the San community of Africa ate pieces of the cactus to

stave off hunger and thirst. The Council for Scientific and

Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa analyzed the cactus and

found the molecule that curbs appetite and sold the rights, worth

billion of dollars, to a multinational pharmaceutical company to

develop an anti-obesity drug. The San people complained and

protested. After a long battle, in 2003, the CSIR agreed to share the

eventual royalties and it became a landmark case where indigenous

community staked their claim to the profits derived from their

knowledge.

 

The Second South-South Bio-piracy Summit held in Johannesburg in 2002

came out very strongly on these issues. The fact sheet released at

the Summit gave information about hundreds of patents being filed on

African plants by multinational companies.

 

Asian countries currently lack laws to govern their biodiversity and

indigenous knowledge. India is a signatory to the international

Convention on Bilogical Diversity (CBD) and is subject to

international instruments such as the agreement on TRIPS; the Global

Plan of Action (GPA) for the conservation and sustainable utilisation

of plant genetic resource for food and agriculture, and the

international undertaking (IU) on plant genetic resources for food

and agriculture. Nevertheless, India still has to put in place a

comprehensive legislation on biodiversity which can protect the local

community's rights over their biological heritage.

 

NE region needs to embark on a process to develop a model law,

specific to the region's requirements, in order to improve its

biodiversity as a means of sustaining the life support system.

Individual State's communities can take initiatives in which lawyers,

political and social activists, NGOs, farmers' bodies trade unions

and government functionaries can take part. Such initiative for a

model law might create a synergy between different initiatives among

the states. The United Nations (UN) has recognised community rights

and recommended that the states do so. It is in this respect that

many countries are incorporating collective rights into their

national legislations. Community rights are particularly important to

protect NE State's abundant multiethnic character, rich culture and

bilogical heritage.

 

A national law on biodiversity needs to define and guarantee the

rights and responsibility of the communities over their biological

heritage and related traditions. This guarantee is in consonance with

the relevant Article of the CBD and the revised section of the FAO

International Undertaking (FAO-IU) on plant genetic resources. The NE

model law can be based on the principle that the biodiversity related

knowledge, technologies and practices and biological resources of

local communities are a result of the tried and tested practices of

past generations and they are held in trust by the present generation

for future generations. The State has responsibility to protect such

rights.

 

The African initiative, through the Organisation of African Unity

(OAU) to develop a model legislation challenged the hegemony of

developed countries and unleashed new political dynamics on the

issue. The initiative began in 1997, when the African group embarked

on a process to assist African countries in fufilling the obligations

to the CBD and the TRIPS Agreements of the WTO. The CBD mandates

countries to regulate access to biodiversity and respects the rights

of local communities, while TRIPS requires all members to protect

intellectual rights on plant varieties through patents or a sui

generis system. At the WTO meeting at Seattle the African group and

the OAU took the lead in opposing the patenting on life form and

insisted on protecting community rights over their agricultural and

biological heritage. They re-stated their known opposition to the

patenting on life form in successive WTO meetings and asked that

community rights be protected under TRIPS as an intellectual property

rights regime.

 

The people of the North- East need to know how to keep their rights

and protect their biodiversity and decide what to do with their

agriculture as also other activities that use biological resources,

their parts and components and how to do it.