Global Trade and Biodiversity in Conflict.

the Gaia Foundation and Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN)

Global Trade and Biodiversity in Conflict is a series of exposes produced jointly by the Gaia Foundation and Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN). The series examines critical points of conflict between the privatization of biodiversity, which is being driven by corporate interests and the Word Trade Organization, and peoples' efforts to empower local communities in biological and cultural diversity management, particularly in developing countries.

TRIPS versus CBD

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) threatens to make the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) impossible to implement. Yet as an international commitment, the CBD is as legally binding and authoritative as TRIPs.

Well over 130 countries adhere to both treaties. Because the two agreements embody and promote conflicting objectives, systems of rights and obligations, many states are questioning which treaty takes precedence over the other.

In particular, TRIPs imposes private intellectual property rights (IPRs) on the South's biodiversity while the CBD recognizes the collective rights of local communities to the same. Governments, scientists and many social sectors accept that our survival depends on the conservation and free availability of biodiversity, not on its privatization.

Governments and civil society therefore must urgently confront the contradiction between TRIPs and the CBD by taking the following measures:

1. Countries should recognize and affirm in law the primacy of the CBD over the WTO TRIPs Agreement in the area of biological resources and traditional knowledge systems.

2. At the TRIPs Review commencing in 1999, governments should ensure that TRIPs provides the option to exclude all life forms and related knowledge from IPR systems.

3. Implementation of TRIPs in developing countries should be challenged and suspended on the basis of its irreconcilable conflict with the CBD.

4. The Collective Rights of indigenous and local communities freely to use, exchange and develop biodiversity should be recognized as a priori rights and be placed over and above private intellectual property rights. This has to be reflected in legislation and public policy at the national level.

5. The CBD should be fully developed as an international instrument to promote the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity, based on community control of resources. The CBD should not be allowed to degenerate into a marketplace for the commercialization of biological resources and related knowledge.

6. There should be a return to the basic assumption that the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity is based on the rights and empowerment of local communities, which inspired the CBD in the first place.

1. Introduction

   In the early 1990s, it was finally recognized at the international level that the industrial system of production and its drive for continued growth at all costs, was literally costing the Earth. The planet's life support systems are severely threatened; as evidenced by: increasing climate instability caused by the greenhouse effect; dramatic levels of soil and genetic erosion; the drying up of the equatorial rainforests leading to unprecedented fires, which will add to climate instability; marine pollution and the depletion of fish stocks; an estimated loss of 100 species per day, extinct forever.

   At the same time, there has been a realization that local and indigenous communities in developing countries, who have nurtured this biological diversity and depend upon it, are equally under threat from the same forces. Not only their livelihoods but their traditional knowledge systems and practices of innovation, accumulated over generations, and their a priori rights to this heritage, are being undermined by industry's hunger to exploit and deplete biodiversity and claim exclusive ownership over life forms.

   The 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a legally binding commitment to stop this destruction and secure the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. Less than a year after the CBD came into force; however, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established with quite a different agenda.

   The Convention is founded on the principle that local communities generate and are dependent on biodiversity and should continue to benefit from it. The WTO administers a global trading system, much of which is founded on the private monopoly rights of transnational corporations over biodiversity.

   These rights and objectives clearly conflict. Yet both treaties provide legally binding obligations for governments. This briefing reviews the main points of the conflict and suggests approaches to resolve it.

2. The CBD

   2.1 The CBD recognizes the contribution of local communities to the enhancement, diffusion and conservation of...