Activists propose halting biological patenting.

• Author: Crimmins, Meghan
• Position: Environmental Intelligence - Brief Article

In February 2002, a diverse group of activists from more than 50 countries convened the second annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where they put together a proposal to prohibit patenting living organisms. The now-annual social forum, which mirrors the Davos World Economic Forum, began last year in protest of the current state of global trade. But this year participants began to more clearly define their movement, which since the 1999 Seattle protests, has been marked largely by what it stands against.

The social forum's most prominent agenda item was to craft the Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic Commons, which calls for an end to the genetic manipulation and legal "appropriation" of all forms of life. The measure challenges the WTO's trade-related intellectual property rule (TRIPs), which allows the patenting of plant varieties. Activist groups launched a plan to work with political parties to get the treaty initiative introduced in parliaments...