BIOPIRACY
 The Eco Debt means calling in the historical debt that the industrialized countries from the North have with the Third World for the intellectual, historical and current appropriation of ancestral knowledge. The primary knowledge, illegally and illegitimately appropriated, relates to seed improvement, the use of medicinal plants and other know-how that form the base of today’s biotechnological and agroindustry and for which the countries from the South now have to pay royalties.
The countries from the North have enriched themselves through the commercial appropriation of the biological diversity extracted from original crops and natural biodiversity and its related knowledge. The former Secretary of State of the United States, Christopher Warren, valued the contribution of foreign maize germplasm to the United States economy at US$7,000 million. However, once maize became part of the NAFTA commercial negotiations in 1994, millions of farmers, principally in Mexico, have been affected by the importation of maize from the United States.
Moreover, it has been calculated that the Third World’s germplasm used in the pharmaceutical industry totals US$47,000 million. The knowledge of plants acquired by the local communities and the wisdom of shamans, village headmen, werjai’as, etc. has also been exploited, thus skipping the need for research into the use and principal actives of plants
As biotechnology has developed, the eyes of the multinational companies have turned to the biodiversity of the South as an “inexhaustible” source of profit, hence the desire to gain free access and control over the biodiversity. The new varieties resulting from biotechnology will replace traditional varieties, thereby accelerating the process of genetic erosion and threatening food security.
Commercial Agreements (TLC, AdA, etc), with their chapters on Intellectual Property, will provide for the free access and application of patent laws from the United States and Europe to all countries in the South.
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Monday, 19 December 2005 |
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AWA FEDERATION-ECUADOR AGREEMENT
THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE, USA
ELIZABETH BRAVO
Ecological Action
The home of the Awá nationality is found in northwest Ecuador and southwest Colombia, on either side of the frontier. The Awá territory is made up of wooded ecosystems, found in the last fragment of western tropical forests, in the Chocó biogeography. |
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Monday, 19 December 2005 |
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Written by Isaac Rojas
COECOCeiba-AT
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The Inbio: what is it and what does it do?
The National Biodiversity Institute (Inbio) in Costa Rica is “a private institute with staff appointed outside the Costa Rican State, but with sufficient representation to be able to influence ministers, legislators, university authorities and other high-ranking officials from the governing class”. The name it uses makes most people think it is a public institution, but in fact it is not so, in actual fact it is a private entity that has benefited from national patrimony.
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Monday, 30 January 2006 |
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Edmonds Institute (USA) and African Centre for Biosafety (South Africa)
PRESS RELEASE
January 30, 2006
Monday, January 30. A shocking report on Africa-wide biopiracy debuted today as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) resumed international negotiations on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) in relation to genetic resources. The report, entitled "Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit Sharing", was released by the Edmonds Institute and the African Centre for Biosafety, public interest, non-profit groups in the United States and South Africa, respectively. |
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Tuesday, 20 December 2005 |
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Silvia Ribeiro, Grupo ETC
The term “biopiracy” is interpreted in a different way according to the person whom you ask. For some, it is the simple act of collecting biological materials without the “prior informed consent” of the communities of the area and/or country from where they are extracted, without respect for existing legislation or an agreement on “benefit sharing”, such as is indicated in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. From this legalistic perspective, the signing of a “bioprospection” contract within the limits of the law, whether existing or to be created, would solve biopiracy. Moreover, so-called intellectual property “rights” (in their many permutations) would become a useful instrument that over the time in which they generate earnings for companies, would bring some economic income to the local communities that provided resources and knowledge about them.
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