BIOPIRACY

Biopiracy happens when researchers or research organisations take biological resources without official sanction, largely from less affluent countries or marginalised people. When researchers use traditional knowledge without permission, or exploit the cultures they’re drawing from – it’s called biopiracy.

The term biopiracy was coined in the early 1990s by Pat Mooney, founder of ETC Group – an organization which works to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from socioeconomic and environmental impacts of new technologies – to describe the theft or misappropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge through the intellectual property system.

Biopiracy is not limited to drug development. It also occurs in agricultural and industrial contexts. Indian products such as the neem tree, tamarind, turmeric, and Darjeeling tea have all been patented by foreign firms for different lucrative purposes. A less politically charged word for biopiracy is bioprospecting. This is more commonly used by research groups who attempt to search for biological resources in a legal and respectful manner.

Sadly, not many positive examples of bioprospecting exist. Ideally, it involves ethical considerations such as prior informed consent, access and benefit sharing agreements, and material transfer agreements before research commences. Earnings from any commercial products should go towards local conservation efforts and the construction of infrastructure.

Scientific colonialism

Biopiracy is historically rooted in colonialism. Top commodities like sugar, pepper, quinine and coffee were all taken from formerly colonized countries via Western trading companies that plundered local ecologies for profit. Pepper, sugar, coffee, quinine, or rubber did, and still do, have significant impact on the world economies. All of them have a colonial past.

At the heart of the matter is the idea of ownership. Patents and trademarks are hotly defended by international trade organisations and multinational groups. But for many traditional farmers or indigenous groups, assigning ownership to one person instead of a community of users is illogical.

Since 1994, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights has required WTO member countries to develop legal frameworks to protect varieties of plant and animal resources in two systems: one for agricultural contexts and the other for pharmaceutical, chemical, textile, or other commodity contexts. Several countries have considered this to be counterproductive for protecting their bioresources.

Since the early 2000s, many national governments have changed their laws to protect their bioresources, in accordance with the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity.

Some examples of Biopiracy

• Patenting of Neem
• Biopiracy of Basmati
• Syngenta’s Attempt at Biopiracy of India’s rice diversity
• Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Indian Wheat

Impact of Biopiracy

The global health consequences of biopiracy include lack of access to medicines, failure to compensate for valuable traditional knowledge, and depletion of biodiversity resources that are needed by indigenous communities for their own ethnomedicine and health care.

The usurpation of indigenous creativity by western companies robs intellectuals contributions from another nation that are worth generating intellectual deprivation. Bio-piracy-based patents divert biological resources away from local communities. Global markets that create scarcity and resource poverty. Bio-piracy allows market control to shift to pirates who then exclude others. Exclusion of the market: Access to the market through exclusion built into intellectual property rights.

Final Thoughts

It is time to revisit our IPR policies in the context of our civilizational imperative and our constitution, in terms of the public interest and the national interest. First and foremost, legislations relating to this area should be reviewed and amended to remove anomalies and strengthen so as to provide adequate protection to indigenous bio diversity. Further, implementation of the recommendations in Framework for Action is much needed. Integration of Environmental Protection Concepts in to legislations and national development projects are essential. Raising public awareness relating to bio piracy and its impacts would help to arrest bio pirates. It is necessary to establish a state funded research and study groups on bio theft and bio piracy while encouraging local scientists to engage in genetic researches.