IIED for farmers` biodiversity rights
The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) has urged the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) to protect farmers' customary rights over biological resources. IIED has submitted a paper to the conference of ITPGRFA governing body, which is taking place in Bali for periodic assessment of ITPGFA’s implementation. The treaty (created by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation – UN FAO –in 2003) is meant to protect farmers’ rights over traditional knowledge to ensure benefit-sharing from commercial use. The treaty aims to ensure farmers get an equitable share of the benefits that arise from the commercial use of traditional crops and have a say in national decision-making processes on the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources. The conference will also hear the first report on the treaty’s multilateral benefit-sharing fund meant to take a share of profits from patented plant genetic resources and share them with farmers who contribute to the conservation of ITPGRs. But Krystyna Swiderska, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says the treaty has so far been very poorly implemented at national level by UN FAO member nations. This is happening at a time when other international agreements that protect the rights of commercial plant breeders (e.g. seed companies) are forging ahead (e.g. the World Trade Organisation’s TRIPS agreement and the UPOV Convention for the protection of new plant varieties). “Small-scale farmers in developing countries are getting no incentives to conserve their local agricultural biodiversity, while commercial interests are being well-served,” said Swiderska. “This gap undermines the rights of farmers because plant breeders can profit from genetic materials conserved and improved by poor farmers without providing anything in return,” she added. The FAO Treaty recognises the enormous contribution that indigenous and local communities and farmers have made to the conservation and development of crop genetic resources. Yet, the ability of farmers in developing countries to continue this role is seriously threatened — not only by lack of benefit-sharing but by a lack of secure rights to land and genetic resources and policies that promotes industrial agriculture and monocultures.