Since the last EPMR IPGRI’s focus and activities on socio-economic and policy aspects of PGR have evolved in response to developments in both international and national contexts. In the early to mid-1990s IPGRI worked mainly on scientific and technical aspects of conservation and had a limited focus on socio-economic, policy and legal issues. This has changed. The Institute has increased its focus on socio-economic and policy issues. This is mainly because of the increased awareness of the important roles that social and economic institutions, policies and laws play in the conservation, enhancement and sustainable use of PGR. IPGRI’s focus on socio-economic, policy and legal research has also been stimulated and guided by the negotiations and adoption of the CBD, the ITPGRFA, the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO and recently the outcomes of the WSSD.
IPGRI has developed an explicit strategy to enable it to consolidate and focus its work on policy and law. The strategy, endorsed by the Board in 2002, outlines the objectives and issues to be covered by the Institute[5]. It lays out principles that should guide the design and implementation of policy research and related outreach activities. The Panel commends IPGRI for this effort. There are, however, three issues or points that emerge from a review of the strategy. These relate to priority setting, balancing a focus on legal issues with policy development and enhancing the integration of scientific and technical aspects into policy research.
There are many important policy and legal issues associated with PGR conservation and sustainable use. They range from patenting of life forms, protecting community and farmers’ rights, sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources, economic incentives for conservation and sustainable use, to issues of regulation of trade in GMOs. These issues are being treated differently in different international policy forums or processes. For example, while the CBD and the ITPGRFA provide a certain measure of flexibility to ensure that community and farmers’ rights are protected, the TRIPS Agreement seems to extinguish these rights or at least makes their recognition and protection by law difficult. IPGRI does not possess financial and human resources to conduct research on all these issues. The Panel is aware that IPGRI is conscious of the huge agenda on socio-economic, policy and legal issues associated with PGR conservation and sustainable use. It encourages the Institute to carefully cluster, prioritise and select issues that will constitute its research agenda over the next five years or so.
In setting priorities IPGRI should be guided by the following principles: (a) it should focus on those research issues and questions for which there is pronounced demand from governments and other stakeholders. Unlike academic institutions that tend to have the luxury to engage in research for its own sake, IPGRI has to respond to clearly articulated or anticipated research problems; (b) the Institute should focus on research issues on which it has prior experience or on which it is able to utilise its existing scientific and technical expertise; (c) it should also focus on issues and processes that will enlarge its comparative advantage, at least in terms of gaining new experience while at the same time meeting the needs of its clients; (d) it should focus on countries in which governments and other stakeholders show interest and commitment to policy change or where such interest and commitment are relatively easy to secure; and (e) IPGRI should identify and target policy processes in countries where there is demonstrable ownership by and engagement of government, farmers’ groups, local NGOs, industry and other stakeholders.
The second issue that a review of IPGRI’s policy research strategy raises relates to the distinction between policy and law. While the distinction is increasingly becoming blurred, it is crucial to note that policy focuses more on the normative aspects of governance while law revolves around rule making. Given the nascent nature of formal PGR conservation and sustainable use institutions in many countries, particularly developing ones and the absence of adequate capacity to enforce law, it is important that more attention is placed on promoting the evolution of and experimentation with norms. The development of norms requires more than the deployment of legal studies and skills. Economics, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences also play major roles in policy development.
IPGRI strives to develop and use multidisciplinary approaches in its policy and law research. It has made significant effort to use economic analysis in PGR policy. For example, in 2000 IPGRI conducted a study that analysed the flow of genetic material from the CGIAR Centres to developing countries[6]. The economic analysis demonstrated that over 90% of the transfer of pigeon peas and chickpeas and close to 100% of the groundnuts, went to developing countries. This study contributed to narrowing differences between developing and developed countries in the negotiations of the ITPGRFA.
IPGRI’s Genetic Resources Policy Strategy makes reference to the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in the Centre’s work. However, it puts most of the emphasis on PGR law and should give more explicit attention to social and economic dimensions of PGR policy development. The absence of economic analysis and data on the costs and benefits of various legal options is often an impediment to building political constituencies for new PGR legislation in many developing countries.
The Panel encourages IPGRI to more explicitly address economic and social issues in its PGR policy strategy. These issues should encompass gender considerations in access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, economic impacts of PGR guidelines and laws and participatory approaches in regulating access to on-farm PGR systems. This is consistent with the first recommendation of the CCER 1999 on IPGRI’s work on human and policy aspects of plant genetic resources. In particular, the Institute should give more attention to the need "to conduct systematic research planning exercises to identify broad conceptual frameworks based on social, economic and ecological patterns, for priority setting and determination of different types of social science and policy research activities".
The third set of issues emerging from the review of the policy strategy is related to the science-policy/law interface. As noted above, a major challenge that the international community now faces is how to ensure that provisions of the CBD and the ITPGRFA are translated into concrete actions at national and local levels. As countries start addressing this challenge they will be faced with growing demand for scientific and technical knowledge. For example, national policies aimed at implementing Article 5.1(e) of the ITPGRFA should be adequately informed by sound science and technical knowledge on regeneration and evaluation of PGR.
Scientific knowledge on PGR conservation and sustainable use is critical for national policies and laws. IPGRI recognizes this and has for the past years endeavoured to ensure that its policy and legal research work interfaces with and is informed by its scientific and technical work. As IPGRI starts to focus at national and local levels, particularly to support the implementation of the CBD and the ITPGRFA, it needs to strengthen further the interface and ensure that science is an integral part of its policy and law research. This is not just a structural reform challenge of adjusting its organizational structure but one that has to do with overall cognitive outlook, particularly conceptual frameworks that it will develop and use to conduct policy research. The Panel encourages the Centre to further explore and develop systemic and evolutionary approaches to policy research and development. It should eschew reductionist policy and legal research that often tends to consider and use natural/biological sciences only to validate preformed decisions. With its considerable expertise in biological sciences and growing capacity in social sciences, including economics, law and sociology, IPGRI is well placed to design policy research frameworks that are responsive to the systemic nature of conservation and sustainable use problems.
IPGRI’s direct involvement in research on socio-economic aspects of PGR dates back to 1995. It established the Project on ‘Ethnobotany and human aspects of plant genetic resources conservation and use’. During the past years the Institute has worked on a range of activities, for example:
(a) Development of concepts and tools for documentation and promotion (including protection) of indigenous knowledge. IPGRI has worked with various organizations including farmers’ associations and NARS to explore and develop the concept of "indigenous knowledge journals". The concept is gaining currency in a number of countries. For example, it is being used in Yunnan to advocate for recognition of indigenous knowledge as an important part of conservation and sustainable use systems. Several publications, including at least one journal article[7], have been generated by this activity. IPGRI has been actively involved in international dialogues on the protection and promotion of indigenous knowledge. As a result of this work the Institute has established close collaboration with such leading professional associations as the International Society on Ethnobotany. Its publications have been cited and used internationally. For example, the CBD’s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) has used IPGRI’s publications on ethnobotany as background material for discussions on indigenous knowledge and rights.
(b) Conservation and sustainable use of Africa’s leafy vegetables. This activity has focused on strengthening the capacity of national programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa to use ethnobotanical information in the identification, selection, conservation and improvement of leafy vegetables. Using participatory research approaches the project staff has worked with NGOs, women’s groups and researchers in Cameroon, Botswana and Kenya among other SSA countries to identify economically important species. The CCER concluded that the Centre’s "practical work on traditional leafy vegetables in Africa provided the first important case to link the conservation and use of PGR to the income and food needs of the poor". IPGRI scientists working on this activity have also published several papers and a book[8].
(c) Economics of PGR. This activity focused on the application of economic research to develop methodologies and tools to support decision making by farmers, PGR managers and policy makers for both in situ and ex situ conservation. In collaboration with IFPRI, IPGRI has been able to develop economic concepts for designing policies for in situ and on-farm PGR conservation. It has also organized at least one workshop to promote the testing and use of the concepts[9]. IPGRI and IFPRI have also conducted economic analysis on the demand for crop genetic resources and the international use of genebanks[10].
IPGRI’s work on socio-economic aspects of PGR has grown and there have been significant outputs generated during the past five years. The Institute has also actively disseminated information from this work widely to policy makers. Its collaboration with IFPRI, though at its early stages, has enabled it to work on economics of PGR. The Panel commends IPGRI for initiating this collaboration and encourages it to strengthen its partnership with IFPRI by developing more joint activities on PGR economics. The Panel is, however, concerned that with the growing demand for IPGRI’s engagement in socio-economic work, particularly on the economic aspects of PGR, the Institute will not be able to adequately respond to the needs of its clients. IPGRI does not have a full time in-house economist, but relies on a half time staff based at IFPRI. IPGRI needs to build its capacity in this aspect. (See Recommendation 6)
As already observed above, PGR conservation and sustainable use have increasingly moved from the confines of scientific discourse to the centre of public policy. Issues that were 20 years ago considered as purely scientific, have acquired political, social, economic and legal dimensions. There is global agreement that policies, laws and institutions are required to orchestrate the development and application of science and technologies-whether modern or traditional-for PGR conservation and sustainable use. IPGRI recognizes this and has over the past five years or so made deliberate efforts to conduct research on policy and legal issues. Most of its policy and legal work has been focused on international negotiations on the CBD and the ITPGRFA.
IPGRI’s work on PGR policy has largely focused on the analysis of policy and legal options, generating empirical data and assisting governments to consider policy options through more analytical rigour. For example, IPGRI was instrumental in preparing some of the background papers that guided the evolution of and negotiations on the ITPGRFA. IPGRI’s engagement in and contributions to the negotiations are well appreciated. The head of Ethiopia’s delegation to the ITPGRFA negotiations described the Institute’s contributions as "monumental". It played two major roles in these processes, first as a representative of the CGIAR System and second, though with observer status, it served as a source of scientific and technical advice to the negotiators. It was a leading source of information and data on the international flow of PGR and was instrumental in advocating for a multilateral system of access and benefit sharing. It provided scientific and technical data that convinced most government delegations of the political and economic advantages of the system. The study IPGRI prepared on germplasm flows (see Section 3.1.2) was widely used by delegations during the negotiations on the need for and governance of a multilateral PGR system. The Panel reviewed this paper and found it to be empirically rich and a source of information on why international exchange of PGR is critical for the long term conservation of the resources.
An assessment of IPGRI’s role in the negotiation of the ITPGRFA[11] showed that, through the provision of technical input, IPGRI was able to support and influence policy makers in the negotiations. Political neutrality and reliability were seen as crucial to IPGRI’s influence. The study found that IPGRI had improved the general understanding of the issues being dealt with in the negotiations and that it shed light on the nature of the inter-linkages between issues, especially those between access and benefit sharing. IPGRI was most influential when it concentrated on clarifying technical issues that were not fully understood by the negotiators. Some of the aspects that IPGRI helped clarify during the negotiation process included: (1) the nature of plant varieties improvement and the difficulties involved with tracing who contributed to the value of a particular material, as well as to the eventual distribution of benefits among all those who contributed over time; (2) the possible scope and architecture of a multilateral system for the exchange of PGRFA; and, (3) the implications of intellectual property protection and alternatives available for the sui generis protection of plant varieties. IPGRI’s experts also suggested some of the possible legal solutions to particular issues, such as payments to the multilateral system to be made by those who acquire IPR that limit the further use of received materials for breeding and research.
IPGRI has also actively participated in the CBD. Senior IPGRI staff has participated in all meetings of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the CBD and many of the SBSTTA sessions. In addition to making interventions at formal plenary sessions, IPGRI has worked with other CGIAR Centres and jointly organized seminars to build awareness of the importance of agrobiodiversity. For example, it mobilised expertise through the SGRP and organized a well attended seminar at the 4th meeting of the COP. A number of the Institute’s publications have been used in the CBD negotiations. For example, IPGRI’s study on options for multilateral exchange[12] has been extensively cited by at least five of CBD’s official papers on access to genetic resources.
PGR policy and legal issues are also being addressed in IPGRI’s science projects. For example, the Musa Programme has started addressing issues associated with the development and field testing of genetically modified bananas. IPGRI has also been involved in providing legal advice on the development of a material transfer agreement and related policies for the exchange of germplasm within the APO region.
IPGRI’s policy and law research activities have grown in number considerably over the past 5 years and are likely to grow more as the international community starts to focus more on national implementation of the conventions, protocols and the ITPGRFA. To ensure that there is intellectual coherence in and adequate administrative oversight of these activities, the Centre has organized its policy and law work into a new Project entitled ‘Laws and policies affecting the conservation, use and exchange of genetic resources for food and agriculture’. Activities to be implemented under this Project during the period 2003-2007 include: training to build expertise in analysing policies and laws; conducting research on cross-cutting issues that affect the conservation, use and exchange of genetic resources; developing options for national and sub-regional PGR policies and laws, particularly on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing; and, ensuring harmonization of positions regarding laws and policies.
The GRPI is one of these activities under the new Project. A project coordinator has been recruited and was posted to IPGRI-SSA office in March 2003. He is responsible for overseeing the implementation of activities in the first six selected countries and three regions. This project is designed in such a way as to ensure that IPGRI utilises its accumulated policy research experience and knowledge base to stimulate national PGR policy development. It is innovative in the sense that it focuses on research on and analysis of, the policy processes as opposed to the conventional PGR policy research approach which is dedicated to research for policy processes. If well implemented the project will generate a body of information and knowledge on how to organize and manage PGR policy processes in developing countries.
On the whole, IPGRI’s work on policy and law is evolving rapidly. The Institute is designing measures to build in-house capacity. For example, in 2001 it employed a lawyer and has now three full time staff dedicated to policy and legal research. It is strengthening the capacity of its regional offices by organizing training workshops on PGR policy issues for regional staff. However, given the wide range of issues emerging from the CBD, ITPGRFA, TRIPS and many other international conventions, IPGRI needs to focus on a set of priority policy questions that it will seek to respond to and work to support the implementation of a manageable number of conventions. IPGRI should not spread its resources thinly in many international conventions or treaties by directly getting engaged in their negotiations and implementation but should seek to work through other competent research institutions to promote PGR conservation and sustainable use goals. (See Recommendation 7)
6. The Panel recommends that IPGRI recruit a full time staff member with the necessary academic qualifications and experience in environmental and agricultural economics, preferably with a focus on PGR.
7. Given the increasing number of international fora in which PGR policy and legal issues are being negotiated and the growing demand on IPGRI’s limited core policy and legal expertise, the Panel recommends that over the next 5 years the Institute focus most of its resources for international policy work on supporting the national institutions with the implementation of the ITPGRFA and related provisions of the CBD.
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[5] IPGRI’s Genetic
Resources Policy Strategy 2002, Supporting the conservation, use and exchange of
genetic resources for food and agriculture in a changing world: New rights, new
partners and new fora. [6] Fowler, C., Smale, M. and Gaiji, S. 2001, Unequal exchange? Recent transfers of agricultural resources and their implications for developing countries. Development Policy Review 19: 181-204. [7] Jianchu, X. et al. 2001, Genetic diversity in taro (Colocasia esculenta Schott, Araceae) in China: An ethnobotanical and genetic approach. Economic Botany 55: 14-31. [8] e.g. Chweya, J.A. and Eyzaguirre, P.B. (eds.) 1999, The biodiversity of traditional leafy vegetables. IPGRI, Rome. [9] e.g. Smale, M. et al. (eds.) 2002, The economics of conserving agricultural biodiversity on - farm. IPGRI, Rome. [10] e.g. Smale, M. and Day-Rubenstein, K. 2002, The demand for crop genetic resources: International use of the U.S. national plant germplasm system. World Development 30: 1639-1655. [11] Sauvé, R. and Watts, J. 2003, An analysis of IPGRI's influence on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In: Agricultural Systems, forthcoming edition. Horton, D. and Mackay, R. (eds.), Learning for the future: Innovative approaches for evaluating agricultural research. [12] Hawtin G. et al. 1996, International plant germplasm collections under the Convention on Biological Diversity - options for a continued multilateral exchange of genetic resources for food and agriculture. In: Proceedings of the Beltsville Symposium XXI, Global genetic resources - access, ownership and intellectual property rights. Beltsville Maryland USA, May 19-22, 1996. |
