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This article provides information about the need for the protection of traditional knowledge:
The implications IPRs for developing countries, and the subsistence farming communities and indigenous population with these countries, are very severe. Not only is their knowledge stolen but their very survival is threatened without any compensation for their knowledge or survival.
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Various protests, against the Seattle Talks in particular and in general to variety of agreements, have pointed out to the Northern and big corporation bias in these agreements. Besides, the IPR regimes are structured to suit the logic developed by the North, which is based on Individual rights and this alien to the community ownership of indigenous and traditional communities.
Some of the characteristics of indigenous knowledge are:
i. Collective rights and interest,
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ii. Closely integrated with their ecology and environment, sometimes taking on a sacred quality,
iii. Many times this knowledge is respectful of the diversity in nature,
iv. Not always well documented; but orally transmitted.
These aspects of indigenous knowledge and their way of life have been their vulnerable point for exploitation. For instance the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), argued that one factor in the loss of biodiversity is the “lack of clear property rights governing ownership and access to biodiversity”. And therefore it recommends that there should be clearer specifications and laws regarding sustainable management of the resources in the control of the indigenous community.
The existing IPR regimes do not recognise the collective rights that indigenous people hold in knowledge and practices. There is also a fixed period for protection under patent laws, usually up to 20 years, which again does not provide for indigenous knowledge that is often the result of millennia of innovation and transmission.
Various organisations have looked to different international conventions and summits to look for guidance of the rights of indigenous communities to work out modalities for the protection of their rights and knowledge.
International efforts to protect of indigenous rights and knowledge: The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides, at Article 24, for Indigenous peoples’ rights to “their traditional medicines and health practices, including the right to the protection of vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals”. Article 29 provides that Indigenous peoples are “entitled to the recognition of the full ownership, control and protection of their cultural and intellectual property”.
These peoples, the Article says: …have the right to special measures to control, develop and protect their sciences, technologies and cultural manifestations, including human and other genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs and visual and performing arts. International Labour Organisation Convention 169 also contains various provisions (e.g. Articles 4, 5, 8, 13 and 23) relevant to the protection of Indigenous peoples’ cultures, environments, and religious and political systems.
One international development that provides specific opportunities ‘or introducing measures to protect Indigenous knowledge is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), mentioned above. Article 8(j) of this Convention encourages countries “subject to national legislation to: …respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional life-styles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of such knowledge, innovations and practices.
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These are as far as the international directives and conventions which provide broad outlines but when it draws closer to implementing a lot of nuances come in the way which makes the protection of knowledge communities very difficult. Perspectives on protection of traditional knowledge: For instance the CBD urges national laws or policies to be made which protect biodiversity and indigenous community rights, for instance, can we say that our national policies and laws have been protective of our small communities or indigenous communities such as the Adivasis. The Indian herbal industry has been accused of using traditional community knowledge and not shared the benefits of the profits it made.