BIO-IPR docserver (GRAIN)

On 29-30 March 2001, the SUNGI Development Foundation, based in Islamabad, Pakistan, hosted an international workshop for the South Asia Network on Food, Ecology and Culture (SANFEC) and the Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (SAAG) of Pakistan on plant breeders' rights or plant variety protection laws. The purpose of the workshop was to compare national situations across South Asia with respect to implementation of TRIPS Article 27.3(b) on plant varieties (sui generis systems) and develop strategy & action plans. There were over 70 participants from NGOs, POs, government agencies and scientific research institutes. Below is the statement that was endorsed by all members of SANFEC and SAAG at the end of the workshop. SANFEC's baseline position paper on TRIPS Art. 27.3(b), adopted in February 1999, can be found on the Internet at http://www.wtowatch.org/library/admin/uploadedfiles/SANFECs_Statement_of_Position_on_TRIPs_Article.htm. For further information about the Islamabad workshop, please contact Dr Shahid Zia, Executive Director, SUNGI Development Foundation at shahidzia_sungi@yahoo.com.

Islamabad, 30 March 2001

The members of SAAG (Sustainable Agriculture Action Group, Pakistan) and SANFEC (South Asia Network on Food, Ecology and Culture) have met in Islamabad over 29 and 30 March 2001 to compare the national situations with respect to implementation of TRIPs Article 27.3(b) in their countries. We are alarmed by the following realities that are emerging across South Asia.

• The farming communities are not being consulted by the governments on how to deal with the WTO obligation to introduce intellectual property rights systems on life forms. In many of our countries, draft laws have been kept secret, civil society groups have had to beg for information about government plans, and in cases where NGOs were given seats at the discussion table, Monsanto showed up too.
• The lack of consultation with farmers has led to wrong directions in policy-making. Many of the draft plant variety protection laws in South Asia are far too biased towards the interests of industrial plant breeders, particularly multinational corporations. In Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, the drafts are based on the UPOV Convention (Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties), which is designed to promote monocultures and corporate agriculture.
• Farmers' rights to save, develop, exchange and sell seeds are part of a wider framework of inalienable community rights. The so-called farmers' "privilege", as constructed under the UPOV Convention and which many of our national PVP drafts encapsulate, is not the same thing as farmers' rights. It is a reduction of farmers' rights. By restricting farmers' practices and/or providing PVP certificates for farmers varieties, these laws are undermine farmers' rights and pose a significant and long-term threat to food security.
• Overall, the sui generis "option" under TRIPS is being reduced to UPOV. Instead of providing real alternative PVP systems with different criteria and different forms of protection that could support South Asian farmers, the draft laws our governments have developed are based on the same principles as the PVP laws in the developed countries.

We are particularly alarmed by the emerging trend through which developed countries such as Europe, Australia, Japan and the US to put direct pressure on South Asian governments to provide "TRIPS-plus" intellectual property privileges for their companies. In their relentless pursuit to take over Asian markets and extract more wealth from our societies, they are cutting bilateral deals with our trade and finance ministries behind everyone else's backs.

For example, the EU is in the process of finalising a bilateral aid agreement with Bangladesh that obliges Dhaka to adopt UPOV as its policy objective for plant variety protection. This goes completely beyond Dhaka's commitments to WTO, where UPOV is not even mentioned. Bangladeshi NGOs, scientists and government officials had long been in the process of developing a complete alternative to UPOV as its implementation of TRIPS. But the EU is now subverting this process as a condition for development assistance. This shows the real agenda of industrialised countries: to harmonise developing countries' IPR laws and secure the strongest monopoly rights possible for their own benefit. And the irony is that they use aid policies to implement their trade objectives. India and Sri Lanka have been subject to similar pressure in the guise of bilateral scientific research cooperation and bilateral IPR cooperation agreements.

Bilateral treaties that force our countries to go beyond their international obligations and create new standards for intellectual property behind the curtains threaten to unravel the political fabric of our societies.

We reject patents on life forms. We do not accept the principle of intellectual property systems in any construction and by any name over biodiversity. Private monopolies over genetic resources not only go against the moral and cultural values of our people, but they directly threaten food security and the livelihood strategies of farming communities.

We vow to step up our national and region-wide actions against TRIPS. We will double our efforts to share information about the threat of these monopoly rights systems with farmers and mobilise more actions. We will also work with farmers as well as with scientists, NGOs, allies in government, students and others to develop alternatives to IPR systems, especially to the UPOV system.

For us, the only alternative to IPRs over life is no IPRs over life. We cannot stop biopiracy unless we outlaw IPRs on life, in whatever form. We support the African Group position at WTO on this matter and welcome the March 2001 resolution of the European Parliament, both of which demand that the TRIPS Agreement prohibit the patenting of life forms and related processes in all WTO member states.

Farmers and all members of society are innovators. And for innovation to flourish we need to strengthen our local knowledge and research systems, especially to achieve food security based on ecological agriculture. Building up and building upon biodiversity at the grassroots level is crucial for our survival. Restrictive monopoly systems like UPOV and patents on life have absolutely no role in our future.

ActionAid, Nepal
ActionAid, Pakistan
ActionAid, UK
Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN)
Green Movement of Sri Lanka
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), USA
Institute for Development Studies and Practices (IDSP), Quetta, Pakistan
SUNGI Development Foundation, Pakistan
Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan
UBINIG, Bangladesh
Unitarian Service of Canada, Nepal
Daman Development Organization, DG Khan, Pakistan
Caritas Pakistan
Rohi, Pakistan
Development VISIONS, Multan, Pakistan
Goth Sudhar Sangat, Sindh, Pakistan
Village Friends Organization, Pakistan
Green Circle Organization, Depalpur, Pakistan
Small Farmers Union, Multan, Pakistan
Shirkat Gah, Pakistan
South Asia Partnership, Pakistan
COMMONS, Bahawalnagar, Pakistan
Pattan Development Organization, Islamabad, Pakistan
Kissan Bachao Tehrik, Sargodha, Pakistan
Community Development Organization, Swabi, Pakistan
The Network for Consumers' Protection, Islamabad, Pakistan
Farmers' Development Organization, Lodhran, Pakistan
Lok Sanjh, Lahore, Pakistan