Biopiracy

Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy BIOPIRACY Biopiracy is a politicized term for the appropriation of biological resources and knowledge of those resources for purposes that do not meet the approval or have the consent of groups or individuals who have some prior claim to the resources or knowledge. In some cases, this appropriation refers to extraction and use only, but the term is also applied to patenting without equitable sharing of benefits. This entry discusses the origins of the term biopiracy, the roles of researchers, examples of biopiracy cases, and the relationship of biopiracy to international policy. The Charge of Biopiracy The biological resources at stake in biopiracy cases have included varieties of food plants, both wild and cultivated, as well as medicinal plants. The charge of biopiracy can also be applied to appropriation of livestock, fungi, and microbes, though such cases have been less common than those involving edible and medicinal plants. Often, the parties who levy charges of biopiracy have less political and economic power than those who have appropriated the resources and knowledge for their benefit; for example, many cases have involved indigenous groups, farmers’ organizations, and national governments in the biodiversity-rich Global South accusing corporations and researchers in the financially rich Global North of wrongful appropriation. The charge of biopiracy is meant to evoke criminal theft and attempts to draw attention to the moral and legal status of resource and knowledge extraction. Among other concerns, antibiopiracy advocates argue that privatization of resources can lead to decreased access to local Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy food sources and livelihoods in the very places from which the resources were extracted, as patent restrictions can limit use and sale by local people. Meanwhile, critics of the discourse surrounding biopiracy argue that the concept reflects an isolationist desire to hoard resources at their sources and impedes improvement of products that could help address people’s nutritional, medicinal, and other needs. Use of biopiracy reflects a contemporary conflict over control of food resources and brings into focus debates about the ethics of privatizing knowledge and biological life forms. Biopiracy is often used in place of the less morally charged term bioprospecting, although both refer to corporate and academic researchers’ exploration and extraction of biological resources for the ultimate purpose of development into new food and drug products. Often, ethnographic work accompanies field exploration, so researchers can more easily identify plants that are useful to local people. Thus, local knowledge and sometimes long-standing practices of environmental management contribute to researchers’ choices of which resources to test and develop, even if particular local practices (e.g., harvesting and processing techniques and technologies) are not directly used in appropriation of the plants in new contexts. Many researchers who see themselves as bioprospecting have actively reassessed their practices and responsibilities to people and landscapes at the sites of extraction as a result of the introduction of the biopiracy concept and of international policies regarding resource extraction and intellectual property rights. Now, many corporations rely more on ex situ product discovery techniques at gene banks and labs than on sourcing directly from local in situ growth, but issues of extraction, ownership, and benefit allocation remain unresolved on the global scale. Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy Critiques of Extractive Practices Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) now called the ETC Group, and its co-founder Pat Mooney are credited with introducing the term biopiracy in 1993, in order to highlight conflicting interests involved in the global exchange and commercialization of resources. Indigenous rights and environmental activists embraced the term and have since brought it into more common usage as a discursive tool to critique practices of corporate resource extraction that they find to be exploitative. Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva has been a prominent denouncer of the privatization of natural resources and shared local knowledge, which she classifies as biopiracy. She links these practices to Western colonialism and questions the assumption at the heart of intellectual property regimes that non-human organisms can be created and owned. Her criticism of extractive practices illuminates two types of argument made through charges of biopiracy that are interrelated but not necessarily compatible: 1) resource and knowledge extraction and commercialization are not managed in politically and economically just ways, according to international legal principles, and 2) the systems under which resources and knowledge are extracted and commercialized are culturally biased, environmentally unsustainable, and morally problematic. International Law and Policy International law and policy reflect some elements of the continuing debates about biopiracy. In 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognized the sovereign rights of states to control natural resources, as well as the importance of local knowledge and techniques in Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy conserving biodiversity. The CBD encouraged benefit-sharing with local people and state governments, but advocates like the ETC have critiqued the CBD for offering no mechanisms of enforcement for these pronouncements. Advocates have also critiqued the convention’s apparent condonation of bilateral agreements between commercial interests and other parties, as such arrangements might or might not meet the CBD’s stated goals of collaboration, biodiversity conservation, and equity. Even when these goals are explicitly sought, challenges to meeting them persist due to institutional complexities, including the absence of a single monitoring body, the diversity of intellectual property systems at play internationally, and the inconsistency of informed consent standards. Moreover, it has proven difficult to compensate groups fairly when resources and knowledge can be shared widely while political and economic power can be more restricted. These challenges have led advocates to characterize several cases of extraction and privatization of foodstuffs as biopiracy. Some of these involve patents, and others do not. One well-known case is the controversy over a U.S. patent granted to Texas-based RiceTec Inc. for basmati rice in 1997. South Asian and international NGOs challenged the patent as a case of obvious biopiracy, since South Asian farmers have been developing for centuries the basmati rice plants, rice grains, and propagation techniques covered under the original patent, and held the plant and its cultural properties as part of the region’s heritage. This case exposed some of the political, economic, cultural, ethical, and legal challenges to appropriation of biological resources and relevant knowledge, as U.S. patent law did not recognize South Asian farmers’ prior art[AU QUERY: Is this the correct word here?], since it was not protected as intellectual property. Other food-related cases include vanilla, saffron, bitter melon, kava, quinoa, Malawian groundnut, Hawai’ian taro, habanero pepper, and Tuli cattle. Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy Recently, new concerns about biopiracy have arisen as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) become more widespread. These developments create the potential for corporations to make gene-level changes to appropriated resources and knowledge, and then patent and commercialize them, without consent of or benefit-sharing with other parties. Some supporters of bioprospecting would rather see local groups with claims to biological resources and knowledge formalize and protect those claims through intellectual property systems than utilize the language of biopiracy. However, international law and policy regarding appropriation of biological resources and knowledge are currently complex and inconsistent, with multiple agencies governing at different scales and with divergent goals. Local, national, and regional initiatives are growing as alternatives and complements to these international systems, in the hope that they can more effectively oversee bilateral agreements, define terms in culturally appropriate ways, and enforce benefit-sharing equitably. Madeline Chera See also Anti-Trust Laws; Cultural Identity and Food; Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs); Heirloom Varieties; IAASTD; Intellectual Property Rights FURTHER READINGS ETC Group. (1995). Bioprospecting/Biopiracy and Indigenous Peoples. In Patents and Biopiracy. Retrieved 1 March 2013, from http://www.etcgroup.org/content/bioprospectingbiopiracy-and-indigenous-peoples Gollin, M. A. (2001). Biopiracy: The Legal Perspective. American Institute of Biological Sciences. Retrieved 1 March 2013, from Madeline Chera | Encyclopedia of Food Issues | edited by Ken Albala | Manuscript Copy http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/gollin.html Mushita, A., & Thompson, C. B. (2007). Biopiracy of Biodiversity: global exchange as enclosure. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Robinson, D. F. (2010). Confronting biopiracy: challenges, cases and international debates. London: Earthscan/James & James. Shiva, V. (1997). Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.