After Copenhagen, the North-South divide on the global commons will once again come to haunt the efforts to hammer out an international legal framework on biodiversity that seeks to supplement, if not replace, the existing Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The proposed accord deals with bio-piracy, which is a cause for grave concern for biodiversity-rich nations like India, apart from access to bio-resources and sharing of benefits arising out of their use with the country to which they belong. The deal is proposed to be formally adopted at the forthcoming 10th Conference of Parties (COP) on biodiversity at Nagoya in Japan in October this year. The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. The CBD, adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, confers sovereign rights to nations over their biological resources, besides setting broad goals for conservation of biodiversity, its sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits.
The North-South divide in this case is rooted in the fact that developing countries hold much of the earth’s biodiversity, while developed countries have benefited most from the latter’s commercial exploitation. The earth’s biodiversity lends itself to wide ranging commercial exploitation. The pharmaceutical industry draws on it for new and safe drugs. India, being one of the world’s most biodiversity-rich countries, has been a victim of bio-piracy despite the existence of the CBD and agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs). Some 2000 patents are reckoned to be granted in the US and Europe to the goods related to the Indian systems of medicine every year. There is, therefore, an urgent need for a more stringent and legally enforceable accord on biodiversity, its access and benefit-sharing to curb usurping of poor countries’ bio-resources by the rich nations.
However, the Nagoya meet is not expected to ink a deal given the diversity of opinion between participating nations. The negotiating text is said to have as many as 3,600 square brackets (disputed issues). It is unlikely that all of these issues will be sorted out by October. The only option then would be for countries to enact domestic legislation and take national action. India, on its part, has enacted the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, and has set up a National Biodiversity Authority. Besides, it has put in place a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), documenting over 2 lakh formulations based on its traditional knowledge and conventions, besides yoga postures. Patent offices of the US and Europe have been lent access to this repository to prevent them from issuing patents to medicines based on these formulations. This should, hopefully, prevent incidents like the patenting of basmati, neem and haldi (turmeric) abroad which India then had to get revoked after costly litigation.
