Agro-biodiversity and intellectual property rights (IPR) RELATED ISSUES

Biodiversity refers to variability of living organisms and ecosystems, while agro-biodiversity to variation in agriculture related organisms and their ecosystems. They are the keys to sustainable socio-economic development. The realisation of importance of variation among the species- and among the individuals of the same species was the beginning of farming. The developing countries are rich in biodiversity. India is one of the twelve centres of megabiodiversity. The plant biodiversity originating from developing countries has been the basis of crop improvement, in addition to its other benefits as source of food, fuel, fibre, medicines etc. However, the benefit accrued from the use of biodiversity has mainly been harnessed by technologically and economically rich developed countries and has not been fairly shared with provider gene-rich countries. Several international initiatives, such as CBD and its mechanisms, FAO Commission and its mechanisms, TRIPS under GATT, UPOV etc. are debating to reach an international consensus on conservation, use and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of biodiversity. Consequently, genetic resources that were considered as ‘common heritage of humankind’ until December 1993, have become nationclt property, with State's having sovereign rights to. determine access and use. On the other hand, TRIPS agreement demands member countries to provide protection to all inventions, including those of agricultural products and processes. As the earlier property rights and variety protection acts, do not recognise the contributions of farmers and local communities in conservation, sustainable use and providing of these genetic resources. The gene-rich developing countries need to take appropriate steps for documenting the indigenous knowledge related to genetic resources conservation and use, and bring them under intellectual property rights on one hand and develop a sui generis property right system on the other for variety protection recognising these contributions. The present article discusses these issues in detail and provides status of, and insight into different international initiatives.