A new global treaty which aims to ensure food security through the conservation, exchange and sustainable use of plant genetic resources was roughly agreed to on 1 July 2001 at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome. But a number of crucial issues are still unresolved. These will have to be dealt with in November at a high-level meeting that will assess progress since the World Food Summit that was held five years ago. At stake is whether the world's agricultural biodiversity is nurtured to provide private gains for a few or food security for all.

The International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (IU) has been under negotiation for the past seven years. An earlier voluntary version of the IU had been agreed to by the member states of FAO back in 1981, framing genetic resources as a common heritage of humanity which needs to be protected from further erosion and loss. But that agreement was overrun by the new political reality of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which reframed genetic resources as national sovereignty and linked access to these resources with the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from them. The underlying objective of the IU -- to ensure the continued availability of genetic resources for food and agriculture -- has not changed in those twenty years. It has only become more urgent.

The new IU will be a legally-binding treaty with its own governing body. Its overall focus encompasses all plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. But its core provisions on "access" and "benefit sharing" will apply to a specific list of crops. The genetic resources of those crops will be pooled into a "multilateral system" that will operate under IU rules.

Although the text of the new Undertaking was roughly finalised last week, there are still a number of crucial issues that remain in brackets, not yet agreed to. The most important ones are: whether and to what extent monopolistic intellectual property rights (IPRs) can be applied to genetic materials accessed through the multilateral system; and the relationship between the IU and other international agreements, most notably the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

THE MAIN LINES

The new IU basically establishes the following:

* The contracting parties will make specific efforts to conserve and promote the good use of genetic resources for food and agriculture. Good use includes agricultural policies that don't undermine biodiversity and support for the role of farmers.

* The IU provides for a multilateral system that sets common rules for access to, and the sharing of benefits from, crop genetic resources. This system applies only to a specific list of crops -- some 35 as of now. This list can grow if parties agree, but the crops that fall outside the list will be treated bilaterally on a case-by-case basis according to the provisions of the Convention on Biodiversity.

* Access to genetic resources under the IU will be multilateral. In other words, countries commit all materials of the agreed crops into a common pot that parties can then draw from under the same rules.

* Financial benefits from the use of IU-governed genetic resources will be shared through a compulsory mechanism that draws on the revenues generated from their commercialisation.

* Whether and to what extent the multilateral system will allow for intellectual property rights on genetic materials in the common pot is still undecided. The current text is in brackets, leaving the possibility wide open.

* Farmers' rights, in the meantime, will be promoted internationally but subject to national law (such as the prohibition to save seed if the seeds are protected at the national level by IPR).

THE WATERING DOWN PROCESS

As often happens in the course of such negotiations, a number of OECD countries led by the United States managed to insert some last minute changes in the text that could make the IU less effective and less comprehensive:

* Only those genetic resources that are in the public domain will be subject to the rules of the multilateral system. Companies and other private holders of crop germplasm are merely ''invited'' to contribute the materials they maintain. In essence, this allows private entities to parasite the system.

* The requirement to share financial benefits only applies if the recipient of the multilateral germplasm limits access to the genetic product he or she sells. Furthermore, this benefit-sharing can be realised through individual contractual agreements -- not necessarily based on new national legislation -- which could turn it into an unworkable and untraceable system.

* The current list of crops to which the multilateral system will apply is ridiculously small. If the treaty is to seriously contribute to food security, it has to apply to many more crops and not only the major commodities.

* The implementation of the IU, and any follow-up action that countries might want to develop under it, will be governed by consensus. In practice, this means that any country can veto any proposal and potentially block the meaningful execution of the treaty.

Despite the successful efforts to weaken the text during the final days of negotiation last week, the new treaty with its governing body is probably a good thing to have. As the multilateral system is meant to facilitate a wide exchange of crop germplasm -- and to fairly share the benefits from it -- it could help prevent a "Wild West" scenario of purely bilateral wheeling-and-dealing from completely taking over. The governing body that will manage the Undertaking, and the multilateral system, should provide a political platform where issues related to crop genetic resources can be dealt with openly at the international level. Everybody, but especially farmers at the local level in need of continued access to agricultural biodiversity, stands to win from such a system.

However, whether these laudable functions will actually materialise depends to a great extent on two things. One is whether the treaty will be able to effectively stop the further privatisation of genetic resources through IPRs. The other is whether the IU will manage to hold its own ground against the imposition of other rules and agreements, such as those implemented by the WTO, that ruthlessly prioritise commercial and international trade interests over and above agriculture and local food security. These are precisely the two issues that are still outstanding and hanging in brackets.

FINAL SHOWDOWN AT NOVEMBER'S FOOD SECURITY SUMMIT

"The treaty fails in many respects," Patrick Mulvany of the UK's Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) said at the closing the negotiating session last weekend. "It is not fair: although Farmers' Rights are recognised, they will be subordinate to national laws protecting the plant breeding industry. It is not equitable: mandatory benefits returned to farmers in developing countries through this treaty will be a minuscule fraction of the food industry's US$2 trillion annual turnover. And it is not comprehensive: it will apply to a mere 34 food crops and a derisory 29 forages."

We agree. The IU only weakly reflects the expectations and demands that over 400 civil society organisations from 60 countries put on the table. But the real test for the treaty still is to come.

Countries now have to decide whether the IU will prohibit intellectual property on the "parts and components" of the materials shared from the common pot. If it does, then the treaty will contribute to ensure the continued availability of genetic resources for further breeding, and will become a milestone in the struggle for sustainable and biodiversity-based agriculture. If it does not, then the IU will contribute to the further privatisation of biodiversity and will be seen rather as an international "undertaker" for plant genetic resources. Because it would then create a legally-binding system that removes biodiversity further away from the control of farmers themselves. It would allow powerful corporations to privatise the shared germplasm and enhance genetic erosion. No developing country will want to contribute genetic resources to a mechanism that allows the materials to be siphoned off as intellectual monopolies in the North. It would be both destructive and wrong.

The final showdown will take place during the first week of November in Rome, when the FAO Conference meets to take stock of how far things have come five years after the World Food Summit of 1996. At that gathering, the final version of the IU is due to be negotiated, adopted and signed. We expect that unless there is strong public pressure to push the IU in the right direction, then the commercial interests pushing it in the opposite direction could very well prevail.

GOING FURTHER:

ITDG is maintaining a section of the UK Food Group's website entirely on the IU negotiations. It is loaded with press materials, position papers, campaign resources, contacts and links to official documents. http://www.ukabc.org/iu2.htm

From: GRAIN Los Banos [mailto:grain@baylink.mozcom.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 6:32 PM
To: bio-ipr@cuenet.com
Subject: [BIO-IPR] The IU hanging on its last brackets

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