Verdict - a 'curate's egg': Good in parts, my lord, but mainly smells.

''RAFI, struggling for credibility with its sponsors after its targets - the spread of technology and IPP in developing countries - mushroomed out of control, changed horses in midstream to support IPP in another high-profile failure as its anti-development agenda became too complex for even RAFI staffers to understand Dave Wood insists"

Apologies for the above parody in RAFI-ese.

What's RAFI up to now?

Giving Bad Advice

RAFI is trying to induce the CGIAR institutes to 'steal' the intellectual property of others. Indeed, if the CGIAR does not do this, RAFI will claim that the CG is in breach of 'Human Rights'. Problem: the major donors to the CG are the US, Japan, and the European Community. Just the same people who hold most of the world's IPP. If the CG follows RAFI's very bad advice the CG will alienate its most important donors and go out of business. Perhaps this is exactly what RAFI wants. Nice try, RAFI! Don't do it, CGIAR! And don't listen when RAFI praises the wrong bits of the CGIAR - the confused policy-makers (now advised by a former RAFI staffer) rather than the fine ag-scientists. And who complained bitterly when Australia did what RAFI now recommends, i.e. taking someone else's property when it's not exactly illegal. This was the example of an Australian institution placing an Indian chickpea variety under PVR giving RAFI the chance to cause an enormous international fuss. What's different now, four years later?

The wounded bird trick?

When a dog gets too close to a grouse nest, the mother bird flaps away just in front of the dog, apparently with a broken wing: the silly dog gets all excited and runs after her, fooled again, and again, and again. RAFI has been doing some very expensive international flapping and squawking over the past few years (Farmers' Rights; 'Terminator'; the 'Aussie chick pea' fuss; 'Agent Green' and now 'patent-busting' and 'Human Rights'). Where is the nest that RAFI is trying to hide?

Denying the CBD

The 'big nest' that RAFI desperately wants to go unnoticed behind its flapping and squawking is the provision in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to exchange biodiversity for technology. The CBD repeatedly encourages the controlled exchange of genetic resources (a strength of developing countries) for technology (a strength of developed countries). But for this win-win situation to be possible, both parties need to control their resources tightly: the genetic resources of developing countries under national sovereignty (encourage by the CBD); and the proprietary technology of developed countries under internationally recognized intellectual property rights (IPPs, mandated by TRIPS).

What RAFI is lobbying for is just the opposite: free access to national genetic resources and certainly no transfer of agricultural technology. This may be a reasonable view from the 'Little House on the Prairie', with wheat as far as you can see. But from where I'm sitting - looking out across the Deccan Plateau in central India - it smells of the self-interest of wheat exporters.

So it seems that yet again RAFI is trying to whip-up feeling on a single issue - this time patent-busting - to draw attention away from a topic of far more importance to developing countries: real sovereignty over genetic resources mandated by the Biodiversity Convention (CBD). This will be the international battle-ground of next year, and not the diversionary 'Human Rights' campaign by RAFI.

What's in the nest?

Keys to the RAFI agenda are 600,000 eggs: comprehensive samples of genetic resources of our major crops in the CGIAR genebanks. RAFI continually claims these are 'public domain'. They are not! They are duplicate samples deposited in gene 'banks' by farmers and nations - originals are often in national collections. Furthermore, under an agreement with FAO, the CGIAR accepts that it does not own the genebank samples (and therefore, of course, cannot place them in the public domain). However, unless countries are now very careful indeed to specify otherwise, new samples deposited with the CGIAR will become public domain, under new Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs). At present the CG offers genebank samples freely to all and sundry, and anyone may then patent anything derived from them (but not the original samples themselves).

The CGIAR may have once hoped the 'free lunch' would encourage the private sector to share technology with developing countries and with the CGIAR itself. However, there are two problems: Firstly, the private sector is wary of investing research resources, given the ambiguous legal status of the CGIAR 'in-trust' samples (which although the CGIAR doesn't own, can give away). Secondly, the private sector has now firmly indicated that they will not allow public dissemination of their proprietary technology by the CGIAR in ways over which it has no control (Dryden, cg2010 debate, 22 August).

Thus the CGIAR is making resources available, but getting nothing in return, either for itself or for developing countries. At the same time, by allowing free access to duplicates of originals samples in national genebanks, the CGIAR is inadvertently undermining the ability of nations to deal with the private sector as envisaged by the CBD. This impasse and confusion over the CGIAR collections is good for nobody but RAFI and the prairie wheat farmers, and will never generate the funds and technology needed by developing countries for conservation and agricultural development.

Back to the CBD

The highly important CGIAR germplasm samples have been designated to the FAO 'international network of ex-situ collections'. When, over the next year, FAO revises the 'International Undertaking' (IU) that controls this network, member countries of FAO can determine that control over the samples devolves to the individual countries of origin (known for 95% of the samples). Only by exerting this control under re-established national sovereignty and supporting laws can countries benefit from the CBD provisions to exchange bio-resources for technology. To ensure equitable benefit sharing under mutually agreed terms, all future distribution of genetic resources must be under strict national controls. Anyone - including all developed countries - wishing to apply IPP to samples or any derivates should be required to obtain prior informed consent (under CBD Article 15:5-7) from the country of origin. With these controls (and only with these controls) access to technology and funding can be negotiated. No longer should the excuse that all developing countries need access to germplasm allow the irreversible 'internationalization' of national bio-resources.

To protect poor farmers, larger developing countries that are rich in genetic resources could make provision for smaller developing countries to access genetic resources globally for their own public-sector use (with restrictions on passing them on to others).

Individual CGIAR Centres holding germplasm should:

• reclaim policy control over Centre genebanks (now vested centrally in the World Bank);
• allocate rights in germplasm to countries of origin;
• continue with their excellent work of adding value to genetic resources through research.