'Biopiracy' refers either to the unauthorised extraction of biological resources, such as plants with medicinal properties, and associated traditional knowledge from indigenous peoples and local communities, or to the patenting of spurious 'inventions' based on such knowledge or resources without compensation. Biopiracy cases continue to emerge in the media and public eye, yet they remain the source of considerable disagreement, confusion, controversy and grief. The aim of this book is to provide the most detailed, coherent analysis of the issue of biopiracy to date. The book synthesises the rise of the issue and increasing use of the term by activists and negotiators in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to form a critical understanding of the themes, implications and politics of biopiracy. Taking a case-study based approach, derived from interviews and fieldwork with researchers, government, industry, local farmers, healers and indigenous people, the author sequentially documents events that have occurred in biopiracy and bioprospecting controversies. Implications and ethical dilemmas are explored, particularly relating to work with local communities, and the power relations entailed. Detailing international debates from the WTO, CBD and other fora in an accessible manner, the book provides a unique overview of current institutional limitations and suggests ways forward. Options and solutions are suggested which are relevant for local communities, national governments, international negotiators, NGO and interest groups, researchers and industry.

Legal control and ownership of plants and traditional knowledge of the uses of plants (TKUP) is a vexing issue. The phenomenon of appropriation of plants and TKUP, otherwise known as biopiracy, thrives in a cultural milieu where non-Western forms of knowledge are systemically marginalized and devalued as "folk knowledge" or characterized as inferior. Global Biopiracy rethinks the role of international law and legal concepts, the Western-based, Eurocentric patent systems of the world, and international agricultural research institutions as they affect legal ownership and control of plants and TKUP.

Vandana Shiva has established herself as a leading independent thinker and voice for the South in that critically important nexus where questions of development strategy, the environment and the posititon of women in society coincide. In this new volume, she brings together her thinking on the protection of biodiversity, the implications of biotechnology, and the consequences for agriculture of the global pre-eminence of Western-style scientific knowledge. In lucid and accessible fashion, she examines the current threats to the planet's biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion and replacement by monocultural production. She shows how the new Biodiversity Convention has been gravely undermined by a mixture of diplomatic dilution during the process of negotiation and Northern hi-tech interests making money out of the new biotechnologies. She explains what these technologies involve and gives examples of their impact in practice. She questions their claims to improving natural species for the good of all and highlights the ethical and environmental problems posed. Underlying her arguments is the view that the North's particular approach to scientific understanding has led to a system of monoculture in agriculture - a model that is not being foisted on the South, displacing its societies' ecologically sounder, indigenous and age-old experiences of truly sustainable food cultivation, forest management and animal husbandry. This rapidly accelerating process of technology and system transfer is impoverishing huge numbers of people, disrupting the social systems that provide them with security and dignity, and will ultimately result in a sterile planet in both North and South, In a policy intervention of potentially great significance, she calls instead for a halt, at international as well as local level, to the aid and market incentives to both large-scale destruction of habitats where biodiversity thrives and the introduction of centralised, homogenous systems of cultivation.

Globally, local and indigenous approaches to conserving biodiversity, crop improvement, and managing precious natural resources are under threat. Many communities have to deal with 'biopiracy,' for example. As well, existing laws are usually unsuitable for protecting indigenous and traditional knowledge and for recognizing collective rights, such as in cases of participatory plant breeding, where farmers, researchers and others join forces to improve existing crop varieties or develop new ones, based on shared knowledge and resources. This book addresses these issues. It outlines the national and international policy processes that are currently underway to protect local genetic resources and related traditional knowledge and the challenges these initiatives have faced. In particular these themes are addressed within the context of the Convention of Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The authors broaden the policy and legal debates beyond the sphere of policy experts to include the knowledge-holders themselves. These are the 'custodians of biodiversity': farmers, herders and fishers in local communities. Their experience in sharing access and benefits to genetic resources is shown to be crucial for the development of effective national and international agreements. The book presents and analyzes this experience, including case studies from China, Cuba, Honduras, Jordan, Nepal, Peru and Syria. Copublished with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Genetic engineering and the cloning of organisms are “the ultimate expression of the commercialization of science and the commodification of nature.… Life itself is being colonized,” according to renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva. The resistance to this biopiracy, she argues, is the struggle to conserve both cultural and biological diversity. As the land, forests, oceans, and atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and polluted, corporations are now looking for new colonies to exploit and invade for further accumulation—in Shiva’s view, the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants, and animals. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition of Biopiracy is a learned, clear, and passionately stated objection to the ways in which Western businesses are being allowed to expropriate natural processes and traditional forms of knowledge.

Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name and in the shadow of bioprospecting, this book takes us into the unexpected sites where Mexican scientists and American companies venture looking for medicinal plants and local knowledge. Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise--and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of "selling biodiversity to save it"--and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural "enfranchisement" to the logics of intellectual property. Roving across UN protocols, botanical collecting histories, Mexican nationalist agendas, neoliberal property regimes, and North-South relations, When Nature Goes Public charts the myriad, emergent publics that drive and contest the global market in biodiversity and its futures.

Intellectual property rights are a major source of controversy. Corporations are now patenting human genes, plants and other biological materials, many of which exist in nature or have been used for generations by farmers and indigenous peoples. Martin Khor examines the biopiracy phenomenon, its links to the TRIPS Agreement, and its various effects.

BIOPROSPECTING OF PLANT BIODIVERSITY FOR INDUSTRIAL MOLECULES A comprehensive collection of recent translational research on bioresource utilization and ecological sustainability Bioprospecting of Plant Biodiversity for Industrial Molecules provides an up-to-date overview of the ongoing search for biodiverse organic compounds for use in pharmaceuticals, bioceuticals, agriculture, and other commercial applications. Bringing together work from a panel of international contributors, this comprehensive monograph covers natural compounds of plants, endophyte enzymes and their applications in industry, plant bioprospecting in cosmetics, marine bioprospecting of seaweeds, and more. Providing global perspectives on bioprospecting of plant biodiversity, the authors present research on enzymes, mineral micro-nutrients, biopesticides, algal biomass, and other bioactive molecules. In-depth chapters assess the health impacts and ecological sustainability of the various biomolecules and identify existing and possible applications ranging from ecological restoration to production of essential oils and cosmetics. Other topics include, bio-energy crops as alternative fuel resources, the role of plants in phytoremediation of industrial waste, and the industrial applications of endophyte enzymes. This comprehensive resource: Includes a through introduction to plant biodiversity and bioprospecting Will further the knowledge of application of different plants and improve research investigation techniques. Summarizes novel approaches for researchers in food science, microbiology, biochemistry, and biotechnology Bioprospecting of Plant Biodiversity for Industrial Molecules is an indispensable compendium of biological research for scientists, researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and academics in the areas of microbiology, food biotechnology, industrial microbiology, plant biotechnology, and microbial biotechnology.