7:24 AM May 5, 1997

BIODIVERSITY: NGOS ASKED TO STRENGTHEN SOUTH HANDS IN NEGOTIATIONS

Geneva, 5 May (TWN/Kanaga Raja) -- Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) pursuing biodiversity issues at various international fora should join hands - by sharing information and other resources - among themselves and with activists in South countries to strengthen hands of developing country governments at various fora dealing with biodiversity issues, a leading international NGO has advocated.

The Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), an international NGO based in Spain, has put forward this view in an assessment of the negotiations on this question last year in the various fora -- the Food and Agricultural Organization and its bodies, the Third Conference of Parties (COP3) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

GRAIN advocates in particular, NGOs joining hands to demand more transparency at the WTO and ensure a decision-making process that would be more democratic.

At the Singapore meeting of the WTO, GRAIN notes, most negotiations took place in informal groups organized by delegations from the developed countries. These were confidential, and attendance was by invitation only. Most Southern countries were kept out and were almost entirely in the dark on what was going on.

The success of the industrial world in managing to include issues like labour, environment and investment standards into the WTO agenda, while downplaying issues of interest to the South -- like further liberalisation in agriculture and textiles -- "showed that the WTO is still heavily biased towards the interests of the North."

The four criteria for success of agricultural biodiversity, are: increased control of farmers over their resources; shift in priorities from ex-situ to on-farm management of genetic resources; farmers having rights over their germplasm and knowledge -- and this includes right to benefit from, to share and to further develop crop germplasm and the right to say 'no' to appropriation and commercialization and establishing procedures for Prior Informed Consent; and increased participation by farming communities in setting research priorities.

This trio of biodiversity related objectives (conservation, utilization and benefit-sharing), suffered mixed fates. While the issue of conservation moved ahead at the Leipzig FAO meeting for Global Plan of Action, the other two objectives were left trailing behind.

There was little or no progress on access to genetic resources, establishment of Farmers' Rights, or rights of local communities and indigenous peoples to control their genetic resources.

At the COP3 of the Convention on Biodiversity, the substantive debate was overshadowed by the turf battle over whether the COP or the FAO should lead in this area. There was a lot of procrastination on setting up a process to address the implementation of Art. 8 (j) of the CBD on rights of indigenous peoples and communities, and despite pressures from the more than 400 representatives of these groups present, the only agreement was to hold a five-day workshop on the subject in May 1998 in Montreal.

The full weight of the industrial lobby was on the issue of IPRs, where the decision of the COP3 to encourage studies on the potential of existing IPR systems to achieve the objectives of the convention, made no reference to the harmful effects of IPRs on biodiversity.

The main reason for lack of progress on utilization and benefit-sharing issues, GRAIN says, has been the attitude of the OECD country delegations who were influenced by the Transnational Corporations (TNCs) lurking in the shadows at key meetings.

At almost every international conference, GRAIN says, the industrialized countries, and especially the US, blocked any moves to establish a system of collective rights for farmers and communities.

Fearing this would hinder their drive for patent monopolies on genetic resources and on technologies of the life industry, the OECD countries refuse to discuss any issue relating to IPRs outside the framework of the TRIPs Agreement of the WTO.

The TRIPs Agreement provides for a review, to be taken up in 1999, of the provision on sui generis system (Art. 27. 3b) which enables countries to exclude from patentability plants and animals.

The OECD countries are not happy with this and there is likely to be a heated debate over the review and there will be strong pressure from the North to remove this exclusion.

Some South countries, and many NGOs feel that the exclusion is not strong enough.

At the FAO Commission on Plant Genetic Resources (which met in December last in Rome), and its International Undertaking (IU), various access regimes are being debated.

Crops which traditionally are more dependent on continuous flow of germplasm or particularly important for global, regional, national or local food security are to fall under a relatively more open regime, with countries of origin (mostly South countries) being compensated through a North-financed fund.

Other crops, particularly industrial crops, could be subject to an open access regime with bilateral benefit-sharing, while other crops would be excluded from the scope of the FAO Undertaking and thus subject to specialised access agreement between country of origin and those requesting the resources.

But the crucial point for developing countries is how to retain or gain control over germplasm flows.

The original concept of Farmers Rights referred to a financial fund for farmers in recognition of their role as creators and stewards of agricultural diversity. But the lack of real political will and financial resources have kept them as empty concepts, says GRAIN.

The revision of the FAO's IU would take some time and the challenge is to ensure that negotiated access regime encourages exchange of genetic resources which is open, but does not limit the negotiating power of developing countries.

"Farmers Rights must not be allowed to become a simple fund to finance conservation activities," says GRAIN, but notes that a renegotiated undertaking without the US and EU would not make much sense nor would it be accepted as a protocol to the CBD by the Convention of Parties. At the same time any negotiated access and rights regime must be able to counterbalance the WTO drive for strengthening of TRIPs.

In the medium term, says GRAIN, the WTO reviews and negotiations will be as crucial as any discussions on the international agenda as the OECD and US push hard for stronger IPRs.

The Clinton Administration has proposed in February, in connection with the talks for a Free Trade Area of the Americas that it should have "the highest levels of intellectual property protection found in regional arrangements." It has NAFTA in mind. And if it has its way, then as in the Uruguay Round, the regional standards would soon be made minimum world standards.

In terms of genetic resources, according to GRAIN, the South, in theory, usually has more negotiating leverage in international agreements. This is because they possess the resources that the commercial interests desire, and are thus better able to set the terms of trade. Therefore, if the FAO and the CBD negotiations are well managed, then the G77 could develop a stronger bargaining position within the WTO negotiations, especially in relation to the TRIPs provisions.

However, in negotiations in various fora there has been an erosion of traditional groupings. The G77 alliance has reached breaking point on several occasions -- due to the different interests and technology levels of the South countries.

Some of the latter, with greater technological capacity and interests in becoming competitive in the bio-technology area, have often joined up with the "Northern interest club" in the hope they too would benefit from the policies being proposed by the North.

"But this move may well fail to pay off," says GRAIN. "Agricultural biotech is increasingly controlled by smaller and smaller handful of TNCs, which are carefully laying the ground to make it very difficult for any Southern country to establish its own independent position in biotechnology."

In terms of overall strategy, NGOs must contrive to demand more transparency from the WTO. The revision of the WTO agreements on TRIPs and Agriculture will be crucial. NGOs preparing for these should cooperate closely and agree on some minimum objectives to achieve.

For the TRIPs revision, the objective should be to freely allow exclusion of plants, animals and indigenous knowledge from patentability. Enough governments must be convinced to resist the OECD pressures and to keep the sui generis options open.

As for the Agricultural Agreements, diversity-based agriculture that promotes food self-sufficiency must not be sacrificed to Northern trade and bio-tech interests.

The Agreement on Agriculture must be stripped of the clauses that explicitly allow export subsidies on the part of the US and EU. It must restore and enforce the anti-dumping provisions of Art. 6 in the pre-Uruguay Round GATT Agreement.

The current obligation to open domestic markets to foreign food - to import a minimum percentage of agricultural products - must be eliminated. The WTO must accept food security as a legitimate form of national security, for which WTO obligations can be waived.

The CBD and FAO - and the ministries of environment and agriculture at the national level - have some expertise in genetic resources and should appreciate the harm which IPRs on living materials and privatization of genetic resources can do to food security and biodiversity. They must stand up against the momentum being created at the WTO towards free trade and global patent regimes.

"If NGOs are to influence the outcome of all of these fora on behalf of human rights, farmers' rights, indigenous peoples' rights, biodiversity, biosafety, and food security, says GRAIN, "we have to improve the position of developing country governments in these negotiations.

"We can help," says GRAIN, "by sharing information and other resources with the people of these countries who in turn may choose to provide their governments with a rationale for better coordinating agricultural, environmental and trade policies in their respective government ministries."