In the Uruguay GATT round, new and unusual subjects were introduced into the GATT agenda.One of these was the subject of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in relation to biological materials like plants and seeds. The tradition of each country deciding its IPR regime was overturned by western demands in GATT that IPR laws will have to be harmonised across the globe. IPRs would now have to be extended to life forms, something not allowed by law in India and many other developing countries.
 

Gene Campaign's position was that developing nations ought to include a minimum of protection measures if they have to accept any kind of IPR on biological/genetic resources under pressure. These measures include retaining the freedom of farmers to produce, sell and modify seeds and of scientists to breed new varieties. This must be accompanied by the acknowledgement of the Farmers Right on par with the Breeders Right.
 

This means that if Breeders are to be rewarded, then farmers and indigenous people of the tropical areas must also be awarded for their informal, innovative work. It is these people who created and refined varieties of almost all major food and cash crops and identified the genes that bestow desirable traits like high yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance.
 

If IPRs were to prevail, then genetic resources must be treated as a commercial resource with a price tag in the same way as copper, coal or iron ore. If Industrialised countries can earn from their copper and iron, we must be allowed to earn from our genes. For this to happen, genetic resources will have to be accepted as the sovereign property of countries where they are found, instead of being treated as the common heritage of mankind to be used without payment.

The struggle to gain economic and political control of the world's genetic resources is between two sides. On one side are the multinational corporations wanting guaranteed access, without payment, to the genetic resources concentrated in the countries of the South. On the other side are the farming and tribal communities, the rural men and women who have protected and maintained these resources and who have knowledge of its properties and where it is found. These real owners of this biological treasure have been completely excluded from negotiations and debates. If the new rules are enforced, these communities will have lost their most valuable resource, the backbone of their economies. Gene Campaign has decided to fight on the side of the farm men and women and the tribal and indigenous communities.  Read More...