Protect Farmers' Rights, Group Urges UN Food Treaty

Protect Farmers' Rights, Group Urges UN Food Treaty

THE International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is
urging the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to do more to protect farmers' customary rights over
biological resources.

AkanimoReports said on Monday IIED is making the call in a paper
submitted to the conference of the treaty’s governing body, which is
underway in Bali (from 14-18 March) for its periodic assessment of the
treaty’s implementation.

The Treaty (created by the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) in 2003 is meant to protect farmers’ rights in
various ways, such as: Protecting rights over traditional knowledge to ensure benefit-sharing from commercial use Ensuring farmers get an equitable share of benefits that arise from the commercial use of traditional crops

Ensuring farmers have a say in national decision-making on the
conservation and sustainable use of Plant Genetic Resources
The conference will also hear the first report on the treaty’s
multilateral benefit-sharing fund, which is meant to take a share of
profits from patented plant genetic resources and share these benefits
with farmers who contribute to the conservation of PGRs.

But so far though the treaty has been very poorly implemented in
national law by UN FAO member nations, says Krystyna Swiderska, a senior researcher at the IIED..

At the same time, other international agreements that protect the rights of commercial plant breeders (e.g. seed companies) are forging
ahead (e.g. the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS agreement and the UPOV
Convention for the protection of new plant varieties).

“The result is a perverse outcome,” says Swiderska. “Small-scale farmers in developing countries are getting no incentive to conserve their local agricultural biodiversity, while commercial interests are being well-served.”

“This gap undermines the rights of farmers because plant breeders can
profit from genetic material conserved and improved by poor
farmers without providing anything in return,” she adds. “This
is hastening the decline of agricultural biodiversity, and so limiting
the options farmers have to adapt to a changing climate, which has
implications for global food security.”

The FAO Treaty recognises the enormous contribution that indigenous and
local communities and farmers have made to the conservation and
development of crop genetic resources. Yet the ability of farmers in
developing countries to continue this role is seriously threatened — not
only by a lack of benefit-sharing, but by a lack of secure rights to
land and genetic resources and policies that promote industrial
agriculture and monocultures.

IIED has submitted a paper to the conference. It argues for a broad
approach to the protection of farmers rights, that goes beyond
benefit-sharing to include protection of farmers' customary rights over
genetic resources and associated landscapes, cultural values and
customary laws, on which the continued conservation and improvement of crops by farmers depends.

ENDS

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