Treaty to Share the Genetic Commons The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), along with 11 other civil society organizations and indigenous peoples organizations, have been actively involved in drafting a Treaty which, in their view, represents an important and necessary policy departure from the positions taken by many governments and many other inter-governmental treaties. They want the eventual text to be negotiated and adopted by governments at the Rio+10 Conference in South Africa next year such that it becomes a legally binding international commitment.* Central aim The purpose is to establish the Earth's gene pool, in all of its biological forms and manifestations, as a global commons to be jointly shared by all peoples. This would prohibit all patents on plant, animal, and human life including patents on genes and the products they code for, in their natural, purified or synthesized form, as well as chromosomes, cells, tissues, organs and organisms including cloned, transgenic and chimeric organisms. While the initiative does have some elements in common with other efforts to establish a global regime to govern and regulate the use of biological resources the Biological Diversity Convention, the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources, TRIPS, etc. it differs from these in one very fundamental respect. Unlike these other initiatives, this treaty opposes the extension of intellectual property rights to any living thing as well as the components of all living things. Its drafters believe that our evolutionary heritage is not a negotiable commodity. While they laud the good intentions of both the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources (IU), they argue that the goal of equitably sharing the earth's biological heritage can only be realized by prohibiting all commercial patents on life. | |
|