Protecting community rights over traditional knowledge
The current system of intellectual property rights is designed to promote commercial and scientific innovation. It offers little scope for protecting the knowledge rights of Indigenous Peoples, traditional farmers and healers, whose survival requires collective – not exclusive – access to new knowledge and innovations.
Principal researcher and team leader (biocultural heritage), IIED's Natural Resources research group
Many communities face increasing threats to their resource rights due to the spread of western intellectual property rights (IPRs), often through Free Trade Agreements. If IPRs are granted too easily they can confer rights over community resources to others and do not require consent or benefit-sharing when community resources are used.
They can also limit the rights of farmers to use, sell or exchange a bio-resource, which can be a serious problem if your livelihood depends on it.
This action-research project, ‘Protecting community rights over traditional knowledge: implications of customary laws and practices’ ran from 2004-2009. It worked with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to develop tools to protect their collective rights over traditional knowledge and related bio-resources, take advantage of market opportunities, and prevent them from being unfairly exploited and misappropriated.
What IIED did
This project saw IIED and partners explore the customary laws and practices of indigenous and local communities to identify appropriate mechanisms to protect their resource rights and knowledge systems.
It involved participatory research at community level to strengthen local capacity and develop local tools for protecting traditional knowledge – including biocultural registers, biocultural community protocols and biocultural products.
The findings and recommendations also informed policies on traditional knowledge and biodiversity at local, national and international levels, and developed the concept of collective biocultural heritage, which provided the common framework to link different studies on this theme in China, India, Kenya, Panama and Peru.
News and updates
Additional resources
Project website: bioculturalheritage.org
Indigenous Peoples' food systems and biocultural heritage: addressing Indigenous priorities using decolonial and interdisciplinary research approaches, Krystyna Swiderska, Alejandro Argumedo, Chemuku Wekesa, Leila Ndalilo, Yiching Song, Ajay Rastogi, Philippa Ryan (2022), Sustainability journal 14(18), 11311
Video: Traditional knowledge rights: heritage on the edge (2017)
PLA65: Biodiversity and culture: exploring community protocols, rights and consent, guest edited by Krystyna Swiderska with Angela Milligan, Kanchi Kohli, Harry Jonas, Holly Shrumm, Wim Hiemstra, Maria Julia Oliva (2012), Participation, Learning and Action Journal
Blog: BBC Viewpoint: Could things for biodiversity go from bad to worse?, Krystyna Swiderska (July 2010)
Policy submissions
Submission on farmers' rights to the FAO Treaty on PGRFA's fourth governing body meeting, Krystyna Swiderska, Alejandro Argumedo, Ruchi Pant, Yiching Song, Jingsong Li (2011)
Submission to the eighth meeting of the CBD Working group on Access and benefit-sharing (November 2009)
Submission to the CBD Expert Group on traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, Hyderabad (June 2009)
Sui Generis Systems for the Protection of Traditional Knowledge, submitted to the CBD Working Group on Article 8(j) (October 2005)
Towards a holistic approach to Indigenous knowledge protection: UN Activities, 'Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage' and the UNPFII Fifth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, New York, Krystyna Swiderska, Alejandro Argumedo (May 2006)
Statement by IIED, ANDES and Call of the Earth, Fifth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, New York, IIED. Andes, Call of the Earth (May 2006) | en español
Partners
Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy
Ecoserve, Delhi
Herbal and Folklore Research Centre (HFRC)
Kenya Forestry Research Centre
International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
Fundacion Dobbo Yala
