<nettime> Certified Italian...and the some: CGIAR

["Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle@web.de>]

> >From _The Economist_'s "Business This Week" e-mail newsletter, 10.10.02:
>
> The Italian government announced a scheme to certify ITALIAN RESTAURANTS
> around the world, ensuring genuine Italian menus served by Italians --
> complete, presumably, with oversized pepper mills and checked table
> cloths. Counterfeit Italian restaurants are thought to make profits of
> some EURO27 billion ($26.6 billion) a year. A pilot scheme will be
> launched in Belgium next year.
>
> - COPYRIGHT -
>
> This newsletter and Economist articles linked from it copyright 2002 The
> Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

I'd say certificates of authenticity should only be issued to restaurants
that also launder money for Berlusconi's P2 colleagues. And how about
catholicism? I'd say the owner should also be a member of Opus Dei, wearing
a barbed belt at least once a week.

BTW, is there some confusion over Bio-IPR? The struggle against UPOV, i.e.
the discrepancy between the rights of commercial plant breeders and
(indigenous, peasant, 'traditional') 'farmers rights' has very little to do
with Berlusconi's culturalist fantasy of authenticity, and so does the
question of the future structure of CGIAR (probably the world's most
powerful agricultural agency, unfortunately continues to escape the
attention of 'the movement') or local attempts to undermine the TRIPS regime
by creating local 'knowledge banks' (pre-registration of previously
'uncodified' knowledges will make commercial patenting impossible), the
question over whether international (patent) law should be transformed to
incorporate collective bearers of rights (one popular solution has been the
collection of trusts) etc etc etc.

This is a lively and interesting field, I'm never quite sure why it
(respectively the strawman-version of it, significantly easier to knock down
than the real thing) becomes the target of mockery rather than controversy
over why this has become such an important terrain, at least in the field of
ecopolitics. Given the spread of TRIPS (or bilateral agreements that are far
more comprehensive than WTO rules), it is not clear to me how the terms of
resistance to hegemonic forms of proprietarization could be determined in
some kind of juridical vacuum - just-say-no-to-IPR is simply not an option
for a lot of actors in this area, even though the struggle to expand the
'public domain' (i.e. contest its enclosure) of biological material
continues.

Soenke

PS Here's some recent overview stuff, if anyone is interested:

BIOPIRACY BY ANOTHER NAME?
A critique of the FAO-CGIAR trusteeship system

GRAIN
October 2002

Nearly ten years ago, back in 1994, the world's most important genebank
collections for plant breeding of our major food crops were placed under the
auspices of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The idea was to
protect this germplasm from misappropriation - or biopiracy - by
establishing legal and political protection called "trusteeship". While few
people are aware of the arrangement, it is a very important one. The
trusteeship agreement is about to undergo a major revision, to bring the
system in line with the new FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. This
presents an opportunity to critically examine the trusteeship system and
asks ourselves if we're on the right boat.

BUILDING UP THE COLLECTIONS

Since the start of the 'green revolution' in the 1960s, international
agricultural research centres have been building up vast collections of
plant genetic diversity called "genebanks." They did this almost as fast as
they replaced that diversity in the farmers' field with their new so-called
"high-yielding varieties" which were supposed to boost productivity in Third
World countries and end hunger. These genebanks are something like seed
libraries: vast collections of different types of rice, corn, wheat or
potatoes, held under special storage conditions to hopefully outlive us all.
But they are not museums. They are supposed to serve as a reservoir of
genetic diversity - all the existing genetic variation amongst our food
crops that the scientists can get hold of - for breeding new and supposedly
better plant types year after year.

In the early 1970s, these research centres were regrouped under the umbrella
of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a
freshly launched consortium of donors. The CGIAR was a shady operation from
the start. With no legal charter and a posh secretariat inside the World
Bank, the CGIAR has operated freely on its own, unhampered by democratic
decision-making processes or UN oversight. And yet its impact has been
significant, as the CGIAR's ensemble of research centres were very
successful in convincing Third World governments that they should replace
their 'backward peasant farming systems' with modern agricultural technology
and thinking - courtesy of the CGIAR.

Genebanks have been a core component of this enterprise. The green
revolution scientists needed a pool of farmers' varieties from which to
produce their own 'high-yielding' ones. That's how breeding has worked for
12,000 years now: breeders don't create new genes, they rearrange old ones.
Over the years, the genebank strategy for collecting and conserving this
crop diversity was pumped and primed, especially through the work of one
CGIAR Centre, the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources.  Today,
there are over six million accessions - or entries - in the world's crop
genebanks. About 10% of them are held by the CGIAR Centres. While that may
seems like a small portion, it's actually the most important part. The CGIAR
collections are reputed to be the most complete, best documented and best
preserved.

Who controls the CGIAR genebanks? For whose benefit? And under what terms?
The trusteeship deal that the CGIAR sealed with FAO was meant to provide
something of an answer to these long nagging questions.

THE PURPOSE OF THE FAO-CGIAR ARRANGEMENT

The essence of the arrangement agreed between the FAO and the CGIAR in 1994
was to bring the CGIAR's germplasm collections under intergovernmental
authority. That was certainly the FAO's purpose, with the added benefit that
the authority would be exercised through the FAO itself. But the CGIAR had
an additional motive.

Placing the germplasm collections under some more official auspices than
their own would help shield the CGIAR Centres from pressures they were
facing in terms of intellectual property rights (IPR). The Centres
collaborate with all forms of scientific research outfits: from small
universities in the Pacific islands to DuPont Corporation in the US.
Increasingly, intellectual property concerns were creeping into these
relationships and plaguing the kind of work that could be undertaken. Plant
breeders' rights - a kind of patent for plant varieties - had been available
in the developed countries since the 1960s. But more restrictive, industrial
patents were now being pushed worldwide to control the commercial use of
genes and biotechnology. These systems give legal monopoly rights over plant
genetic resources in a way that restricts the flow of information and
materials, threatening plant breeding itself. They also taint the mandate
of public research institutes, since they encourage the siphoning off of
publicly-funded work to private gains and compromised agendas.

Beyond day-to-day problems of research partners coming in with IPR-related
restrictions on scientific cooperation, international policies were also
shifting all around the CGIAR at the time. The Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), which asserts national sovereignty over genetic resources,
had just been signed. The World Trade Organisation, with its highly
prescriptive Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement,
was just months away from being launched. Fences were being built around
genetic resources left and right.

All of this was making life increasingly complicated for the CGIAR, which
just wanted to produce what it considers to be "international public goods".
For the CGIAR, the arrangement with FAO was a kind of high-level political
'hands off' sign - a shroud of protection in a world getting more greedy and
individualistic about who owns what. This is not to say that going into this
scheme was an altruistic move on the part of the CGIAR. Its scientific
lifeline was up for grabs.

THE COMPONENTS OF THE SYSTEM

There are three components to the trusteeship system: the FAO-CGIAR
Agreement, the joint FAO-CGIAR Statement and a model Material Transfer
Agreement (MTA).

The Agreement was signed on 24 October 1994 between FAO and 12 of the 16
CGIAR Centres (those that are supposed to hold plant germplasm collections).
The Agreement is identical in all 12 cases. It basically says that:

* designated germplasm will be held "in trust" by the Centres for the
benefit of humanity;
* germplasm will be maintained properly and shared freely for the purpose of
conservation, research and plant breeding; and
* no one will be allowed to take out IPR on the germplasm.

Under the terms of the Agreement, each Centre has to decide which accessions
in its genebank will be "designated" to the FAO. This selective approach is
supposed to respect the different conditions under which the germplasm may
have been acquired by the Centres. In some cases, there may be restrictions
imposed by the donor, but the overall aim is to designate as much germplasm
as possible. Currently, about 70% of the CGIAR's germplasm holdings are
designated to the trusteeship system (see table). The Agreement is subject
to renewal every four years. It was renewed without modification in October
1998 and is up for renewal again in October 2002 - when it will start
undergoing important changes to fall into line with the new FAO
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources.

Attached to the Agreement are joint Statements signed by the FAO and the
CGIAR (one drawn up at the first signing of the Agreement, and the second
accompanying the 1998 renewal.) These Statements serve to clarify a few
matters, especially in terms of how trusteeship will honour the principles
of the CBD. Among other points, they make two significant "clarifications".
The first is that the intention of the Agreement, and the function of any
tools used to implement it, is to ensure that the germplasm "remains in the
public domain". In other words, both the FAO and the CGIAR Centres
apparently equate "trusteeship" - protection of the germplasm from IPR
claims - with a "public domain" status of the material. The second one is
that the Centres explicitly reject any responsibility for enforcement of the
Agreement. When shipping out germplasm to people who request samples, or to
institutes doing safety backups, "in neither case will the source Centre be
under an obligation to monitor the compliance of the recipient with these
undertakings [i.e. to refrain from claiming IPR]; the obligation of the
source Centre will be limited to obtaining such undertakings on the part of
the recipient."

Finally, the FAO and the CGIAR drew up a standard MTA. This is a contract
that is supposed to accompany all transfers of designated germplasm from the
Centres to whoever requests samples. The main feature of the MTA is that it
tells the germplasm recipient that he or she has "no rights" to claim
intellectual property over the material - and that this provision extends to
anyone with whom he or she shares it further (third parties). No signature
is required to express acceptance of these terms on the part of the
recipient: merely opening the package signifies agreement. The MTA also
makes it clear that direct commercialisation of the germplasm - through, for
example, multiplication and distribution of seeds to farmers - is perfectly
within bounds of the agreement.

THE PROBLEMS

On the surface, a hands-off policy to prevent 'misappropriation' of the crop
genetic resources held by the CGIAR seems like an excellent thing. However,
if you look closely at how the system is set up, what it implies for
farmers, and how well it's being implemented, there is a lot that appears
fundamentally wrong with it.

1. Farmers' rights denied

The FAO-CGIAR trusteeship system does not recognise, much less support or
help enforce, farmers' rights. This is the most profound problem with the
whole arrangement, not least since it involves two institutions which claim
to be all for the rights of farmers with respect to the management of
agricultural biodiversity.

Why are farmers' rights so important? More than 70% of the designated
germplasm is composed of landraces and wild materials. That translates to
half a million different plant varieties that were taken from farmers and
indigenous peoples across the developing world. (Many wild plants are
actively cared for by local communities, even if they are not directly
cultivated.) No one is saying that farmers or indigenous peoples should be
considered "owners" of those materials. But they developed them, conserved
them, and ended up giving them to all of us through the genebank system set
up by the CGIAR. And yet the trusteeship system ignores this history and
walks right over any relationship that the farmers had - or continue to have
- with the seeds.

No farmers were involved in drafting the Agreement or asked to approve it.
Neither do farmers have any authority or practical means to oversee its
implementation or express any grievances about it. If they don't like it,
tough luck. This is not a theoretical problem. In 1998, RAFI  discovered
that a whole number of chickpea and lentil varieties taken from farmers in
South Asia and 'entrusted' to one of the CGIAR Centres (the International
Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India) had been sent
to Australia where some local breeders obtained plant breeders' rights on
them. The materials had not been modified in any way through plant breeding,
but they were 'new' to Australia and were legally appropriated. The same
happened with cereals from another CGIAR institute, the International Centre
for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, based in Syria. The same could
easily be happening with more seeds from more farmers in other places. In
other words, genetic resources taken from farming communities are being
claimed as other people's intellectual property through or despite this
trusteeship system.

The problem of farmers being locked out of the system goes further still. In
2001, Thai NGOs and social movements learned that the country's cherished
Jasmine rice, which was being conserved under the trusteeship arrangement at
the CGIAR's International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), in the
Philippines, was shipped to the United States without an MTA. This triggered
off huge protests because of concerns about the Jasmine rice being
genetically engineered, patented, and/or grown in the US to undercut
Thailand's export market. Not only did IRRI fail to honour its
responsibilities, but important economic and political insecurities were
generated among the farming communities that the rice came from.

These materials come from farmers. Yet farmers are denied any rights or role
to control what happens to them under this system. In the case of the
Jasmine rice, the farmers had no immediate recourse but to go down to
Bangkok and protest in front of the Prime Minister's office. Some even flew
over to the Philippines and protested in front of IRRI. What else were they
to do when they are not part of the arrangement? They wouldn't even have
known about this trusteeship deal - and how it turned against them - had
local NGOs and newspapers not blown the whistle. It's not as if the FAO or
the CGIAR had informed them or kept them updated with new developments. The
CGIAR has even denied that the Jasmine affair was of any importance, despite
the point of view of the Thai farmers. This is an extreme and concrete
denial of farmer's rights, no matter how you define it.

More fundamentally, by unilaterally declaring all 500,000 designated
accessions as "public domain", the CGIAR in particular has severed whatever
relationship farmers and indigenous peoples may consider that they have
towards those materials. This raises a whole range of questions about due
legal process and the substance of the rights involved here. In terms of
process, what legal basis is this "public domain" status grounded in? What
tradition does it emerge from and is it properly framed in international
law? Where does the CGIAR, whose history of collecting and distributing
germplasm "on behalf of the international community" it is supposed to
protect, get the right to operate it? With regard to substance, what does
"public domain" mean here? Free access? Public property? Is the CGIAR a
public entity? What if the farmers or indigenous groups consider the seeds
part of their heritage and want to have a certain kind of control over who
accesses them, how they are used and what happens to them? What if they have
their own understanding of sovereignty - not necessarily vested in national
governments, the FAO or the CGIAR for that matter - which applies? Are the
sovereign rights of indigenous peoples, which are increasingly getting
crystallised in national and international law, properly accounted for
through this "public domain" tag? What if they see these seeds, these plant
varieties taken from their lands and farms, as subject to collective rights
- historically, today and for the future? Are these collective rights
compatible with "public domain"?

The CGIAR, and this especially reflects the position of the CGIAR in many
documents, does not seem to care about any of this. Its main concern is to
have these materials effortlessly declared public property so that its
scientists can freely continue their work. It's like trying to construct a
kind of 'no man's land', so that no one can come and pester the CGIAR
genebanks with conflicting claims and competing rights. The Centres are like
ostriches sticking their heads in the sand. Below the surface, maybe they
see a world free of IPR pressure, a peaceful "public domain" - but there are
definitely no farmers' rights down there either. The links have conveniently
been cut. Which leaves us with free access to the CGIAR-held 'raw materials'
(below ground) and IPR on the rest (above ground).

2. An unenforceable system

Another major problem is that the system cannot be enforced - and those of
in charge of it do not even seem serious about wanting to enforce it. This
is borne out by a number of key facts already mentioned:

* No signature indicating acceptance of the terms of the MTA is required;
* The Centres officially renounce responsibility to monitor compliance with
the Agreement;
* Centres have been caught distributing designated germplasm without an MTA;
and
* Designated material distributed from the Centres has been directly
appropriated under intellectual property regimes.

It is clear from all the legal documents that the system relies on good
intentions and nothing more. The CGIAR Directors have reiterated many times
their desire to see things work well, but they are not committed to ensuring
that the policy works. Yes, they have steps to deal with violations. But
they cannot and have to no desire to police, say, the 60,000 shipments of
germplasm that left their Centres in the year 2000. Nor can the FAO.
Violation-spotting is left to public interest NGOs instead. But tracking
seed packets is not the heart of the enforcement problem. The real problem
is that the people running this system want everyone to believe that it's a
sound and credible one, when this does not appear to be true.

3. An empty 'hands off' policy

When you look closely, the 'no IPR' policy of the trusteeship system only
applies to the germplasm accessions in the form that they are sitting on the
genebank shelves. Despite all the trumpeting, components of the germplasm
accessions (such as individual genes) and derivatives (selections made from
the plants or descendents of crosses) may be legally appropriated by anyone
through IPR. This is explicitly upheld by the system in several documents.
And it happens all the time.

This makes for a very deceptive system in many ways. First, despite all the
assurances, the protection from IPR that the system is supposed to provide
is extremely limited. Okay, no one should be able to take a seed sample from
a genebank and patent it. But under most any IPR law, that would be
impossible anyway because the seed is not new. So who needs trusteeship?
Another kind of deception is that the MTA is not very up front about this.
The implicit policy is that no IPR should be applied to the materials "in
the form received". Nowhere in the current setup will you find those four
little words.

But those four little words are fast becoming the de facto policy governing
the distribution of genetic resources all around the world. It means that if
you get hold of two rice accessions from IRRI, you cannot patent them as
such - in the form you received them. But you can cross them together and
patent the offspring. The final deception is neglecting to remind anyone
that the Centres themselves may also get IPR protection over designated
materials in this devious way. Under the same unspoken principle of "in the
form received", the Centres would never try to get IPR on the materials as
contained in the genebanks. But their components and derivatives are another
story. Many CGIAR Centres have pro-IPR policies which state that the Centres
are prepared to seek IPR over the results of their own research and breeding
work, i.e. modifications of the genebank materials.

The hands-off sign provided by trusteeship is largely irrelevant, since the
material would not qualify for IPR protection anyway. Any patent office
should turn a tempted biopirate - someone trying to claim that what already
exists is actually new - away.

4. Commercialisation, but no benefits

The FAO-CGIAR trusteeship Agreement states that designated germplasm is to
be distributed for the purpose of "scientific research, plant breeding or
genetic resources conservation". Full stop. The MTA, which is supposed to
accompany every mail-out of material, adds a new dimension. It opens the
doors to commercial release of the material. "This [MTA] does not prevent
the recipient from making the germplasm directly available to farmers or
consumers for cultivation, use or consumption," it says. The Centres
themselves clearly understand this to mean commercial release. For example,
the Director General of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in
Colombia has written to her staff stipulating that, "Commercialisation of
the material, as well as use for research and breeding, is allowed under the
agreement."

For people concerned about faithfulness to the CBD, this is a bit odd.
Because nowhere in the trusteeship system up to now - and it has been around
for as long as the CBD - has there been any provision for sharing benefits
from the direct commercial use of the material with the country it came
from.

WHERE WILL TRUSTEESHIP GO?

In October 2002, the FAO member states will sit down to revisit the nuts and
bolts of the trusteeship system. There are two reasons for this. On the one
hand, the current four-year agreements with the CGIAR are about to terminate
and have to be renewed. On the other hand, the whole system has to be
shifted to the auspices of the new FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources,
which will now govern the "in trust" germplasm under its own provisions.

It is expected that the current agreements with each of the 12 Centres will
be renewed for now without much fuss. In the background documents for this
procedure, the CGIAR has reported some problems with IPR being taken out on
designated germplasm. But these problems are said to be under control.
(Nothing is said about the Jasmine rice fiasco, however.) Rehauling the
system towards compliance with the new FAO Treaty is where things get
complicated. And the proposals on the table should generate a host of
questions and debates.

The revised trusteeship system, to be administered under the FAO Treaty, is
basically the old one plus deeper problems.

One deeper problem is that "in the form received" is now being entrenched as
the legal framework for distributing farmers' materials from genebanks.
Under the FAO Treaty - which still needs to be ratified by more than 30
governments before it comes into force - these four little words will become
the letter of international law. "Recipients shall not claim any
intellectual property or other rights that limit the facilitated access to
the plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, or their genetic parts
or components, in the form received from the Multilateral System," the
Treaty says. The revised trusteeship system will have to implement this
rule. As we've seen, "in the form received" is no shield from biopiracy. You
cannot access Jasmine rice from IRRI and patent it. But you can access
Jasmine rice, add one gene, and patent the result. Never mind that 99% of
what gets patented this way was in the "public domain" yesterday, or fell
under the national sovereignty of the Thai government or was developed by
Thai farmers. The policy now is that the slightest modification of so-called
public germplasm, or its "parts or components", qualifies it for private
monopoly control. With patent offices eager to call the isolation of a gene
a feat of invention, "in the form received" amounts to a very poor defense
against the privatisation of genetic resources and the new trusteeship
system will have to implement it to the letter.

Another deepening problem is enforcement. The old system had weak legal
bones and half-hearted commitments; its implementing tools, like the MTA,
even deviated from the basic policy. The new trusteeship system could get
more problematic. Without necessarily solving those previous problems - with
the exception of the legal bones, since the FAO Treaty will be a legally
binding instrument with its own governing body - it now has to respect
different categories of germplasm with different strings attached. The
Treaty only covers about 35 crops, itemised in its Annex 1. The CGIAR
Centres will handle those crops in accordance with the Treaty. Crops outside
the coverage of the Treaty but held by the Centres will be handled according
to whatever specific terms were agreed to either with the country of origin
of the material or with the country the Centres got it from. Add to this the
fact that not all countries from which the materials came (one way or
another) are party to the CBD, plus the possibility that not all countries
which contributed to or wish to access the CGIAR genebanks will join the FAO
Treaty, and it gets quite complicated.

For example, there will probably be fights over how commercial benefits from
the use of "in trust" germplasm will be shared under the revised system.
This fight will have to play itself out no matter what when the Treaty comes
into force, since there are no details on this with respect to any kind of
Treaty-covered material. But access to CGIAR-held germplasm has been
generating a lot of commercial benefits up to now which have never been
shared through the trusteeship system - and some governments may raise noise
about that. Similarly, the FAO Treaty provides for benefit sharing upon
commercialisation of modified "in trust" material, but not unmodified "in
trust" material. Further, there are still mixed messages being put across in
terms of the purpose of distributing the "in trust" material. The new draft
trusteeship Agreement talks about research, breeding and training.
("Conservation" has been booted out.) The new draft MTA once again adds a
footnote allowing direct commercialisation (but no benefit sharing).

Most importantly, the new trusteeship system - like the old one - risks
being founded on wrong principles. Farmers have rights in relation to those
seeds, but nowhere in the new construction do we see those rights being
upheld. In fact, just where the "trust" to be implemented through the system
arises from, in legal terms, is not at all clear. For the FAO, it arises
from "a historical process": a series of agreements, one superseding the
other with very different legal weights attached. When and where did the
farmers and indigenous peoples from whom the seeds come delegate authority
over all this to the CGIAR? When did they give it to the FAO or to the
governments for that matter? Where did the right to designate all these
materials to the "public domain" come from, and who is this supposed to
serve, and how?

The CGIAR and the FAO ought to start from scratch and redesign the whole
system rather than simply update it to bring it into line with the new FAO
Treaty. That means anchoring it on a full and unquestionable commitment to
farmers' and indigneous peoples' rights. Not the way Northern governments -
like the European Union, for whom farmers' rights are a "retrospective
reward" for having given us the genetic diversity now subject to trusteeship
- might want to reduce them. Trusteeship only makes sense if it is properly
negotiated with those who have rights vested in the materials. That means
providing the proper forum and using an appropriate legal basis  - such as
that of collective rights - so that farmers and indigenous peoples can
decide themselves what the principles and policies should be, who does what
with the seeds and for whose benefit. If these agencies can't do that, then
all this talk about farmers' rights at FAO or within the CGIAR itself is
plain hot air. In this case, farmers and indigenous peoples will be left to
take care of their rights in defiance of these systems.


GRAIN would like to thank Antonio Onorati of the Italian NGO Crocevia for
his important contributions to this article.


SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

van Caenegem, William, "The Public Domain: Scientia Nullia?", European
Intellectual Property Review, Vol 24, Issue 6, June 2002.

Commission on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture,
Consultations with the IARCs of the CGIAR and Other Relevant International
Institutions on the Agreements to be Signed with the Governing Body of the
ITPGRFA, First Meeting Acting as the Interim Committee for the International
Treaty on PGRFA, 9-11 October 2002, Document CGRFA/MIC-1/02/08, FAO, Rome.
http://www.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/docsic1.htm

Commission on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Report on
the International Network of Ex Situ Collections Under the Auspices of FAO
and Renewal of the Agreements Between the IARCs of the CGIAR and FAO and
Draft Revised MTA, Ninth Regular Session, 14-18 October 2002, Documents
CGRFA-9/02/11 and CGRFA-9/02/20, FAO, Rome.
http://www.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/docs9.htm

ETC Group (formerly RAFI), "Pinning the Tail on the Ostrich: The Australian
PBR Scandal", Communique, 30 January 1998.
http://www.rafi.org/article.asp?newsid=189

European Commission, Communication by the European Communities and their
Member States to the TRIPs Council on the Review of Article 27.3(b) of the
TRIPs Agreement, and the Relationship between the TRIPs Agreement and the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Protection of Traditional
Knowledge and Folklore: A Concept Paper, Directorate-General for Trade,
Brussels, 12 September 2002.
http://trade-info.cec.eu.int/europa/2001newround/comnr_trips.pdf

Huam�n, Zosimo (formerly with CIP), Changes in MTA for the Distribution of
FAO-Designated Germplasm Held in Trust at CIP, PROBIOANDES, Lima, March
2001.
http://www.geocities.com/probioandes/changes_in_mta_for_the_distribut.htm

Koo, Bonwoon, Philip G Pardey and Brian D Wright, Endowing Future Harvests:
The Long-Term Costs of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centres,
SGRP/IFPRI, Rome, 2002. http://www.sgrp.cgiar.org/SGRP_GenebankEndowment.pdf

Lianchamroon, Witoon (BIOTHAI), Bioprospecting: The Case of Jasmine Rice,
paper presented to the "Second South-South Biopiracy Summit", Johannesburg,
22-23 August 2002.
http://www.biowatch.org.za/wliancham.htm

System-Wide Genetic Resources Program and CGIAR Genetic Resources Policy
Committee (producers), Booklet of the CGIAR Centre Policy Instruments,
Guidelines and Statements on Genetic Resources, Biotechnology and
Intellectual Property Rights, Version 1, SGRP, Rome, September 2001.
http://www.sgrp.cgiar.org/Policy_Booklet_Version1.doc

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