The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) aims to promote intellectual property rights (IPRs) worldwide. In 2000, it established an inter-governmental committee to address IPR issues relating to genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, including how to protect traditional knowledge from misappropriation and how to share benefits from commercialisation equitably.
We are facing a double extinction crisis - biological and cultural - as a result of prevailing development models and globalization.
The FAO estimates we have lost three quarters of all crop genetic resources in the past 100 years. Modern farming, based on just a few species and varieties, has spread across the globe, weakening agriculture’s genetic basis and our capacity to adapt to changing climates. Yet policymakers often see traditional farming systems rich in genetic diversity as a hindrance to economic growth.
Biocultural heritage, as a concept, has evolved in response to traditional knowledge policies that have tended only to protect the intellectual component of knowledge systems, and not the equally crucial biological, cultural and landscape components. It reflects indigenous communities’ holistic worldview, where everything is inter-dependent and inter-connected.
The International Labour Organisation is a specialised UN agency that aims to improve living and working conditions. ILO Convention 169, concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, entered into force in 1991.
It calls on governments to develop systematic actions to protect the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, including their social, economic and cultural rights, customs, traditions and institutions.
The research team for the Protecting Community Rights over Traditional Knowledge: Implications of Customary Laws and Practices project adopted the concept of 'collective biocultural heritage' as the common vision to link the work in Peru, Panama, India, China and Kenya.
Based on this, the project developed a conceptual framework for assessing the conditions and trends affecting traditional knowledge, and the responses needed to address these.
A herbalist providing information on medicinal and food plants occurring in Kaya Kinondo
UNESCO has developed a number of international conventions relating to the protection of cultural and intellectual heritage. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which came into force in April 2006, aims to safeguard oral traditions and expressions, including language, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, and knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe. However, it focuses only on intangible heritage.
This section provides the main outputs of the project "Protecting community rights over Traditional Knowledge: Implications of customary laws and practices" (2005-2009).
A number of human rights conventions also provide useful instruments for protecting indigenous peoples’ rights, but in many cases they have not been ratified or fully implemented by governments. Furthermore, existing human rights legislation is mainly directed at individual rights. Perhaps the most important are: