Here, as promised, is a summary of the recent IU agreement.

The report below comes from GRAIN-IPR and thus represents their strong
position in this debate, but the article provides a clear assessment of the
recent decisions and the future path.

Diligent readers may want to compare this with the official announcement on
the FAO website .

Best wishes
 

David Duthie

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BIO-IPR docserver
________________________________________________________

TITLE: The IU Hanging on its Last Brackets: A Brief Assessment
AUTHOR: Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN)
DATE: July 2001
URL: http://www.grain.orgs
________________________________________________________

THE IU HANGING ON ITS LAST BRACKETS: A BRIEF ASSESSMENT

GRAIN
July 2001

A new global treaty which aims to ensure food security through the
conservation, exchange and sustainable use of plant genetic resources was
roughly agreed to on 1 July 2001 at the UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation
(FAO) in Rome. But a number of crucial issues are still unresolved. These
will have to be dealt with in November at a high-level meeting that will
assess progress since the World Food Summit that was held five years ago.
At
stake is whether the world's agricultural biodiversity is nurtured to
provide private gains for a few or food security for all.

The International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture (IU) has been under negotiation for the past seven years. An
earlier voluntary version of the IU had been agreed to by the member states

of FAO back in 1981, framing genetic resources as a common heritage of
humanity which needs to be protected from further erosion and loss. But
that
agreement was overrun by the new political reality of the Convention on
Biological Diversity, which reframed genetic resources as national
sovereignty and linked access to these resources with the fair and
equitable
sharing of the benefits from them. The underlying objective of the IU -- to

ensure the continued availability of genetic resources for food and
agriculture -- has not changed in those twenty years. It has only become
more urgent.

The new IU will be a legally-binding treaty with its own governing body.
Its
overall focus encompasses all plant genetic resources for food and
agriculture. But its core provisions on "access" and "benefit sharing" will

apply to a specific list of crops. The genetic resources of those crops
will
be pooled into a "multilateral system" that will operate under IU rules.

Although the text of the new Undertaking was roughly finalised last week,
there are still a number of crucial issues that remain in brackets, not yet

agreed to. The most important ones are: whether and to what extent
monopolistic intellectual property rights (IPRs) can be applied to genetic
materials accessed through the multilateral system; and the relationship
between the IU and other international agreements, most notably the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights.

THE MAIN LINES

The new IU basically establishes the following:

* The contracting parties will make specific efforts to conserve and
promote
the good use of genetic resources for food and agriculture. Good use
includes agricultural policies that don't undermine biodiversity and
support
for the role of farmers.

* The IU provides for a multilateral system that sets common rules for
access to, and the sharing of benefits from, crop genetic resources. This
system applies only to a specific list of crops -- some 35 as of now. This
list can grow if parties agree, but the crops that fall outside the list
will be treated bilaterally on a case-by-case basis according to the
provisions of the Convention on Biodiversity.

* Access to genetic resources under the IU will be multilateral. In other
words, countries commit all materials of the agreed crops into a common pot

that parties can then draw from under the same rules.

* Financial benefits from the use of IU-governed genetic resources will be
shared through a compulsory mechanism that draws on the revenues generated
from their commercialisation.

* Whether and to what extent the multilateral system will allow for
intellectual property rights on genetic materials in the common pot is
still
undecided. The current text is in brackets, leaving the possibility wide
open.

* Farmers' rights, in the meantime, will be promoted internationally but
subject to national law (such as the prohibition to save seed if the seeds
are protected at the national level by IPR).

THE WATERING DOWN PROCESS

As often happens in the course of such negotiations, a number of OECD
countries led by the United States managed to insert some last minute
changes in the text that could make the IU less effective and less
comprehensive:

* Only those genetic resources that are in the public domain will be
subject
to the rules of the multilateral system. Companies and other private
holders
of crop germplasm are merely ''invited'' to contribute the materials they
maintain. In essence, this allows private entities to parasite the system.

* The requirement to share financial benefits only applies if the recipient

of the multilateral germplasm limits access to the genetic product he or
she
sells. Furthermore, this benefit-sharing can be realised through individual

contractual agreements -- not necessarily based on new national legislation

-- which could turn it into an unworkable and untraceable system.

* The current list of crops to which the multilateral system will apply is
ridiculously small. If the treaty is to seriously contribute to food
security, it has to apply to many more crops and not only the major
commodities.

* The implementation of the IU, and any follow-up action that countries
might want to develop under it, will be governed by consensus. In practice,

this means that any country can veto any proposal and potentially block the

meaningful execution of the treaty.

Despite the successful efforts to weaken the text during the final days of
negotiation last week, the new treaty with its governing body is probably a

good thing to have. As the multilateral system is meant to facilitate a
wide
exchange of crop germplasm -- and to fairly share the benefits from it --
it
could help prevent a "Wild West" scenario of purely bilateral
wheeling-and-dealing from completely taking over. The governing body that
will manage the Undertaking, and the multilateral system, should provide a
political platform where issues related to crop genetic resources can be
dealt with openly at the international level. Everybody, but especially
farmers at the local level in need of continued access to agricultural
biodiversity, stands to win from such a system.

However, whether these laudable functions will actually materialise depends

to a great extent on two things. One is whether the treaty will be able to
effectively stop the further privatisation of genetic resources through
IPRs. The other is whether the IU will manage to hold its own ground
against
the imposition of other rules and agreements, such as those implemented by
the WTO, that ruthlessly prioritise commercial and international trade
interests over and above agriculture and local food security. These are
precisely the two issues that are still outstanding and hanging in
brackets.

FINAL SHOWDOWN AT NOVEMBER'S FOOD SECURITY SUMMIT

"The treaty fails in many respects," Patrick Mulvany of the UK's
Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) said at the closing the
negotiating session last weekend. "It is not fair: although Farmers' Rights

are recognised, they will be subordinate to national laws protecting the
plant breeding industry. It is not equitable: mandatory benefits returned
to
farmers in developing countries through this treaty will be a minuscule
fraction of the food industry's US$2 trillion annual turnover. And it is
not
comprehensive: it will apply to a mere 34 food crops and a derisory 29
forages."

We agree. The IU only weakly reflects the expectations and demands that
over
400 civil society organisations from 60 countries put on the table. But the

real test for the treaty still is to come.

Countries now have to decide whether the IU will prohibit intellectual
property on the "parts and components" of the materials shared from the
common pot. If it does, then the treaty will contribute to ensure the
continued availability of genetic resources for further breeding, and will
become a milestone in the struggle for sustainable and biodiversity-based
agriculture. If it does not, then the IU will contribute to the further
privatisation of biodiversity and will be seen rather as an international
"undertaker" for plant genetic resources. Because it would then create a
legally-binding system that removes biodiversity further away from the
control of farmers themselves. It would allow powerful corporations to
privatise the shared germplasm and enhance genetic erosion. No developing
country will want to contribute genetic resources to a mechanism that
allows
the materials to be siphoned off as intellectual monopolies in the North.
It
would be both destructive and wrong.

The final showdown will take place during the first week of November in
Rome, when the FAO Conference meets to take stock of how far things have
come five years after the World Food Summit of 1996. At that gathering, the

final version of the IU is due to be negotiated, adopted and signed. We
expect that unless there is strong public pressure to push the IU in the
right direction, then the commercial interests pushing it in the opposite
direction could very well prevail.
 

GOING FURTHER:

ITDG is maintaining a section of the UK Food Group's website entirely on
the
IU negotiations. It is loaded with press materials, position papers,
campaign resources, contacts and links to official documents.
http://www.ukabc.org/iu2.htm
 

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