CPA - The Guardian

The Australian government played a disgraceful role as a lackey to US negotiators and corporate interests in Copenhagen in trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It is also dragging its feet in negotiations for a new UN Protocol or agreement on Biopiracy under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD). Later this month, there will be a critical meeting of Parties to the Convention, but the silence from the Australian government and media is deafening.

The UNCBD is an important Convention, with significant relevance to climate change. It has three main objectives:

The conservation of biological diversity – the varieties of plant and animal life;
The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity;
The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utililisation of genetic resources.

When the UNCBD came into force in 1993, the Keating Labor government ratified it. The Convention has one Protocol, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which was adopted in January 2000 and came into force in September 2003.

One hundred and fifty-seven countries have ratified the Protocol. The Howard government refused to ratify it, and the Rudd Labor government has still to sign it. Australia stands alongside the USA and Canada as one of three major developed countries refusing to ratify the Protocol.

“The world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are stockpiling hundreds of monopoly patents on genes in plants that the companies will market as crops genetically engineered to withstand environmental stresses such as drought, heat, cold, floods, saline soils, and more. BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called ‘climate ready’ genes at patent offices around the world,” the ETC Group warned in a communiqué issued in May 2008*.

“In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviours. The focus on so-called climate-ready genes is a golden opportunity to push genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change,” the ETC Group said.

Most of the genes being referred to by the ETC Group were acquired by theft, more commonly referred to as Biopiracy. Biopiracy involves the monopolisation by private corporations of genetic resources and traditional knowledge or culture taken from indigenous peoples and local communities. Monopoly ownership of these genes – forms of life – is through patenting and other forms of privately owned “intellectual property”.

These corporate giants not only steal the genes, but also the local traditional knowledge of the properties of the various plants and animal products, the result of breeding and knowledge acquired over many generations. These genes are from plants and animals that have particular properties that have been identified by their traditional owners – medicinal; pest resistant, capable of surviving in extreme conditions such as drought, flood, extreme heat or cold; able to withstand saline soils; etc. The genes that the corporations are acquiring and patenting are not scientific inventions, but forms of life.

Corporate giants steal the genes from plants and animals that have been identified by their traditional owners to have particular properties, such as medicinal.

The big pharmaceutical and seed companies are commodifying and privatising nature. These proprietary technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research, and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds,” the ETC Group stated.

As the ETC Group points out, the big seed, pharma and industrial-agricultural corporations plan to exploit and profit from climate change, by selling back at high, unaffordable prices their patented products to the very people who they stole the basis of their patents from. It would not come as a surprise if much of the climate change assistance from developed countries is used to fund the purchase of these products and ensure the profits of the biopirates.

These same corporations make huge political donations to governments and sit at the negotiating table on climate change, obstructing progress. They see climate change as a source of new monopoly, profit-gouging opportunities for seeds and other products that are capable of withstanding the impacts of climate change. There aim is to have a complete monopoly on plants that can survive the new conditions.

They are also making millions out of highly-priced products in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries based on products acquired through biopiracy, which the victims of this theft can also not afford.

The questions of biodiversity and biopiracy are tightly related to climate change – both in mitigation of climate change and adaptation to climate change. The patented techno-fix seeds will not provide the adaptation strategies that small farmers need to cope with climate change. Their extensive use kills off diversity.

“Crop diversity also provides a natural insurance against major eco-system changes, be it in the wild or in agriculture, and plays a major part in ensuring food security. It is now predicted that genetic diversity will be most crucial in highly variable environments and those under human-induced climate change. The larger the number of different species or varieties present in … an ecosystem, the greater the probability that at least some of them can cope with changing conditions,” notes Chee Yok Heong**, a researcher with the Third World Network.

Negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for a new treaty to address biopiracy began in 2005, following ten years of persistent demands by developing countries. The focus on negotiations is the third objective of the Biodiversity Convention – “fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utililisation of genetic resources”.

These negotiations are significant in that representatives of indigenous and other non-government organisations have unprecedented rights to participate in negotiations with the same rights of access to documents as governments. Indigenous peoples have achieved a high level of organisation and representation through the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity. They are playing a critical role in the development of the text for what they hope will be a new Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing to the Biodiversity Convention – commonly referred to as a Protocol on Biopiracy.

Australia and a number of other developed countries have resisted the adoption of a single agreement or legally binding treaty on biopiracy, instead pushing for a political declaration or voluntary guidelines and other instruments. The outcome of these negotiations will have a direct bearing on the ability of developing countries, in particular, to take action in response to climate change.

Developing countries and indigenous negotiators hope that a draft text can be finalised at the meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, later this month. This would enable its formal adoption at the high level Conference of Parties in Nagoya, Japan, in October this year.

The upcoming Cartagena conference is an opportunity for the Australian government to announce the government’s ratification of the Protocol on Biosafety. It should follow this declaration by doing its utmost to achieve agreement on the text for a Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing to the Biodiversity Convention.

Australia should also support the calls of developing countries and indigenous peoples to suspend the granting of all patents on climate change-related genes and traits.

By taking these small steps, it would not only be helping to save millions of lives, but also win the widespread respect that it needs if it is to fulfil its aim of a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

* “Patenting the ‘Climate Genes’ … And Capturing the Climate Agenda”, May/June 2008, www.etcgroup.org

**Third World Resurgence, Issue No 231-232, Nov/Dec 2009, available from Third World Network, www.twnside.org.sg

Further reading: Who Owns Nature?, ETC Group, November 2008, www.etcgroup.org

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