• Education Links
  • Events & Meetings
  • Links to Universities
  • Resources for Schools
• Global Biodiversity Issues
  • Conservation Debate
  • Agriculture
  • Inventions & Ideas
  • Endangered Plants species
• Books & Publications
  • Book Reviews
  • Ethnobiology Journal
  • Essays & Articles
• Ethnobiology
  • Herbals & Aromatics
  • Traditional Medicine
  • Ethnobotany
  • Bioproducts & Oils
  • PhD Research Projects
• Africa Links
  • Safari Holiday Deals
  • Cheap Flights & Freight
  • Community Projects
  • African Cookbook

Global Conservation issues

Much controversy surrounds plant utilisation and global biodiversity loss. Some scientists argue that habitat destruction is the proximate cause of biodiversity loss. Political ecologists attribute this to greed and need, translated into capital accumulation and poverty. In other words loss of biodiversity is a result of competing interests within the spheres of utility, profit and power or politics. Poor people are being displaced to pave way for government controlled Parks and land for new settlements. With the ever-increasing population and climatic changes, local ecological situation has got more and more complicated and in dire need of regulation. There has been a push for regulation to stem negative changes and regulations to restore the positive or at least maintain status quo. This situation led to the need to define ownership of biodiversity and the knowledge that goes with it. Legislation on environment and biodiversity has been on going for close to 90 years. Here we briefly discuss some of the most outstanding issues.

Early international conservation laws were either regional or sectoral and specific. Here are some international initiatives in conserving biodiversity; the 1902 Convention for the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture, the 1940 Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife preservation in the Western Hemisphere and the 1973 Convention on the Conservation of the Polar Bears amongst others. These were created to either protect a given region or a particular species (De Klemm and Shine: 1993:5-13). The move to conserve is driven by the assumption that all human societies have a desire to preserve wild species and the realisation that biodiversity has enormous economic benefits (Luckert and Campbell: 2002). However, reasons for conservation are numerous and complex and cannot be explained so simply.

The current global debate on conservation is mainly hinged on the CBD. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was signed at the First Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The CBD deals with agricultural diversity, biodiversity of inland waters, biodiversity of dry and sub-humid lands, forest biodiversity and marine and coastal biodiversity. A new theme of mountain biodiversity has been introduced recently. The CBD addresses three main objectives; conservation, sustainable use of biodiversity and access to genetic resources and benefit sharing. There are also other thematic issues such as traditional knowledge, taxonomy, plant conservation, invasive species, and biosafety and intellectual property rights ( The CBD).

The CBD

Conservation and utilization of Biodiversity has brought to the fore a new set of issues. One of the most contested yet considered crucial, is the equitable distribution of the products extracted from biodiversity and the local knowledge that goes with it. For a long time the local communities, who are considered the owners and custodians of local products, have received little or nothing from commercial exploits such as medicines developed from plants in their locality. This has given rise to the Fair Trade movement. Fair Trade is a movement for tackling poverty through trade and has been active for over 40 years. The goal of Fair Trade, using trade as a tool for improving the livelihoods of the poorest, is now a mainstream concept and one that has a lot of resonance for many worldwide institutions and bodies. Fair trade focus has been on sectors where the traditional skills and agricultural capacities involve the poorest and the most marginalised.

FAIR TRADE

Fair Trade can be traced back to of business can be traced back to the writings of Eduard Douwes Dekker, a Dutch writer who in 1859 who castigated the unfair trade in coffee where poor farmers were paid very little while the buyers made huge profit. The main crux of the thinking is the anti-imperialistic thesis that free-trade structures favour multi-nationals and their countries at the expense of the poor nations that supply the materials or produce. Organisations such as Oxfam, fanatics, ordinary supporters of the idea and students have made this movement very strong and potent global bargaining tool.

Intellectual Property Rights

The other issue that continues to linger in the public domain is the Intellectual Property Rights in the realm of economic exploitation of Biodiversity. The term Intellectual property rights (IPR), according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), refers to the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. The IPR regimes usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his or her creation for a certain period of time. This period is usually finite and is up to 20 years ( WTO). Patents have become controversial with pharmaceutical companies patenting herbal products, which are collected together with the knowledge of use from poor local communities.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), there is a growing acceptance that there exists an inextricable interplay between Intellectual Property and traditional knowledge ( WIPO). These two concepts encapsulate the interaction between researchers, local people and biodiversity as far as management and utilisation is concerned. Interestingly patents, apart from protecting the interest of inventor and user in terms of utility, do not take care of the user's safety or risks.

Traditional Resource Rights

The term Traditional Resource rights is a new term that has been coined in recognition of the fact that culture and biodiversity are inextricably linked. The term goes beyond mere knowledge. Hence the term Traditional Resource Rights (TRR) has emerged to define the many "bundles of rights" that can be used for protection, compensation, and conservation. The change in terminology from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to Traditional Resource Rights reflects an attempt to build on the concept of IPR protection and compensation and the recognition of traditional resources, both tangible and intangible ( Local Knowledge). This move is seen as useful in protecting local people who claim ownership to local resources with economical potentials.

More information can be found at specialized websites listed here;.