Environmental Resilience and Food Law

Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology

Gabriela Steier, Alberto Giulio Cianci, Gabriela Steier, Alberto Giulio Cianci

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138336063
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429811821
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

Agrobiodiversity and agroecology go hand-in-hand in promoting environmental resilience in international food systems as well as climate change resilient food policy. This book contextualizes how various legal frameworks address agrobiodiversity and agroecology around the globe and makes it accessible for audiences of students, practitioners, educators, and scholars.

Some chapters focus on the legal regulation of agroecology from a food law perspective. Others are geared toward providing regulators, lawmakers and attorneys with the scientific and policy background of those concepts, so that they are equipped in the field of food law in everyday practice and policy. Climate change dimensions of the issues are woven throughout the book.

part one

Fundamentals of legal protection of agrobiodiversity and agroecology

chapter one

Local agricultural knowledge and food security

Michael Blakeney

Contents

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Local knowledge, traditional knowledge, and intellectual property

1.3 Legal transplants

1.4 Local knowledge, innovation, and the informal economy

1.4.1 Utility of local knowledge

1.4.2 Local knowledge and climate change adaptation

1.4.3 Local knowledge and scientific knowledge

1.4.4 Local knowledge in the legal discourse

1.5 Geographical indications, local knowledge, and food

1.5.1 Preserving biodiversity through the protection of geographical indications

1.6 Editors’ note

1.7 EU policy on geographical indications

Notes

1.1 Introduction

This chapter provides a literature review of local agricultural knowledge in the context of food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that about 795 million people were chronically undernourished in 2012–2014. ¹ In 1996, the World Food Summit defined food security as “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” ² With 70 percent of the world’s extreme poor and food-insecure populations living in rural areas, the role of agriculture, which is the predominant economic activity in those areas, is crucial for the eradication of poverty and food insecurity.

Smallholder farmers increasingly cultivate marginal lands which are particularly vulnerable to climate change. ³ The FAO has observed that climate change will likely cause “many of today’s poorest developing countries … to be negatively affected in the next 50–100 years, with a reduction in the extent and potential productivity of cropland.” ⁴ A 1996 FAO study estimated that the largest reductions in cereal production, averaging around 10 percent, will occur in developing countries. ⁵ To put this in perspective, a projected 2 percent to 3 percent reduction in African cereal production for 2020 has been estimated to be enough to put 10 million people at risk. Among the particularly vulnerable are low- to medium-income groups living in flood-prone areas who may lose stored food or assets; farmers who may have their land damaged or submerged by rising sea-levels; and fishers who may lose their catch to shifting water currents or to flooded spawning areas.

Compounding these problems are the estimates, according to Pinstrup-Anderson et al., that, at the current rate of global population increase, “the global demand for cereals will increase by 20 percent between 1995 and 2020, [and so] net cereal imports by developing countries will have to double to meet the gap between production and demand.” ⁶ Currently, the developing world is a net importer of 88 million tons of cereals a year at a cost of US$14.5 billion, and its demand for cereals will increase by 40 percent between 1995 and 2020. ⁷

The conventional policy approach to guarantee food security is to promote technological improvements in agriculture. The massive increases in food productivity in the 30 years between 1960 and 1990, often described as the “Green Revolution,” were achieved by the development of high-yielding crop varieties, as well as massive increases in fertilizer and insecticide use. By 1990, however, it had become apparent that reliance upon the chemically nurtured, high-yielding crop varieties that had precipitated the Green Revolution was no longer economically or environmentally acceptable. ⁸ Therefore, in order to meet the food security needs of the next 30 years and create wealth in poor communities there would need to be increases in agricultural productivity on the presently available land without compromising the natural resource base. ⁹

Governments have also introduced hybridized crop varieties, often developed by multinational life-science corporations, but these were often vulnerable to pest infestation or disease. ¹⁰ In response, the local knowledge and agricultural practices of traditional farming communities have begun to be looked at as more serious assets for establishing and maintaining sustainable agricultural systems. ¹¹ As this chapter will indicate, an essential component of food security is the contribution that traditional farmers have made in identifying and conserving useful biological material, embodied in biotechnological innovations. Implementing agricultural advances depends upon the existence of appropriate legal instruments, the recognition and enablement of change, the local knowledge of farmers, as well as their understandings and adaptations of scientific knowledge. ¹² This chapter reviews the literature surrounding local knowledge and its contribution to agricultural innovation and food security.

1.2 Local knowledge, traditional knowledge, and intellectual property

When evaluating the contribution that local knowledge can make to agricultural innovation and food security, a distinction has to be drawn between the terms “local knowledge” and “indigenous knowledge” or “traditional knowledge.” It is also useful to consider the extent to which these knowledges might be classified as “intellectual property.”

Confusion between these terms has often arisen during the negotiations within the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which is seeking to negotiate three treaties that would recognize, regulate, and protect traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and genetic resources. ¹³ To assist the IGC in its task of formulating draft texts for these treaties, the WIPO Secretariat has prepared a Glossary of Key Terms Related to Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions. ¹⁴ In its Glossary, the WIPO Secretariat reiterates that “there is as of yet no accepted definition of traditional knowledge (TK) at the international level.” ¹⁵ It draws a distinction between TK “as a broad description of subject matter” as that which:

generally includes the intellectual and intangible cultural heritage, practices and knowledge systems of traditional communities, including indigenous and local communities (traditional knowledge in a general sense or lato sensu). In other words, traditional knowledge in a general sense embraces the content of knowledge itself as well as traditional cultural expressions, including distinctive signs and symbols associated with traditional knowledge.

As opposed to TK in “international debate,” where it, “in the narrow sense,” refers to:

knowledge as such, in particular the knowledge resulting from intellectual activity in a traditional context, and includes know-how, practices, skills, and innovations. Traditional knowledge can be found in a wide variety of contexts, including: agricultural knowledge; scientific knowledge; technical knowledge; ecological knowledge; medicinal knowledge, including related medicines and remedies; and biodiversity-related knowledge, etc. ¹⁶

A number of problems have been identified with the concepts of “indigenous” and “traditional” knowledge. One political obstacle to their protection is that the terms have become associated with the right of peoples to self-determination. In 1993, Erica-Irene Daes, Special Rapporteur of the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and Chairperson of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, observed in a report that “the protection of cultural and intellectual property is connected fundamentally with the realization of the territorial rights and self-determination of indigenous peoples.” ¹⁷ These principles are explicitly reaffirmed in Article 31 of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2007, which recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to “maintain, control, protect and develop as intellectual property their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.” ¹⁸

Daes’s concept of “indigenous” is grounded upon the idea of a distinctive culture, based on long-held traditions and knowledge, that is essentially connected to a specific territory. Le Gall, on the other hand, points out that confining the protection of traditional knowledge to indigenous creations overlooks the co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the editors
• Contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Part I: Fundamentals of legal protection of agrobiodiversity and agroecology
• Part II: Specific challenges for agrobiodiversity and agroecology
• Index