Vandana Shiva at the WTO

World Trade Organization Conference
Nov 30 to Dec 3, 1999
Indigenous Peoples at the WTO
Session: The Problems with Patents:
Why We are Campaigning

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva,
India

Vandana Shiva, from the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, was at the WTO Conference to talk about the WTO and biodiversity:

"...From the first draft of the biodiversity conservation laws that were being created in India to implement the Biodiversity Convention...and we've been through three versions. Each time they bring a draft, they sneak in "biodiversity, wherever it exists, is the property of the state." Unfortunately for them,I am always on the drafting committee to clear it, and that's the first line I strike off. Because, by defining it as the property of the state, that type of intellectual property right systems of the kind we have...it's a perfect contractual arrangement of the kind the U.S. administration is trying to propose as a solution to biopiracy in their response to the review. I call it contracts between rapists and the raped, between the burglars and those who have been burglared. You can't write contracts on those things; those things should not exist. You can't ever get a fair benefit sharing out of rape and plunder. The only way to get fairness and justice in those circumstances is to stop the plunder. And to ensure that our laws from the local to the national, to the global level, criminalize biopiracy. .."

 

Kari-Oca to Kimberley


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Copyright Natalie Drache 1999