<nettime> Biopiracy by Vandana Shiva from Eco Books

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

Biopiracy
The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
by Vandana Shiva

Biopiracy is a learned, clear and passionately stated objection to the
ways in which Western businesses are being allowed to expropriate natural
processes and traditional forms of knowledge.

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Biopiracy 
by Vandana Shiva 
148 pages, paperback 
South End Press, 1997 
List: $14.00 
Our price: $12.60 
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Praise for Biopiracy

"Biopiracy is a path-breaking work on one of the most important issues of
the coming century." --Jeremy Rikfin "With her characteristic blend of
analysis and passion, Vandana Shiva traces the continuity from the
European colonization of 'native' peoples . . . to the present
appropriation of the natural resources they need for their physical and
cultural survival. An important book that should be read by anyone wanting
to understand the global threat posed by the technological transformations
of organisms, cells, and molecules and by their exploitation for
profit."--Ruth Hubbard

About Vandana Shiva / Order Biopiracy / Search / Table of Contents


Quotes from Biopiracy

"On April 17, 1492, Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand granted Christopher
Columbus the privileges of 'discovery and conquest.' One year later, on
May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, through his 'Bull of Donation,' granted
all islands and mainlands 'discovered and to be discovered, one hundred
leagues to the West and South of the Azores towards India,' and not
already occupied or held by any christian king or prince as of Christmas
of 1492, to the Catholic monarchs Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of
Aragon."  "Charters and patents thus turned acts of piracy into divine
will. The peoples and nations that were colonized did not belong to the
pope who 'donated' them, yet this canonical jurisprudence made the
christian monarchs of Europe rulers of all nations, 'wherever they might
be found and whatever creed they might embrace.' The principle of
'effective occupation' by christian princes, the 'vacancy' of the targeted
lands, and the 'duty' to incorporate the 'savages' were components of
charters and patents.

"The Papal Bull, the Columbus charter, and patents granted by European
monarchs laid the juridical and moral foundations for the colonization and
extermination of non-European peoples. The Native American population
declined from 72 million in 1492 to less than 4 million a few centuries
later.

"Five hundred years after Columbus, a more secular version of the same
project of colonization continues through patents and intellectual
property rights (IPRs). The Papal Bull has been replaced by the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty. The principle of effective
occupation by christian princes has been replaced by effective occupation
by the transnational corporations supported by modern-day rulers. The
vacancy of targeted lands has been replaced by the vacancy of targeted
life forms and species manipulated by the new biotechnologies. The duty to
incorporate savages into Christianity has been replaced by the duty to
incorporate local and national economies into the global marketplace, and
to incorporate non-Western systems of knowledge into the reductionism of
commercialized Western science and technology.

"The creation of property through the piracy of other's wealth remains the
same as 500 years ago."

"The freedom that transnational corporations are claiming through
intellectual property rights protection in the GATT agreement on Trade
Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is the freedom that European
colonizers have claimed since 1492. Columbus set a precedent when he
treated the license to conquer non-European peoples as a natural right of
European men. The land titles issued by the pope through European kings
and queens were the first patents. The colonizer's freedom was built on
the slavery and subjugation of the people with original rights to the
land. This violent takeover was rendered 'natural' by defining the
colonized people as nature, thus denying them their humanity and freedom.

"John Locke's treatise on property effectually legitimized this same
process of theft and robbery during the enclosure movement in Europe.
Locke clearly articulated capitalism's freedom to build as the freedom to
steal; property is created by removing resources from nature and mixing
them with labor. This 'labor' is not physical, but labor in its
'spiritual' form, and manifested in the control of capital. According to
Locke, only those who own capital have the natural right to own natural
resources, a right that supersedes the common rights of others with prior
claims. Capital is thus defined as a source of freedom that, at the same
time, denies freedom to the land, forests, rivers, and biodiversity that
capital claims as its own and to others whose rights are based on their
labor. Returning private property to the commons is perceived as depriving
the owner of capital of freedom. Therefore, peasants and tribespeople who
demand the return of their rights and access to resources are regarded as
thieves."

. . .  "Neem, Azarichdita indica, a beautiful tree native to India, has
been used for centuries as a biopesticide and a medicine. In some parts of
India, the new year begins with eating the tender shoots of the neem tree.
In other parts, the neem tree is worshipped as sacred. Everywhere in
India, people begin their day by using the neem datun (toothbrush) to
protect their teeth with its medicinal and anti-bacterial properties.
Communities have invested centuries of care, respect, and knowledge in
propagating, protecting, and using neem in field, field bunds, homesteads,
and common lands.

"Today, this heritage is being stolen under the guise of IPRs. For
centuries, the Western world ignored the neem tree and its properties: the
practices of Indian peasants and doctors were not deemed worth of
attention by the majority of British, French and Portuguese colonists. In
the last few years, however, growing opposition to chemical products in
the West, in particular pesticides, has led to a sudden enthusiasm for the
pharmaceutical properties of neem. Since 1985, over a dozen U.S. patents
have been taken out by U.S. and Japanese firms on formulas for stable
neem-based solutions and emulsions-- and even for a neem-based toothpaste.
At least four of these are owned by W. R. Grace of the United States,
three by another U.S. company, the Native Plant Institute, and two by the
Japanese Terumo Corporation. Having garnered their patents, and with the
prospect of a license form the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
Grace has set about manufacturing and commercializing its products by
establishing a base in India. The company approached several Indian
manufacturers with proposals to buy up their technology or to convince
them to stop producing value-added products and instead supply Grace with
raw material. Grace is likely to be followed by other patent- holding
companies. 'Squeezing bucks out of the neem ought to be relatively easy,'
observes Science Magazine.

"The journal Ag Biotechnology News has called W. R. Grace's processing
plant the 'world's first neem tree-based biopesticide facility.' Nearly
every home and village in India, however, has biopesticide facilities. The
Indian cottage industries' Organization Khadi and the Village Industries
Commission have been using and selling neem products for 40 years. Private
entrepreneurs, too, have launched neem pesticides, such as Indiara. Neem
toothpaste has been manufactured for decades by Calcutta Chemicals, an
indigenous company. W. R. Grace's justification for the patents hinges on
a claim that their modernized extraction processes constitute a genuine
innovation:

Although traditional knowledge inspired the research and development that
led to these patented compositions and processes, they were considered
sufficiently novel and different from the original product of nature and
the traditional method of use to be patentable.  "In short, the processes
are supposedly novel, an advance on Indian techniques. This novelty,
however, exists mainly in the context of the ignorance of the West. Over
the 2,000 years that neem-based biopesticides and medicines have been used
in India, many complex processes were developed to make them available for
specific use, though the active ingredients were not given Latinized
scientific names. Common knowledge and use of neem were the primary
reasons given by the Indian Central Insecticide Board for not registering
neem products under the Insecticides Act of 1968. The Board argued that
neem materials had been in extensive use in India for various purposes
since time immemorial, without any known deleterious effects."




Table of Contents of Biopiracy
Introduction 
Piracy Through Patents: The Second Coming of Columbus 
Chapter One 
Knowledge, Creativity, and Intellectual Property Rights 

Chapter Two 
Can Life be Made? Can Life Be Owned?: Redefining Biodiversity 

Chapter Three 
The Seed and the Earth 

Chapter Four 
Biodiversity and People's Knowledge 

Chapter Five 
Tripping Over Life 

Chapter Six 
Making Peace with Diversity 

Chapter Seven 
Nonviolence and Cultivation of Diversity



Lachlan Brown
Third.net (germinating)
T(416) 826 6937
VM (416) 822 1123

                                       



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