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SPECIAL REPORTS
- Monday
17 January 2005
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DEVELOPMENT:
Potato Capital of the World
Offers Up New Recipe
Sanjay
Suri
LONDON, (IPS) - Peru gave the
world the potato, and the potato
now offers indigenous people
around the world a new recipe
for securing their rights.
A new agreement between six
indigenous communities and the
International Potato Centre in
Cusco, Peru, heart of the old
Inca civilisation in the Andes
mountains of Latin America,
recognises the right of these
communities over the unique
potato strains that they have
developed and grown.
”No, this does not mean that
these communities will now
procure patents over these
varieties of potato,” Alejandro
Argumedo, associate director of
the Association for Nature and
Sustainable Development (ANDES),
a Cusco-based civil society
group led by indigenous peoples,
told IPS.
”These indigenous people are
against patents,” Argumedo
explained. ”They represent a
model of property that does not
fit into their worldview.
Indigenous people are used to
exchanging and sharing
information in open ways. But
this means a legal agreement
that no one else can claim
intellectual property rights
over their knowledge.”
The implications can be
far-reaching, Argumedo said.
Whether it is varieties of corn
in Mexico or basmati rice in
India, the agreement over these
potatoes ”is a first legal sign
of the restoration of rights
that indigenous people once
had.”
Peru would of course use
potatoes to break new ground; it
is the official centre of the
world of potatoes.
”Potatoes are important for us
as food but also as a cultural
symbol,” Argumedo said. ”We have
co-evolved with potatoes. Peru
gave the potato to the world,
they are so important in
marriage and religious
ceremonies. They mean so much in
Andean culture and iconography
that goes back thousands of
years.”
The Andes region in and around
Peru has more than 2,000
varieties of potato, among more
than 4,000 varieties around the
world. A potato park in Cusco
produces about 700 varieties of
potato.
ANDES helped broker the
agreement with the International
Potato Centre, one of 15
consultative groups for
international agricultural
research centres responsible for
the world's largest
agro-biodiversity gene bank
collections.
The eminent reputation of the
centre gives strong
international weight to the
agreement. Although it does not
involve a government, it is
legal under Peruvian law.
The new agreement ”means that
Andean communities can unlock
the potato gene bank and
repatriate biological diversity
to farming communities and the
natural environment for local
and global benefit,” ANDES said
in a statement Tuesday.
Though excluded and often
oppressed, indigenous peoples
are the traditional custodians
of biodiversity, and this
agreement recognises that ”the
conservation, sustainable use
and development of maximum
agro-biodiversity is of vital
importance in order to improve
the nutrition, health and other
needs of the growing global
population,” ANDES says.
Several policy analysts and
civil society campaigners are
preparing to push for similar
initiatives at a meeting of the
Convention on Biological
Diversity to be held in Bangkok
next month, and at a World
Intellectual Property
Organisation meeting to be held
in Geneva in June.
The new agreement, called the
”agreement on the repatriation,
restoration and monitoring of
agro-biodivisity of native
potatoes and associated
community knowledge systems”,
will challenge the trend of
”privatising genetic resources
and indigenous knowledge which
has seen seed gene banks
swallowed up by unaccountable
research bodies and
corporations, threatening local
livelihoods and cultural ways of
life,” ANDES said in its
statement.
ANDES campaigned for the
agreement with considerable
support from the London-based
International Institute for
Environment and Development (IIED)
and the government of the
Netherlands.
”Civil society groups,
particularly those led by
indigenous peoples, should not
be dictated to, but they do need
greater support from the rich
countries,” Dr Michel Pimbert,
director of the sustainable
agriculture and rural
livelihoods programme at IIED,
said in a statement.
”Groundbreaking agreements, like
this example in Peru, require
negotiation with all parties on
an equal footing,” he said,
”which means boosting the
capacity of local indigenous
communities to argue their case
for access to the genetic
resources they helped develop in
the first place.” |
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