Year: 2018 | Month: December | Volume 11 | Issue 6
India’s Fight Against Agricultural and Medicinal Plants’ Biopiracy: Its Implications on Food Security, Traditional Rights and Knowledge Degradation
DOI:10.30954/0974-1712.12.2018.9
Abstract:
At present, about two-third of the Indian population relies on indigenous knowledge of biological resources and have conserved their knowledge and culture through their traditional lifestyles and local economies. More than 7500 species of plants are utilized for the traditional purposes in India. The economic value of traditional knowledge in the herbal medicine and pharmaceutical sector is estimated to reach around 5 trillion by 2020. Since Indian agriculture is highly rich in biodiversity, it becomes an easy prey of biopiracy in agriculture-based business corporations. Biopiracy term is generally used when multinational corporations or companies profit from the medicinal and agricultural uses of plants known to indigenous or native societies and fail to compensate those communities. Traditional Knowledge (TK) plays a key role in the preservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. There is a threat to the future of TK due to globalization of production systems and the distance between the holders of knowledge and its exploiters. Many cases have been registered in India where attempts have been made to steal the indigenous knowledge from India due to its easy access which affect food security, livelihood of indigenous people and even cause changes in consumers’ choice. Indian government challenged many patents in the last two decades by providing numerous research papers predating those patents and these patents were thus rejected. India is the pioneer country in the world to have set up an institutional mechanism – the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) – to protect its TK.
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