The Hindu : `Beware of bio-piracy, biotech, GM rice'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 12, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

`Beware of bio-piracy, biotech, GM rice'

By Our Staff Reporter

KOCHI NOV. 11. The massive stealing of biodiversity from poor countries and its commercial exploitation by gigantic multinationals came in for sharp criticism from the audience at a seminar on intellectual property rights, here on Monday.

It was alleged that India's rich biodiversity was being plundered in a systematic manner. As a result, India's genetic base was being rapidly eroded. The culprits were the gigantic multinationals, particularly those operating in the sphere of biotechnology. Not only from India, but the entire span of developing countries in the south was vulnerable to planned piracy of germ plasm.

K.P. Prabhakaran Nair, soil scientist and senior fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, and K. Ravikumar, chairman, National Farmers Protection Committee, Palakkad, spearheaded the criticism. The World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organisation, the three international agencies which promote globalisation and support MNCs, were blamed for indirectly aiding the `biopiracy' and exploitation.

These multinationals were on the one hand imposing on the poor countries highly damaging products like genetically-modified seeds and, on the other, stealing the strong indigenous varieties like Basmati. The Monsanto Corporation as well as GM seeds and Golden Rice were attacked in particular.

Dr. Nair pointed out that the Green Revolution, which copied western methods of farming that used a heavy dose of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, had done incalculable damage to the soil in Punjab and Haryana. Indian agriculture had been essentially based on organic farming practices and conserved biodiversity, but the western methods had helped destroy the soil and biodiversity.

Mr. Ravikumar said that the northern (developed) countries were now asking the southern nations to conserve biodiversity so that they could exploit it using biotechnology. He said that biodiversity was external to biotechnology and noted that if the northern farming practices based on biotechnology were adopted by the poor countries, special care should be taken to maintain genetic resources.

The WIPO officials, however, failed to address the fundamental questions raised by the critics. They said the issues were beyond the scope of the WIPO and wanted the critics to raise them with the Governments concerned.

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