Biodiversity i.e. biological diversity is the variety of plants and animals on the earth, which has been a major resource for human sustenance and development. Despite its enormous potential value due to new medicines and crops, its accelerating erosion due to over-harvests and habitat destruction has been a recent global concern. Developing countries are also alarmed against emerging biopiracy i.e. monopolistic commercialization of Indian genetic resources and/or related knowledge by foreigners, wile pretending cosmetic changes in traditional knowledge of use as industrial inventions. Conservation biopiracy concerns together lead to International Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the United Nations in 1993 at Rio. CBD is revolutionary in protecting benefits of developing countries, in contrasting to like General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT), a convention opening global markets for the developed world and multinational corporations, while imposing trade barriers for the rest.

Most significantly, CBD asserts sovereign rights of countries over their biodiversity, necessitating their prior informed consent (PIC) before its accession and use by foreigners. CBD also enforces equitable sharing of benefits by commercial applicants with countries of origin of biodiversity and knowledge and relevant communities. These provisions can help developing countries to seek fair price for their bioresources & knowledge and correct imbalance imposed by GATT & subsequent World Trade Organization (WTO). Countries wishing to benefit from CBD provisions must enact supportive laws like by Philippines or Costa Rica. India will be the first major developing country with such a law to lead the third world. After prolonged negotiations between conflicting interests for 8 long years, the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) of India has tabled balanced bill for enactment in August 2002. The bill would prevent foreign misuse of biodiversity and related knowledge, while promoting fair use & equitable benefit sharing to reward for people conservation and sustainable use. This is a major achievement since CBD to be projected to motivate other developing countries at the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg in 2002 to review developments in the decade since Rio.

PREVENTING BIOPIRACY

Significantly, the bill aims to prevent biopiracy by allowing access if it promotes equitable benefits sharing to foster conservation. It prohibits transfer of Indian bioresources abroad without proper prior approval and benefit sharing conditions by the Indian Government authority (Chapters II, IV and V). Similarly, any related patent or other intellectual property right (IPR) application must seek prior proper prior approval and benefit sharing conditions by the Indian Government authority {Articles 6 and 18(4)}. This complements similar provisions in Patents Act 2^nd Amendments 2002 and Plant Variety Protection and Farmer’s Rights (PVPFR) Act, 2001. The bill also compels government to oppose globally any relevant unauthorized IPR. The bill empowers government to charge fees and royalties on above transfers and IPR (Articles 19 (3)), and ensure equitable benefit sharing through transfer of technology, monetary returns, joint R & D, venture capital funds and joint IPR ownership (Article 21).

EMPOWERING PEOPLE

The bill is revolutionary in empowering local people to manage and document their bioresources and knowledge, regulate and even tax outsiders for accessing it commercially while facilitating traditional and ongoing subsistence use for agriculture or medicine (Article 41). Another revolutionary provision requires central and state governments to seek local people’s permission to use bioresources or declare those as heritage site for conservation. Further, any economic losses incurred by local people due to conservation efforts must be compensated (Article 32, 37). This may correct injustice imposed on villagers by earlier laws like the Wildlife act, 1972 and Forest Act, 1927 which required rehabilitation but not compensation. The bill complements existing laws so as to add and not counter to their conservation effects.

To prevent biopiracy and facilitate equitable benefit sharing with villagers, the bill provides for registration of knowledge at local to national levels (Article 36(4)) to oppose unfair IPR & share benefits of fair commercialization equitably with National and relevant State and Local Biodiversity Funds. These may promote conservation by rewarding people e.g. folk healers registering knowledge or farmers that conserve folk cultivars (Articles 27, 32, 43).

REGULATING OVEREXPLOITATION

The bill also will monitor overexploitation of bioresources by compelling Indian nationals and industries to intimate government about their harvests, while exempting local people’s traditional subsistence use (Article 7). This assessment can help to identify bioresources threatened by overexploitation, so as to impose harvest restrictions as per articles 37 & 38 that provide for declaring heritage sites and threatened species. Further, such harvests would require regular permission, monitoring and even taxation by villagers (article 41).

The bill seeks to minimize the destruction of biodiversity due to the development projects, by enforcing biodiversity-friendly environmental impact assessments (EIA) and integration of biodiversity into all sectoral plans, programs and policies (Articles 36). The bill also balances latest biotechnological developments {Article 36 (3ii)} by minimizing risks associated with the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO), while more relevant bill like Plant Variety Protection and Farmer’s Rights (PVPFR) has ignored this crucial concern!

DEMOCRATIC, PROGRESSIVE PROCESS

The revolutionary, pro-people provisions like clauses 21,32, 36, 37, 41 were inserted in 1997-98 version through public hearings in 1998. After the bill was tabled in the Parliament in May 2000, it was referred to ioint committee of upper and lower house. The JPC studied & balanced the complex issues through its nearly 100 meetings, including tours to various states, to listen to conflicting opinions of scientists, foresters, industry, NGOs and communities. The bill was improved by (a) empowering citizens to approach courts (clause 52), (b) establishing synergy with other overlapping acts (clause 59), (c) availing central assistance to states (clause 36), (d) exempt value added products, cultivation and traditional subsistence uses from regulations (clause 2,3,7,41) and (e) requiring NBA to process access & IPR applications within 3 months (clause 6) (f) forbidding any foreign legal jurisdiction in these matters (clause 54). Now, the rules and guidelines under the bill must be developed soon in a similarly consultative fashion by drawing on nationwide public networking achieved in National Biodiversity Strategy & Action Plan (http://sdnp.delhi.nic.in/nbsap ), National Innovations Foundation’s (http://www.nifindia.org) Register of Informal Innovations and & Unique Traditional Knowledge, Peoples Biodiversity Register (http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg ), Rapid Assessment of Local Health Traditions (http://www.frlht-india.org) and Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.