Who wouldn't like to share benefits? But its about Sharing of Benefits from Common Property Resources and global Biological Heritage

 By Malini Shankar,

Digital Discourse Foundation

In the first part of the curtain raiser series we tried to comprehend the basic meaning and significance of Biodiversity that is at the heart of benefit sharing mechanisms of the Nogoya Protocol for instance. It is the attempt to protect Common Property Resources sustainably by the UNCBD or United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity. Today let’s try to figure the need for its governance. 

"The Conference encompasses the 16th Meeting of the Conference of Parties serving as the meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and the fifth meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources, and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from their Utilisation. It will include a high level ministerial segment." According to the official website of the UNCBD COP 16

Let us understand by example.

The Kani tribes in Kerala shared a patent with the Tropical Botanical Garden Research Institute which  documented the medicinal properties of arogya paccha (Trichopus zeylanicus) found in the Western Ghats. The Kanis got a 50 per cent share of the patent fees. Lacking the socio-economic infrastructure to deal with the monetary benefit, the patent money was subject to endless disputes. Once the patent license term expired, the Kanis couldn't either renew their patent or negotiate with TBGRI to sustain their loyalty fees. Consequently, the Trust that was formed for the development of the Kanis with the patent fees is languishing and the money they got, expended, leaving them to the mercy of the bottle.

Out of the box solutions are needed to solve issues like coordination, fiscal cooperation, which bureaucracies have to overcome.

Forest dwelling Irulas got included in India's Administration thanks to one efficient conscientious Indian Administrative Officer in the Tamilnadu Government – Dr. G.S. Bedi, IAS who included the food starved Irulas in the Scheduled Tribe List in the immediate aftermath of the Asian Tsunami. With this inclusion the Irulas were given skill training in fishing and related skills by the MSSRF so they do not have to depend only on hunting and gathering while tethering on starvation. This film Bewildering Biodiversity by me spells out in great detail how the Irulas came to benefit from such administrative inclusion. Benefit sharing was of mutual benefit or advantage – between the Forest Department and the Irulas.

Now let us see a third example. In my previous article I had mentioned that forest dwellers who live cheek by jowl in tiger terrain … have been included in the banking sector in an attempt to include them in the tax net by the Modi government since 2014. But these forest dwellers lack livelihood and food security. How then can they contribute to the economy? Impoverished forest dwellers score low on precepts of livelihood, food and health security. What is the point of pompous inclusion in the banking or tax net if their human development is stalled? Land use policy definitions are so urgently required to really include forest dwellers in the economy. Since UNCBD COP 16 will dwell at length on SDG 17 which is all about Partnerships for Sustainable Development – again out of the box solutions are necessary for inclusive development. If forest dwellers don’t get enough to invest on their own development and subsidies have to be taken out – per WTO, - then something like a dedicated tribals’ bank is needed to invest for their development – but outside tiger terrain so again – land use policy is the need of the hour. Is the Indian Government listening? This is necessary to mitigate Human Wildlife Conflict Mitigation. Otherwise not only the human wildlife conflict will be sustained but no problem will ever be solved. This the political leadership needs to understand.