Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
have largely encouraged genetic standardization. For instance, a wheat variety or even more an hybride
will be prefered to another because of small differences in the high yields that can be obtained (under
standardized conditions).
Today, no country is really protected against the dramatic consequences of genetic standardization in
terms of food production for its population or for export. Given the geography of Wawilow centres and
the high levels of biodiversity in areas so far not destroyed (yet?), it should not come as a surpize that
the private actors and the governements who really push for patenting on genes are the ones in the
genetically poor countries. Indeed, as we have seen, the major Centres of biodiversity are situated in
the South while agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies willing to appropriate genetic material are
overwhelmingly from industrialised countries. Biopiracy (legalised or not) is not rare: The world is
witnessing the appropriation and privatization of resources which had been maintained and managed for
centuries by subsistence farmers and indigenous communities. The communities rely on these
resources for their survival and are aware of this dependence, but the whole human community is
actually dependent on these resources. Genetic material is then kept in gene banks or private
laboratories. The safest and most appropriate place for a variety, however, is a carefully cultivated
ecosystem with a stable and high genetic biodiversity.
ii. New Attacks on Biodiversity
New attacks on biodiversity have come up with a potentially severe impact on biodiversity and its
services for food production. It is necessary to carry out an analysis in terms of risks for the right to food
and for future generations.
The general trend is a loss of control over genetic resources by peasants and indigenous communities
at the benefit of corporations, which consider these recources as mere commodities.
TRIPS and Genetic Resources
The control of peasants over seeds and biodiversity has become a major international issue. The WTO-
TRIPS agreement (on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) entails risks for people´s
ability to feed themselves. WTO-TRIPS means (inspite of theoretical saving clauses and procedures)
that plants protected by patents must be used only under the conditions imposed by the patent holder –
and that most patents will be held by agribusiness corporations from OECD countries.
With the TRIPS agreement, deep changes are to be feared in the field of seeds. The survival of small
and subsistence farmers in the South is highly dependent on their access to means of production and
agricultural inputs like seeds. The latter have traditionally been freely selected, cultivated and
exchanged between communities over generations. Plants are adapted to local conditions. This free use
could be endangered by the TRIPS patenting process. Agrobusiness corporations are frequently
reproached for monopolising essential inputs (seeds) which gives them a great influence on the
agricultural production all over the world. In theory peasants can buy what they want or continue to trade
their traditional varieties – in practice, however, the agricultural extension systems and agrarian policies
get oriented (sometimes with the help of government agents) towards the interests of corporate
agriculture.
The UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights noted in August 2000 that “
actual and potential conflicts exist between the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement and the
realisation of economic, social and cultural rights in trelation to, inter alia, impediments to the transfer of
technoology to developing countries, the consequences for the enjoyment of the right to foodof plant
variety rights and the patenting of genentically modified organisms, “biopiracy” and the reduction of
communities’ (especially indigenous communities’) control over their own genetic and natural resources
and cutlural values, and restrictions on access to patented pharmaceuticals and the implications for the
FIAN International 136
June 2002