Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Reasearch position paper 7appropriate, and also commits to provide in kind support to aboriginal culturalorganisations studying traditional knowledge. 18 Indigenous peoples have been onthe Canadian delegations to the CBD and Canada has funded off-delegationindigenous NGOs to participate in CBD discussions of traditional and indigenousknowledge protection. A World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) factfindingmission in November 1998 involved consultations with indigenous groupsacross Canada to consider the viability of IPRs for protecting ITKIP. 19NGOs based in the Council Parties have been active participants in internationalfora focusing upon these issues and in specific projects in developing countriesthat are documenting and preserving ITKIP. 20 European NGOs, however, havebeen critical of the European Commission’s draft Biodiversity Action Plan, notingthat the discussion paper circulated in January 2000 made no reference to issues offood security, TRIPs, bioprospecting, or biopiracy. 21 One reason for this was thefailure of the European Commission to involve NGOs in the early stages of thediscussion process. 22 NGOs with global links to indigenous peoples are often themost significant source for information about ITKIP and the threats posed toindigenous peoples’ cultural survival.Finally university research institutes and independent researchers in most CouncilParties are engaged in biodiversity research related to ITKIP in both domestic andforeign arenas. 23 Overseas projects are often undertaken in conjunction with developingcountries’ governments and researchers with the aim of improving internationalco-operation on biodiversity and cultural landscapes. In many of the regionsthat these researchers visit, local peoples are engaged in the task of recording traditionalknowledge. 24 Such researchers do not always share their information withpeople within the country, however, and local peoples are often unaware of evenpublished information pertaining to their own cultural ancestry and ITKIP.Research into the feasibility and consequences of making government researchfunding and publication subventions contingent upon the repatriation of researchinformation to local informants and host governments is needed. This might beone means by which Council Parties could contribute to developing countries’efforts to preserve cultural diversity.It is recommended that Council Parties undertake further research to consider:– how states can link their commitments to preserve biodiversity with considerationsof cultural diversity and the cultural dimensions of ITKIP in bothdomestic legislation and regional regulation;– how the relationship between natural resource management and cultural diversitycan be recognised in all environmental protection measures such that thepreservation of cultural landscapes serves to preserve the ongoing developmentof cultural diversity;– how a system of collective rights that recognises ITKIP, encourages its use,and facilitates the equitable sharing of benefits derived therefrom would beintegrated with or recognised by domestic intellectual property regimes;175