Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversitiesself-development. Articles 5 and 6 of the Council Resolution on Indigenous Peoples areannexed to the Joint NGO Comments. See preceeding note.23. For instance, the Swiss Biodiversity Forum – a project of the Swiss Academy ofSciences – is supporting a research project on Local Ecological Knowledge of SwissFarmers and its Influence on Actual Landuse Behaviour. More information on thisresearch project available from World Wide Web: (30.07.00).24. For example, local researchers are attempting to archive the over 814 distinct culturesin PNG in order to ensure the survival of forms of indigenous knowledge. This knowledgewill be put on the Internet to make it more widely available. With one of the largestconcentrations of biodiversity in the world, coupled with its cultural diversity, PNGattracts researchers from around the world. For more information on this archival project,see Webbing New and Traditional Knowledge at: (30.07.00).25. For example, see the WIPO interim mission reports on the nine fact-finding missions onTraditional Knowledge, Innovations and Culture: results of the mission conducted inNorth America from 16 to 30 November 1998 (Annex 4 of the WIPO Final Report onFact-finding Missions on Intellectual Property and Traditional Knowledge, 1998-1999.Available from World Wide Web: (30.07.00).26. In its Programme for the Protection and Promotion of Biodiversity and CommunityRights, for example, the Third World Network (TWN) has commissioned a series ofpapers on the ways developing country governments should implement their Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Properties Agreement (TRIPs) obligations while takinginto account the need to protect and preserve biodiversity and community knowledge,innovation and practices and the means to ensure that traditional and indigenous knowledgeis given a vital role in scientific and technological policies relating to the sustainableuse of biodiversity. In nearly all of the papers commissioned for the second year ofthe programme, the patenting of life forms is rejected and the intellectual property systemitself is denounced for undermining indigenous peoples’ rights, knowledge, andlivelihoods. See, for example, Egziabher, 1999a and 1999b; Ho and Traavik, 1999;Tauli-Corpuz, 1999.27. One of the many websites where this document can be found is (30.07.00). Ultimately, it suggests that the cultures of indigenouspeoples, their knowledges, cosmologies and values provide the most viable alternativesto dominant models of economic growth and export-oriented development and that theimposition of IPRs forecloses the capacity of indigenous or traditional knowledges toserve this vital role.28. For various legal and administrative reform proposals see Dutfield, 2000a; AustralianInstitute, 1997 and 1998; Simpson, 1997. Although Volume One of The Crucible IIGroup provides an excellent coverage of the policy framework and the opportunitiesand constraints that it provides, Volume Two (forthcoming) promises to provide moreprecise options for legal reform. As Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Director of TebtebbaFoundation, Inc., the Indigenous Peoples’ International Center for Policy Research andEducation) writes:“Intellectual property rights are monopoly rights given to individuals or legal persons(such as transnational corporations) who can prove that the inventions of innovationsthey made are novel, involved an innovative step, and are capable of industrial application.Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage are usually collectively evolved andowned. If indigenous peoples have to use western IPRs to protect their own knowledge190