Articles by Dr. Shiva

Commodification and Privatisation of the Planet

by Dr. Vandana Shiva

The biggest threats posed by globalisation are the commodification and privatisation of the planet.  

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of WTO privatizes life forms and biodiversity.  

During the Uruguay Round of the GATT, the United States introduced its flawed patent system into the WTO, and thus imposed it on the rest of the world. US Corporations have admitted that they drafted and lobbied on behalf of TRIPs. As a Monsanto spokesman said, “The industries and traders of world commerce have played simultaneously the role of patients, the diagnosticians, and prescribing physicians.”  

TRIPs not only made Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws global geographically, but also removed ethical boundaries by including life forms and biodiversity into patentable subject matter. Living organisms and life forms that are self-creating were thus redefined as machines and artifacts made and invented by the patentee. Intellectual property rights and patents then give the patent holder a monopolistic right to prevent others from making, using, or selling seeds. Seed saving by farmers has now been redefined from a sacred duty to a criminal offence of stealing “property”. Article 27.3 (b) of the TRIPs agreement, which relates to patents on living resources, was basically pushed by the “Life Science” companies to establish themselves as Lords of Life.  

The chemical companies of the world have bought up seed and biotechnology companies and reorganized themselves as Life Science corporations, claiming patents on genes, seeds, plants and animals. Ciba Geigy and Sandoz have combined to form Novartis, Hoechst has joined with Rhone Poulenc to form Aventis; Zeneca has merged with Astia; Dupont has bought up Pioneer HiBred; and Monsanto now owns Cargill Seeds, DeKalb, Calgene, Agracetus, Delta and Pine Land, Holden and Asgrow, Seminis. Eighty percent of all genetically engineered seeds planted are Monsanto's “intellectual property.” And Monsanto owns broad species patents on cotton, mustard, soyabean – crops that were not “invented” or “created” by Monsanto but have been evolved over centuries of innovation by farmers of India and East Asia working in close partnership with biodiversity gifted by nature.  

As a result of globalization, corporations like Monsanto have gained monopoly control over seed. (See Table) In India, they first entered through hybrid cottonseeds and later with genetically engineered Bt cottonseeds. High cost seeds, which are both non-renewable and unreliable, have pushed hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers to suicide. In a parliamentary debate in 2006, the government figures were 150,000 farm suicides in the last decade. The “suicide belt” overlaps with regions where corporations like Monsanto have established seed monopolies.   

World's Top Ten Seed Companies*

Yet, instead of promoting access to seed for all farmers and access to medicines for all, the G-8 is promoting access to monopoly markets for those pharmaceutical giants, which are also the seed biotechnology giants.  

The priorities for the G-8 submitted as identified by the Personal Advisor to the Chancellor (Berlin, October 10, 2006) repeated refers to stronger IPR rights for corporations, and hence weaker rights to food and medicine for citizens. The note on priorities states,

  “Innovation is at the root of welfare in knowledge-based societies. Protection of innovation, especially in international trade and investment relations, plays a decisive role for the willingness to invest in research and development. We see a need for action particularly in the improvement of international cooperation to implement intellectual property rights in the fight against product and brand piracy.”  

There is no mention of biopiracy. Product patents are, assumed to be a right and process patents are defined as “product piracy”. This is a direct support to corporate monopolies over seeds and medicines.  

Instead of making a commitment to the outstanding review of TRIPs, the G-8 priority is to create new agreements to enforce monopolies for corporations.  

Instead of making a commitment to the outstanding review of TRIPs, the G-8 priority is to create new agreements to enforce monopolies for corporations.  

If TRIPs has killed hundreds of thousands of farmers, by denying them seeds, and threatens to kill millions of people by denying them medicine, how much more violence will a TRIPs plus, driven by the G-8, unleash on the poor of the world? Corporate intellectual property rights have become a threat to the survival of the poor.  

The G-8 has claimed to put climate change on the top of its agenda. However, it is actually promoted GHG emissions by outsourcing pollution to countries like India. It is also seeking easy market friendly solutions, which are in effect non-solutions for responding to climate catastrophe.   

The emissions trading solution to climate change promoted by the G-8 is also a privatisation of the planet.  

The pollution of the atmosphere is a form of “enclosure of the commons”. The atmosphere has been privatized by the oil and coal companies, the automobile and power companies, as a waste dump of their pollutants. On the one hand, the build up of carbon dioxide from coal and oil has deprived other humans and other animals of their share of a clean, unpolluted, atmospheric commons. On the other hand, climate change triggered by accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also affects the poor most, those who have made no contribution to the degradation of the atmosphere and the destruction of its capacity to recycle carbon.  

The first privatisation of the atmosphere is now being followed by a second privatisation – this time as a “solution” to climate change. The second enclosure is carbon trading and emissions trading  - the main outcomes of the Kyoto Protocol and the Stern report. Sir Nicholas Stern, who was earlier the World Bank's Chief Economist had stated, “The very basis of emissions trading is assigning property rights to emitters, and then allowing these to be traded. (Carbon Trading Development Dialogue, No. 48, September 2006, p73). Larry Lehman, the author of “Carbon Trading” shows how market solutions to climate change, whether embodied in US pollution trading programs, the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, give “property rights” to the atmosphere “to a selection of historical polluters – wealthy countries and companies – for free.  

The Kyoto Protocol gave 38 industrialized countries that were the worst historical polluters emissions rights. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme rewarded 11,428 industrial installations with carbon dioxide emissions rights.  

This is an enclosure of the atmospheric commons, and the privatisation of the atmosphere as a public good. Through Emissions trading “rights to the earth's carbon cycling capacity are gravitating into the hands of those who have the most power to appropriate them and the most financial interest to do so” (Carbon Trading, p73) In the Stern Review, Nicholas Stern reiterates that underlying emissions trading is the allocation of a full set of property rights (Stern Review, p311) And in the Kyoto Protocol, the rights given away were several times higher than the carbon cycling capacity of the atmosphere allows if global temperatures are not to rise by more 2 degree celcius (Carbon Trading, p 75)  

Market solutions in the form of emissions trading are thus doing the opposite of the environmental principle that the polluter should pay. Through emissions trading private polluters are getting more rights and more control over the atmosphere, which belongs to all life on the planet.