Challenging Biopiracy

The IPR laws embodied in the TRIPs agreement of WTO have unleashed an epidemic of the piracy of nature’s creativity and millenia of indigenous innovation. Navdanya led the campaign against biopiracy trough the Neem Campaign. In 1994 Navdanya (in co-operation with the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology) mobilised 100,000 signatures against Neem patents, and together with the European Greens and IFOAM, challenged Patent No. 436 257 B1 of USDA and WR Grace at the European Patent Office, resulting in the Neem victory in May 2000.

In 1998, Navdanya started the Campaign against Basmati Biopiracy against Patent No. 5663484 of RiceTec. In August 2001, as a result of legal actions and people’s movements, the broad-based biopiracy claims of RiceTec were struck down by the USPTO.

In 2003, RFSTE/ Navdanya launched another biopiracy campaign against patenting of Indian wheat variety “Nap Hal” by Monsanto in the European Patent Office (EPO). On 21 May 2003, the EPO in Munich granted a patent to Monsanto with the number EP 445 929 and the simple title "plants". The patent covers wheat exhibiting a special baking quality. The cause of this special quality lies in a naturally occurring combination of genes, which reduces a certain part of the protein in the grains. Wheat with these character­istics was originally developed in India. Now Monsanto holds a monopoly on the farming, breeding and processing of this type of wheat.

RFSTE / Navdanya has filed a challenge against the wheat biopiracy in the EOP in February 2004 along with Greenpeace International and Bharat Krishak Samaj. Simultaneously, RFSTE also appealed to the Supreme Court of India through a Public Interest Litigation to “take appropriate measures to prevent Monsanto getting a patent on Indian Wheat”. Both the cases are still on and no decision has been taken till August 2004.

The Living Democracy Movement, Jaiv Panchayat, launched by Navdanya on May 5, 999, is another creative response to biopiracy and IPR monopolies on life forms. As part of the movement, over 1000 village communities have asserted their rights to their biodiversity and vowed to conserve and protect their biodiversity. Navdanya’s Living Democracy Movement has inspired similar movements across the world.

The movement to reclaim the biological and intellectual commons has rejuvenated indigenous knowledge and promoted its propagation from grandmothers to grandchildren through documentation in Community Biodiversity Registers. Navdanya’s focus on collective, cumulative innovation embodied in indigenous knowledge has created a worldwide movement for the defence of the intellectual rights and communities.

Navdanya, along with the foundation for Economic Trends, RAFI and many other groups across the world has also taken the fight for Reclaiming the Genetic Commons at the international level through the Treaty Initiative launched at the World Social Forum 2002.