Implementing Agenda 21

Citizens and the Biodiversity Convention: The Indian Experience

by Ashish Kothari

The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed at the Earth Summit in 1992, marks a significant milestone in the history of global environmental relations. The convention is the first treaty to deal with the entire range of life forms found on earth, including wild plants and animals, crops and livestock, and micro-organisms. Entering into force as an international law in December 1993, the convention has so far (early 1995) been signed by over 170 countries, and ratified by over 100.

There are three major thrusts to the convention: conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable utilisation of biological resources, and the equitable sharing of benefits arising from such utilisation. These are matters which require not only an ecological understanding, but also an enquiry into the basic moral and social tenets governing human society. It is these tenets which direct the way in which we use the natural world around us, the rate at which we use it, and the distribution of benefits we derive from it.

The convention has far-reaching implications for the conservation and development policies of each country. If any nation commits itself to following the convention's provisions, it will first have to understand these implications. How sensitive are the country's development policies to biodiversity concerns? Do current conservation attempts adequately cover the entire range of life forms? Can modern agriculture integrate diversity concerns, or will it need a drastic change? Who can effectively conserve biodiversity: governments or local traditional communities, or a combination of the two? How relevant are modern science and technology compared to traditional systems? How can conservation, sustainability, and equity be achieved in the use of biological resources? What do recent trends in intellectual property rights imply for biodiversity? These are just a sample of the difficult issues which will have to be grappled with and resolved.

The Indian Context

India was the first country to sign the convention, and the 48th to ratify it, in February 1994. The Indian government was clearly of the opinion, not unjustified, that the country had a lot to gain from the convention. In no small measure was this view influenced by the handful of NGOs and individual environmentalists who had recognised its potential, pointing to the following: its provisions on in-situ and ex-situ conservation can provide a renewed thrust to wildlife protection and a new direction to agriculture; its clauses assuring national sovereignty and mandatory agreements on sharing of biological resources and related technologies can help to stem the wholesale theft of genetic resources from the tropical nations, and redress some of the imbalances between industrial and Third World nations; its provisions regarding traditional communities can help these communities to regain their rights, and some respect and returns for their contributions to conservation and sustainable use.

However, the NGOs had also repeatedly pointed out that the potential of the convention would remain on paper unless there was a much greater public debate on the various issues it raised, a debate which would lead to creative and constructive interpretations of the convention's provisions, and to urgently needed follow-up action. Even as basic a task as inventorying the biodiversity of the country needs to be completed, especially with regard to lower plants and animals, and micro-organisms. Assessments of the status of species, populations, and various human activities on biodiversity. But research is just one of the urgent tasks needed. We need a drastic reorientation of our development policies and programmes in all sectors, from agriculture to industry to trade, if not just biodiversity but the entire natural environment on which we depend is to be saved.

Even our conventional conservation strategies, in particular that of protecting wildlife with the aid of a top-down centralised bureaucracy, need to be reviewed in the light of what the convention tells us of the role of local traditional communities; clearly, a much more participatory and decentralised approach is needed.

Both NGOs and the government have also realised that at the international level, India needs a whole series of actions. These range from conservation cooperation with neighbouring countries, to regulating foreign access to the country's biodiversity and ensuring appropriate returns for granting such access. It also requires action on the front of technology transfer, and on the safe handling and trade in biotechnologically modified organisms. The issue of intellectual property rights needs to be dealt with, especially in the context of recent trends under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).

Action on Conservation and Sustainable Development

Though the Rio summit was seen by many (including myself) as a massive show with disappointing results at the government level, it nevertheless had the effect of generating considerable worldwide debate and interest in issues of environment and development, and in galvanising a much larger NGO and public effort than before. In the case of the Biodiversity Convention, what had until then remained a peripheral subject being discussed between a few government officials and even fewer NGOs in India, became the focal point of growing interest and debate. Its major effect was on many NGOs and individuals who had already been working on the biological, social, economic, and political aspects of biodiversity, and who received a boost and a renewed direction.

The provisions of the convention on conservation and sustainable use have attracted limited but critical interest among NGOs. There is a greater recognition that the massive task of inventorying and studying the country's biodiversity cannot be left to government agencies alone. Ecologists from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, are now involving college students and teachers as 'parataxonomists' in local inventories of the rich Western Ghats ecosystems; in the west Indian state of Gujarat, academics of the Indian Institute of Management are helping to organise 'biodiversity competitions' in which children are asked to identify local diversity, including of crops. A much larger NGO effort at inventorying the bird diversity of various regions, and of assessing its status, is starting.

Perhaps two of the most significant contributions of the convention in the field of in-situ conservation are the attention it gives to the entire range of life forms, and to the role of local communities. India's wildlife efforts in the last few decades, impressive though they have been, have concentrated very heavily on big mammals and birds. The new emphasis on diversity has been used by NGOs and independent scientists to focus on the neglected 'lower' life forms, including on micro-organisms which have been the least studied of all. This focus is also being driven home by pointing out that these life forms are the ones most prone to being taken out of the country, for their possible pharmaceutical and other values, and therefore the need to identify and study them ourselves (see below, on access).

Secondly, the conventional top-down model of wildlife conservation so far practiced in India is being increasingly questioned, as social action groups working with local communities across the country are demanding the recognition of the rights of these communities to a share in the benefits and management of protected areas. Again, the convention's emphasis on the importance of indigenous and local communities (e.g. Article 8j; see also below), is used to bolster this argument. In many national parks and sanctuaries, there is a renewed attempt to encourage local community participation.

The NGO critique of conventional commercial agriculture, in India's case typified by the Green Revolution model of intensive cropping with chemical additives and intensive irrigation, has also received a new thrust with the convention. Resolution no. 3 which was adopted by all countries at the time of the signing of the convention, dealing with agricultural biodiversity, is being used by NGOs to seek a change in policy. The biodiversity approach calls for a serious rethinking of the Green Revolution strategy, which may have helped us to achieve short-term food security at the expense of a long-term ecological collapse brought about by genetic erosion. An increasingly widespread network of farmers and community-based groups are trying organic farming and the renewal of indigenous seed and livestock diversity. The Beej Bachao Andolan (Save the Seeds Movement) in the Himalayan foothills, for instance, is reviving biodiverse cropping patterns, with one single farmer experimenting with over 100 local varieties of rice and an equal number of varieties of kidney beans. Navdanya, a network of farmers, formal scientists, and activists, is trying the same in the Western Ghats and other areas. Governments are having to respond; in the case of livestock, for instance, the official machinery has admitted that there has been serious erosion of diversity, and has started moving on conserving what is left and reviving what is lost.

Finally, on the issue of sustainable use of biological resources, the convention has given another tool to NGOs who have for long been questioning the currently unsustainable and inequitable path of development which India has chosen. Agriculture is one sector, but questions are also being posed to industry, mining, trade, energy, and other sectors which use biological resources without much thought to the consequences. Provisions contained in Articles 6 (General Measures for Conservation and Sustainable Use), 7 (Identification and Monitoring), 10 (Sustainable Use), and 14 (Impact Assessment and Minimizing Adverse Impacts), are being cited to bolster arguments for a complete overhaul of developmental policy. One specific target is the country's EIA procedures; NGOs are asking for incorporation of biodiversity concerns into these procedures.

Action on Access and Benefit-Sharing

The convention's provisions on access and on the sharing of benefits were quickly grasped by some Indian NGOs during the negotiating stage itself. Pointing to the large-scale transfer of genetic resources outside the country, they started putting pressure on the government to stem the transfer. Based on their own research and on information received from foreign NGOs, they were able to cite specific examples of resource flow which had helped northern countries greatly, but with no appreciable returns coming back. The environmental action group Kalpavriksh, for instance, cited evidence provided by the Canada-based Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) on the patenting of micro-organisms taken from India by American pharmaceutical companies, and put pressure on the government to take action.

At about the same time (1993-94) considerable controversy was erupting on the potential impacts of GATT, and on the runaway trend of patenting life forms and biotechnological products in industrialized countries. This controversy attracted attention amongst all sections of the Indian public, and especially in the media, and some NGOs were able to link it with the convention's provisions on access and IPRs. They pointed out that unless India took quick action, it would be unable to benefit from these provisions. Articles 15(4) and 15(5), which specify that transfer of genetic material can only take place under mutual agreement and prior informed consent, as also Article 16(5), which discourages the application of IPRs which violate the provisions of the convention, were repeatedly cited as potential rallying points.

This argument has already had partial effect. The Indian government is intending to promulgate a notification regulating the transfer of Indian genetic material across the borders. Drafted by a group of governmental and non-governmental experts set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the notification is likely to be in force soon. It is, however, not yet very clear how exactly it will be administered, given the serious lack of readiness among Indian customs and scientific bodies to monitor the large-scale transfers of genetic material that are already taking place. Nor are the terms and conditions under which transfers will be allowed clear as yet; an exercise to determine the kinds of material transfer agreements or other contracts which will be acceptable, is urgently needed. Some NGOs are analyzing the agreements reached in other countries to assess their applicability to India.

There have also been attempts by NGOs to provide alternatives to the privatized IPR system being promoted by GATT. Having succumbed to pressure from the GATT system and from the increasing number of multinational seed companies entering the country, the Indian Agriculture Ministry is pushing a Plant Varieties Protection Act. However, though it is essentially similar to the International Convention on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), public pressure has led it to introduce significantly stronger provisions for farmers' rights and curbs on the monopolistic rights of breeders than available under UPOV. In addition, so NGOs like the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, and Gene Campaign, have proposed legislative and other measures for ensuring community intellectual rights, recognising that much of the information on biodiversity (especially agricultural diversity) is shared by communities and not held in private. Some of these suggestions have received a sympathetic response from government, but will have to be worked on much greater before entering official policy.

One of the sections of the convention which has attracted great interest is Article 8J, which commits countries to respect traditional knowledge and practices, to seek permission from local communities before using this knowledge, and to ensure equitable returns for such use. Even before Rio, NGOs and mass movements have pointed out that traditional communities have tremendous experience and knowledge regarding biodiversity, the use of which has benefited larger society, but for which they have received little in return. They now recognise that the convention provides the opportunity to redress this. Apart from arguing for legislative measures to ensure this, NGOs are now systematising the documentation of traditional knowledge.

One practical step is the proposal for starting Community Registers, in which communities with NGO assistance document the wide-ranging traditional uses of biodiversity. Such a register could be used not only as proof of existence of this knowledge to counter any attempts by outsiders to monopolise it, but also to exchange among communities and to use as a abase for capacity enhancement. Initiated by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions, the proposal is now being taken up by several groups in various parts of India. A draft of the register format was discussed in early 1995, and is going to be field-tested and put into practice in mid-1995. Though both official and independent formal scientific bodies will be involved, care will be taken to see that communities have full control over the process, including in determining who should have access to the Register.

Various suggestions are being examined for ensuring returns to local communities in the wider use of their knowledge and resources. These range from collection fees to royalties to development inputs and exemption from the operation of IPRs. Interestingly, some NGOs are also urging the government to ensure that information collected in an All-India Project on Ethnobiology, conducted in the 1980s, is not used for commercial gains without the prior consent of the communities of origin, and without appropriate arrangements for returning part of the benefits.

The Government Follow-Up

Not least due to the considerable NGO and local community pressure put on the government to follow the convention, the latter has taken a number of interesting initiatives. These include:

1. Drafting a comprehensive legislation on biodiversity, including on its conservation and sustainable use, and on the equitable sharing of benefits arising from its use. Currently the draft is in the stage of a detailed statement of principles, and work is underway to put it into legal shape.

2. Formulating a detailed National Action Plan on Biodiversity, also dealing with the aspects mentioned above, and also involving a diversity of governmental and non-governmental experts. Currently, the Plan is at the stage of an extended outline, and details are being incorporated.

3. Hosting a meeting of Asian countries, to discuss regional cooperation on matters related to biodiversity (August 22-23, 1994).

4. Preparing a detailed status report on biodiversity in India, covering both wild/natural and agricultural biodiversity. Sponsored by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the report is under preparation at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, a non-governmental institute. A detailed report on legal aspects is also under preparation at the Centre for Environmental Law.

5. Initiating a dialogue with industry and scientific agencies, on enhancing indigenous capacity to sustainably utilise biological resources.

The Way Forward

One major lacunae in the follow-up to the convention is their relative lack of involvement of local communities, and social activists working with them. There is an urgent need to inform grassroots workers of the potential of the Convention (as was done in the specific case of IPRs as relevant to GATT). This is especially critical if the convention's major implications are to be seriously followed up, including: reviewing development policies from the point of view of biodiversity, giving local communities much greater stake in and benefits from biodiversity conservation, and reviewing the relationship of other international obligations (such as those under GATT) with Indian obligations under the convention. With sustained public pressure, India's follow-up to the convention will hopefully move towards these actions.

In this context, one of the most important roles that NGOs are playing is to popularise the convention among the general public. Some groups are now translating it into regional languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi), and spreading awareness in various forms. The voluntary group Kalpavriksh has repeatedly brought it into the mainstream media, and published the country's first detailed analysis of the implications of the convention. In the last three years, almost every major meeting on wildlife and biodiversity has devoted space to a discussion on the convention. The popular media is carrying many more articles on the subjects related to biodiversity than before; some like Frontline and the annual Hindu Survey of Environment have consistently carried analytical pieces on the convention. Such exposure is critical if this international agreement is to have the results it deserves.