Posted on 12-7-2004
“Indigenous
knowledge is integral”
by Azzurra Carpo, Jun 24, 2004
Interview with Alejandro Argumedo, expert in biodiversity
According to the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of
the Amazon
Basin — representing more than 400 indigenous groups (2.5
million people)
in nine South American countries — there are 5 million
species in the
Amazon (flora and fauna), of which only 1.4 million have been
studied.
The Amazonian indigenous peoples depend on the control, conservation
and
development of these resources. Nevertheless, multilateral trade
accords
and systems of protection of intellectual property try to use
traditional
knowledge of indigenous peoples to generate exclusive commercialization
rights.
Azzurra Carpo, contributor to Latinamerica Press, spoke with
Peruvian
researcher Alejandro Argumedo, associate director of the Cusco,
Peru-based
Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Communities, about
the
importance and value of traditional indigenous knowledge.
What is the importance and characteristics of traditional indigenous
knowledge?
Sixty percent of the world lives from indigenous knowledge to
maintain
their health and 80 percent of the world — according to
the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health
Organization
(WHO) — need indigenous knowledge to survive, eat and
carry out
sustainable agriculture.
According to the UN Development Program (UNDP), more than 1.4
billion
people who inhabit the countryside live on less than US$1 a
day. Among
these people, who are the world’s poorest, the great majority
are
indigenous people. What do these people live on? Obviously biodiversity:
seeds, medicinal plants, forests, fish. The access to this biodiversity
is
essential for daily sustenance, it is a defense against poverty
and
fundamental for self-employment. Therein lies the importance
of the
transmission of knowledge on how to conserve these resources
and develop
biodiversity which is passed on from generation to generation
among
indigenous peoples. They maintain and recreate these resources
constantly.
Indigenous knowledge is fundamental for maintaining equity in
the
communities through a system of re-distribution and other local
models.
Unfortunately, indigenous knowledge is integral and comes from
experience;
it is a something that we cannot separate or abstract. When
we talk about
indigenous knowledge, we are talking about a system that is
integrated, in
which spiritual and cultural aspects are closely linked. This
knowledge is
the basis of survival of these indigenous peoples.
How would you explain the relation between indigenous knowledge
and
intellectual property?
Globalization has brought a great international push of the
systems of
intellectual property. Although in many cases the terms "traditional
knowledge" and "indigenous knowledge" are interchangeable,
these
definitions are having an effect on indigenous rights and on
the
international debate about the access to genetic resources,
the equitable
distribution of profits and about who has rights to patents.
There is a
direct link between indigenous knowledge and indigenous rights.
We are against patents on forms of life, against the monopolization
on the
privatization of traditional knowledge. Bio-piracy is the illicit
appropriation in the area of agriculture, medicinal plants,
of anything
that is human genetics, made by companies of indigenous knowledge
and
associated genetic resources. By doing this, neither human rights
nor
ethics are respected.
What ethical-scientific problems are derived from biopiracy?
There is an idea that everything published by anthropologists,
historians,
chroniclers, is in the public domain. Nevertheless, in many
cases of
indigenous knowledge in the public domain, the communities have
never
given their previous and informed consent. For example, the
system of
genetic banks on the world level, botanic gardens that collected
seeds
without the permission of the communities. And this is not only
taking
away the genetic material and the plants: is also taking away
knowledge,
taking away history, taking away the cultural relations that
one has with
this whole system. Among every indigenous people, on the local
level,
there are systems and models of distribution of knowledge, systems
that
regulate how information is transferred, for example, about
a seed.
In what terms is bio-piracy discussed on an international level?
The international regime that is being developed on biodiversity
seeks
more the commercialization of indigenous knowledge and the associated
resources, rather than the promotion or protection that would
allow
communities to maintain their production systems, their health
systems, to
look for educational systems that are more integrated with the
environment, that is, the rights that are associated with our
future
generations. Rather (this regime) seeks how to privatize, through
a
supposed technical improvement, this knowledge.
There is no international framework for the protection of these
rights in
a way that reflects the cosmo-vision and character itself of
this
indigenous knowledge. Neither is there a clear process where
these rights
can be established.
I believe in the need to change the debate. We should look more
at the
value that these systems of knowledge have, not look so much
at the
genetic resources, the environmental services because the management
of
the ecosystem makes it possible for us to have water, grazing
lands,
firewood, seeds.
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