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.