[Taxacom] Shared Ownership of Biological Resources

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Fabian Haas wrote:
> well, the CBD says several times that the national states have sovereign 
> rights over their biodiversity. This was introduced to make them protect 
> whats in their borders. No way this will change and no way biodiversity 
> will be treated as a common heritage anymore. Other discussions in IPR 
> will go similar ways. Maybe only Agriculture with their exchange system 
> for gen plasms is different.

* When we did the Canadian tree of life poster in 1995, the original 
title was "Every species belongs to itself," which is what I think needs 
to be true, and I think philosophers could work this out pretty simply 
from a [holophyletic?] descent-&-kinship based value system. But it was 
too hot for the Canadian Biodiversity Institute or the Department of 
Foreign Affairs, so it was truncated to the heroically vague "Every 
species belongs." (Karstad, Aleta, Heather Hamilton, and Frederick W. 
Schueler. 1995. "Every Species Belongs." poster published by the 
Canadian Biodiversity Institute.)

But we consoled ourselves that this was better than the historic "Every 
species not directly beneficial to humanity needs to be blown away."

An alternative is that all Persons who know the name of a species have a 
joint ownership interest in it, and the right to intervene when a 
population is threatened by Human action. I wanted to proclaim this in 
1996, in just the same way (and doubtless less absurdly than) Champlain 
claimed Canada for the King of France, but again this proposal was too 
hot for the Canadian Biodiversity Institute, and we just did a bioblitz 
instead.

fred.
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> Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan wrote:
>>  Pl. see out letter "Shared Ownership of Biological Resources"in Science
>> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/324/5930/1014-c.pdf

* this isn't accessible to the general public.

>> "....Current negotiations within the framework of the CBD on access and
>> benefit sharing do not address the issues created by nationalization of
>> genetic resources. Hence, a dialogue should be initiated in the next
>> Conference of the  Parties (COP) of the CBD to correct the historic
>> aberration of nationalization and to treat biological diversity as a common
>> heritage of mankind. "
>>
>> PRIYADARSANAN DHARMA RAJAN  AND PRATHAPAN DIVAKARAN

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