This is to invite all of you who are interested in the issues related to biodiversity to subscribe to a list serve - “BioD Watch”. The Campaign for Community Control over Biodiversity, currently being “nursed” by the Campaign Desk of Kalpavriksh, Delhi, is starting this new list serve to report updates relating to the following Indian legislation: 

• The Biological Diversity Act and Rules
• The Plant Varieties Protection and Farmers’ Rights Act
• The Seeds Bill
• Other related policies concerning community control over biodiversity in India.

Why do we need this list serve now? 

The Biological Diversity Act was promulgated in 2002, and raised hopes of being a tool for effective conservation of biodiversity, regulation of industrial and commercial use of biological resources, and community control over their biological resources and related knowledge. But the Biodiversity Rules of 2004 diluted some of the progressive provisions of the Act. The functions that the Biodiversity Act provided to the communities as the conservers of biodiversity, were reduced in the Rules to mere functions of documenting their traditional knowledge and listing their bioresources. Even that knowledge is not safeguarded against threats like biopiracy by any of the provisions of the Biodiversity Rules. Meanwhile the institutional structures that Biodiversity Act and Rules established (i.e. National Biodiversity Authority, State Biodiversity Boards and Biodiversity Management Committees) have or are being set up. Much of the work of the National Biodiversity Authority so far seems to be on screening applications for access to bioresources by the industrial sector, and not much has been done on the conservation, traditional knowledge protection, and other related provisions of the Act.

The other legislative measures like the PVP& FR Act, amendments to the Patent Act and now the proposed Seed Bill, are opening the doors for the private companies to get intellectual property rights (IPR) over traditional knowledge and biological diversity which originally belong to or were being managed by local communities. These laws impinge on traditional lifestyles and customary practices of local communities, rewriting the rules of their access and sharing.

The Biodiversity Act and the Rules are being implemented, the Plant Varieties Protection Act is about to be enforced, and the Seed Bill is being discussed within a Parliamentary Committee. The pace with which these legislations are getting approved and enforced warrants an equally regular monitoring. Timely alerts are necessary for people’s action and necessary interventions. BioD Watch intends to keep track of these developments to facilitate pro-active and reactive steps, on biodiversity & knowledge related issues of concern to communities.

The list serve is not an end in itself. Through this we hope to revive and expand the Campaign for Community Control over Biodiversity (See: www.kalpavriksh.org), which had groups from across India coming together to react to the issuance of the Biological Diversity Rules, 2004. It is a beginning for us to come together in common interest and collective thinking; so that we can take the information to where it necessarily belongs. It needs to move away from the centralized coffers and implications need to be understood at the grassroots.

We will ensure that only the relevant information reaches your mailboxes and we don't choke them. It is a first step towards collective efforts and we do hope you will come on board!   

To subscribe (free of cost), please write to kvdelhi@vsnl.net or mashqura@gmail.com


Campaign for Community Control over Biodiversity

Kalpavriksh (www.kalpavriksh.org)

(Under an ongoing collaboration on biodiversity issues with GRAIN)

February 2006