BIODIVERSITY People's Ecological Planning (PEP) Network and Agricultural Revitalization in South India Utkarsh Ghate Introduction Ongoing globalization with its attendant impacts such as commercialization, mechanization, monopolization, economic inequity etc. are questioned or condemned in academic and sociopolitical forum (Shiva, 1993). However, such debates are often reactive and only promote conflict, rather than a balance between the extreme positions so as to integrate the traditions with the modern, sacred with the secular, social interests with the private interests. Interestingly, notable ecological initiatives have recently sprung in India that embody such synergistic approach. These include registration of environmental knowledge and management priorities of various social sectors to foster sustainable natural resource management (Achar et al, 2000). The focus on biological diversity and related traditional knowledge in such registration has opened up opportunities to protect the local interests against the global interests through synthesis rather than antagonism (Gadgil et al, 2000). This is particularly true of the knowledge dimension as demonstrated by emerging proposals for alternative systems of intellectual property rights (Gupta, 1993). However, role of such registration in participatory planning of natural resources is explored a little (Kothari et al, 2000). Penning Wisdom and Plans People's Ecological Planning (PEP) network is an emerging initiative by several Indian non-governmental organisations (NGO) trying to build upon folk ecological knowledge, decentralised governance and information revolution. It is a logical extension of an informal network of NGOs linked with the biodiversity register (PBR) programme. PBR is an initiative by voluntary agencies (VA) from India for promoting sustainable use and equitable benefit sharing while conserving the biological diversity. A loosely knit nationwide movement, it aims to generate village level biodiversity management plans eventually to occupy legislative and political spaces for decentralise governance. Besides protection of immediate natural resource rights of villagers, broader objectives of the initiative also include protection of their intellectual property rights (IPRs), by creating documentary evidences useful in litigation. Motivation partly comes from the examples like Neem and Turmeric related patents revoked by European Union and USA respectively due to legal 6HHGV RI +RSH /RND\DQ challenges based on prior Indian publications. The objectives of the programme include: a) Documentation of people's knowledge, moreover, practices of sustainable use and conservation of bioresources, both wild and domesticated; to help in protecting their IPRs in future. b) Participatory planning for its sustainable and equitable use, besides conservation. c) Resolution approving this document as a village resource, in a gramsabha (village meet) or panchayat (village council), to help in its institutionalisation. d) Wide publicity to this process and products in popular as well as scientific media. Trade Barriers Challenges before agriculture have skyrocketed recently due to adverse techno-legal compulsions Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) over new crop and livestock breeds, facilitating foreign monopolies over the agricultural backbone and enslavement of the farmers. More frightening are concerns over food security, due to reduction of import controls of foreign agro-products, including the Genetically Modified Organisms GMOs. Domestic erosion of indigenous agricultural diversity and related practices magnifies these threats. Some fresh legislations provide breathing spaces. But concrete hopes stem from the pre-emptive grassroots efforts for sustainability described here. World Trade Organisation (WTO) is the new global power center, established by the international convention General Agreement on Trade and Tariff, 1994 (GATT). Greatest concern stems from Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement which compels member nations to provide strong IPR protection to new plant varieties, domestic and foreign alike. The infamous Basmati case only provides a glimpse of the future biological wars within legal tangles. Rice Tec, a multinational agro-corporation patented a new rice variety grown in USA by name Basmati, infuriating traditional Basmati farmers and exporters from the Indian subcontinent no end. For, this unfair non-tariff barrier would first oust them from the US markets and eventually even from the prime European markets, European Union (EU) countries being committed to TRIPS. Today the consumer pressure has compelled the European traders to prefer marketing the traditionally grown Basmati from the subcontinent. However, EU may eventually respect the Rice Tec Basmati, dooming the Indian and Pakistani farmers and exporters, just as EU bowed down to permit imports of US traded banana and beef under the WTO mandate, to the loss of its commonwealth producers. Greater threat to farmer comes not only from loss of foreign markets but even likely loss of Indian markets in future, emulating the EU. This is evident from the Plant Variety Protection and Farmer's Rights (PVPFR) bill due for enactment by Parliament soon, facilitating industries to obtain seed monopolies. PVPFR emulates laws in the industrial countries that favour breeders over farmers. However, unlike those lows, PVPFR does not avail compensation to farmers from the seed companies over unmet promises. Two provisions of PVPFR resemble farmer's rights, however cosmetic. Firstly PVPFR facilitates farmers to challenge seed monopolies for appropriating and manipulating farmer's breeds, as successfully done with frivolous patents on Neem and Turmeric. Secondly, the PVP applicants must disclose original breeds employed to evolve new varieties, depending on which they must contribute to a Community Gene Fund (CGF) to provide incentives to farmers for on farm conservation of agro-diversity. Community Intellectual Rights? Four growth phases of the PBR movement are described in Table 1. The programme originated with the concept of Community Register (CR) launched 236 3HRSOH·V %LRGLYHUVLW\ 5HJLVWHU by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) in a meeting of southern Indian NGOs during 1994. The idea then was to systematically document the traditional knowledge and skills (TKS) of the villagers recognise them including as `prior art' to contest the related, fraudulent IPR claims. This beginning marked an important deviation from the classical ethnobotanical publications that recognise and benefit only the modern botanical reporters, besides medicinal or crops industry. Table 1. Defining characteristics of each phase of biodiversity registration. STE LEAD LOCAL COST SITES SCALE FOCUS IMPACT P Rs./BR CR FRLHT NGOs 2000/- 10 Region TKS NGOs CBR IISc Colleges 25,000 5 Region Landscape Methods /- BCP WWF NGOs 50,000 50 Nation Trade-offs Policy P /- PBR NGOs Villagers 5,000/- 100 Distric Development Law t But this hardly benefited real knowledge holders, villagers themselves. Such unfair knowledge transactions eventually destroy the TKS, besides making derived new seeds and drugs prohibitively costly for the villagers. CR provided an innovative channel to bring TKS into the broader public domain, without compromising the erstwhile advantages to the individuals or communities. These included community recognition to knowledge holders like the folk medicinal practitioners, besides access to and control over livelihood resources, like crops or kitchen garden medicines. About a dozen such CR documents were compiled by various NGOs scattered in southern India from villages in their vicinity. Such recognition including in modern systems akin to modern IPRs was also being increasingly availed to village folk through the efforts of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), around its base in Ahmedabad. This programme, popularised as SRISTI or honeybee network, primarily focused on promoting grass-roots innovations and creativity, primarily individualistic, whether traditional or modern. CR differed a little in focus on community base and traditional nature or knowledge. Both the efforts got highlighted in the media and among scientists, including ethnobotanists. The CR documents and lessons therein however remain confined to NGO offices. Information gathering lasted barely a few days per village, costing food and travel of the researches. Banking on Convention on Biological Diversity Community Biodiversity Register (CBR) was the next logical step during 1995, linking it to the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that for the first time provided spaces for the rights to communities about their biological and cultural heritage. Spearheaded by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), this phase contributed more to methodology development, in 237 6HHGV RI +RSH /RND\DQ handful of villages scattered along the Western Ghats mountains. The documentation, lasting about a year per village, was shouldered by college teachers and students. Costs rose manifold due to manifold travel and lodging expenses of outside researchers than the CR. The innovative additions to CR in this phase included documentation of not just species but even their habitats ranging from forests to cultivation, thus embracing the landscape. This helped in understanding not just `which' biodiversity was important but also `where'. The scope of documentation expanded beyond usage to recognise conservation, including