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Defending peasants’ rights to seeds and genetic resources, against the biopiracy

Published

3 years ago

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The International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty’s (IPC) Working Group on Agrobiodiversity is in Rome this week to participate in the Open-Ended Working Group negotiations. The aim is to enhance the functioning of the Multilateral System, and to fight the private interests that try to get rid of their obligations as set by the FAO Plant Treaty 20 years ago. La Via Campesina members are also part of this group in the Rome meeting, to defend peasants’ rights to seeds and genetic resources, against the biopiracy of the seed industry supported by rich countries.

What is the Multilateral System?

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) was adopted by the Thirty-First Session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 3 November 2001. The Treaty’s Multilateral System, puts 64 of our most important crops – crops that together account for 80 percent of the food we derive from plants – into an easily accessible global pool of genetic resources that is freely available to potential users in the Treaty’s ratifying nations for some uses.

Most of these samples have been collected from the fields of the farmers who selected them and reproduced them from generation to generation. They represent nearly 40% of the samples stored in germplasm banks. Sixty percent of them come from national collections, 5% from private collections and 35% from international seed banks (CGIAR).

Agriculture needs an enabling access and benefit-sharing system. Such a system should recognize interdependence, trigger the exchange of genetic material of plant origin on a multilateral and facilitated basis. But most importantly such a system must instill fairness and recognize that the global pool to which access is facilitated is continuously enriched by the contributions of farmers worldwide.

A practical and fair access and benefit-sharing system must ensure that genetic resources continue to flow worldwide, while those individuals who selected and conserve those resources are adequately rewarded.

How the access to the Multilateral System works?

The mechanism for obtaining specific genetic resources is through a standardized contract referred to as a “Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA). The SMTA is a binding private bilateral contract between the provider and recipient which states the terms and conditions for use of the genetic resource.

According to the IPC, “Governments, when they negotiated the mechanism, limited the application of the Multilateral System to resources that they could manage and control directly, since most of them are held in national germplasm banks. Plant genetic resources in the public domain should be considered as those which are not the subject of intellectual property rights…[]..Facilitated access through the multilateral system is for the purposes of utilization and conservation for research, breeding and training for food and agriculture… Such purposes do not include chemical, pharmaceutical and/or other non-food/feed industrial uses.”

How the benefit sharing mechanism should work?

The ITPGRFA sets forth the basic structure of monetary benefit sharing under the Multilateral System, but it is the SMTA that defines how much is to be shared.

The beneficiary who markets products (containing PGRFA or genetic parts or components of PGRFA from the Multilateral System) with restrictions has two alternative options for monetary benefit sharing:

  • he or she pays 0.77 per cent on the net sales of the commercialized product with restrictions for a period corresponding to the duration of such restriction (for instance, 20 years in the case of intellectual property rights-based restrictions), OR
  • he pays 0.5 per cent on the sales of all PGRFA products of the same crop to which the accessed material belongs for 10 years (renewable).

In this second case, the payment is higher and in return, the beneficiary can access all the genetic material of that crop without paying for other SMTAs.

SMTA-generated monetary benefits flow into a multilateral fund – namely the Benefit Sharing Fund. This fund is also open to direct contributions and benefits arising from the use of PGRFA that are shared under the multilateral system would flow primarily to farmers, especially in developing countries, who conserve and use PGRFA in a sustainable manner.

However, these payments are optional when commercialized seeds are available “without restriction for research and breeding”, i.e. when they are free of any intellectual property rights or covered by a plant variety right that only limits farmers’ rights and not breeders’ rights.

But industry’s not paying its share

For 15 years, no payments have been made. Seed companies holding patents restricting facilitated access (for research and breeding), which are the only ones subject to mandatory payments, do not pay by taking advantage of the absence of a traceability requirement for PGRFA trade to avoid reporting their use of PGRFA from the Multilateral System. At the time of the blockchain, however, such traceability is technically possible and exists within each company. But industry hides behind trade secrets to provide no information.

In the absence of contributions from beneficiaries, some States and private individuals made voluntary payments to initiate the Fund. Over the past years, the Fund has only raised around $10 million. In comparison, the Global Crop Diversity Trust Fund for ex situ conservation (in gene banks) mobilized $314 million from contributions from rich countries and industrial foundations. It is therefore not the lack of money that explains the negligence of the Benefit Sharing Fund, but the political choice not to pay for the work of farmers in selecting, retaining and renewing PGRFA.

To get out of the circumvention of benefit sharing by beneficiaries, the IPC Working Group on Agrobiodiversity proposes to make payments mandatory through two mechanisms.

Access to the sole information on a genetic sequence contained in a PGRFA allows today, without the need to access the physical PGRFA itself, to reconstitute this sequence in the laboratory with synthetic biology or to identify it in other plants for integration into new seeds with new biotechnologies, or by crossbreeding if it has been identified in sexually compatible plants. Such information is compiled in huge databases of data that are freely accessible via the Internet. Whatever the conclusions of current international discussions on regulating access to such genetic information for benefit sharing, no State can now control free access to the databases that compile it on the Internet.

So, while the seed industry has benefited enormously from this facilitated access to the Treaty material, they never shared the benefits equitably and the majority of States continue to adopt intellectual property laws, which violate farmers’ rights. In response to this failure, the Treaty began work in 2013 to “improve” its functioning. The Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-Sharing was created.

Over the last five years no agreement has been reached, because differences remains between developing and reach countries. After 20 years since the Treaty entered into force, its survival is threatened by the seed industry’s refusal to pay its debt and respect farmers’ rights.

Digital Sequence Information – DSI

Recent advances in biotechnology and genetic sequencing enormously increase that risk. In fact, they allow industry plant breeders to stop working by observing the physical characteristics of plants, and to analyze on their computer screens the digital representation of their genetic sequences. Access only to the digital information of a genetic sequence (Digital Sequence Information – DSI) contained in a PGRFA now allows, without the need to access the physical PGRFA itself, to reconstitute this sequence in the laboratory with synthetic biology or to identify it in other plants for integration in new seeds with new biotechnologies, or by crosses if it has been identified in sexually compatible plants. Rich countries and industry consider that this DSI is not a genetic resource subject to prior consent and benefit-sharing obligations of the Nagoya Treaty or Protocol.

Industrialized countries make these claims even if the Treaty is very clear when it refers to the access to the physical material and the “associated information”. However, there is no agreement on this and rich countries do not take a step behind this red line.

Another main unsolved (and maybe unsolvable) issue is the payment rates in the subscription system. The industrialized countries, especially Canada, Germany and Switzerland want to set a very low payment rate of 0,011% of the sales of the material covered by the Multilateral System of the Treaty, while the payment requested by developing countries is 0,1%.

Source: La Via Campesina

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NGO WORK

The Great “Green” Heist: When Artificial Intelligence and Arms Dealers Seize the Minerals of the South

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3 weeks ago

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August 4, 2026

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By Franck Zongwe Lukama, Congolese journalist and researcher, leads the independent media KilaloPress in DRC.

We were sold a simple equation: to save the planet, we must dig. Dig faster, deeper, extracting from the earth the cobalt, lithium, or copper needed for solar panels and electric vehicles. Yet, this climate rescue rhetoric conceals a staggering statistical deception. Today, 70% of global demand for critical minerals does absolutely nothing to support the energy transition. These resources end up in aerospace, communication technologies, and, above all, weaponry. Sectors that, ironically, exacerbate the global ecological crisis. The green revolution has become the perfect smokescreen, the moral veneer for a very different kind of war.

Far from the promises of sustainable development touted by the World Bank, the current scramble is driven by a strict logic of geopolitical power. A damning report from the California-based Oakland Institute exposes this global scheme. The report reveals an unprecedented and formidable convergence of interests between the American military-industrial complex and the giants of Silicon Valley. With the Pentagon openly pivoting toward a combat strategy focused on artificial intelligence (AI), securing supply chains is no longer a matter of ecology, but a question of survival in the face of Chinese influence. The United States is not seeking to reduce carbon emissions; it is seeking to guarantee its technological and military supremacy.

Artisanal Coltan - manganese - cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Photo: Erberto Zani.

The real winners of this frantic race wear suits far removed from environmental activism. Trillions of dollars are flowing into new alliances that intertwine AI-driven mining companies, like KoBold Metals—backed by billionaires such as Bill Gates—and companies specializing in cutting-edge defense technologies, like Palantir and Anduril, not to mention the networks of influence close to the Trump family. For these players, the discourse of climate emergency acts as a powerful public relations tool. It justifies massive and accelerated extraction that would otherwise provoke international outrage.

Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world.

And the price of this hypocrisy is being paid in full throughout the Global South. In the Rubaya hills, in the Kolwezi copper belt, as in the Indigenous territories of Latin America and Asia, the promise of “prosperity” translates into a terrifyingly familiar tragedy. Land grabbing, forced displacement, devastating groundwater pollution: the plundering of ecosystems and human lives is accelerating. Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world. Today, opposing the destruction of one’s village by a multinational mining company risks being accused of hindering the fight against climate change. The rhetorical trap is devastatingly effective.

Artisanal Coltan - manganese - cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Photo: Erberto Zani.

The long-term consequences of this diversion are alarming. The exponential surge in demand generated by future AI data centers, mass surveillance, and global rearmament will mathematically deplete available reserves. Every ton of copper, nickel, or cobalt consumed by combat drones or algorithmic data processing servers is a ton diverted from the production of renewable energy infrastructure. We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.

We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.

If no strict regulations are put in place to curb this rampant mining frenzy, hundreds of new mines will spring up in the coming years, causing irreversible damage on an unprecedented scale. The question facing citizens today, from Kinshasa to Washington, is no longer whether we will have enough minerals to save our atmosphere. It is why we are willing to sacrifice millions of lives and destroy our lands to fuel next-generation algorithms and weapons. In ten years, when the Global South is nothing more than a vast crater serving a militarized hyper-technology, it will be too late to realize that the planet was never the priority.

Photos: Artisanal Coltan – manganese – cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Erberto Zani – stock.adobe.com

Source: oaklandinstitute.org/

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NGO WORK

EU: IPI welcomes action against 14 states over Anti-SLAPP Directive delays

Published

4 weeks ago

on

July 27, 2026

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EU states must introduce robust measures to protect journalists and media from vexatious litigation

The International Press Institute (IPI) today welcomes the infringement proceedings initiated by the European Commission against 14 EU Member States over their inaction or delays in transposing the Anti-SLAPP Directive.

The countries included are Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

The EU infringement proceedings were initiated on 15 July, with letters of formal notice sent to these Member States for failing to notify about progress made in implementing the Directive. States now have two months to respond and update about measures taken or could eventually face legal action at the European Court of Justice.

The Anti-SLAPP Directive introduced EU-wide rules which protect journalists and civil society actors from manifestly unfounded or abusive civil proceedings with cross-border implications, including early dismissal tools and remedies for targets of SLAPPs. It was adopted in April 2024 and the transposition deadline was 7 May 2026.

Monitoring by IPI shows that while in some of the countries identified, such as Greece and Spain, steps have been taken to prepare for the transposition and bills are actively in development and reportedly close to being presented to or adopted by parliament.

In others such as Bulgaria and Portugal, initial work done to develop legislation has been delayed by institutional changes, changes in governments or political instability, though transposition work remains ongoing.

In other states, such as Italy and Hungary, little to no measurable progress has yet been made on transposition. However, with the new Tisza government in Hungary driving forward media freedom reforms, there is hope the new administration will introduce initial anti-SLAPP measures in the next legislative package identified for the autumn.

While Ireland has been actively working to tackle SLAPPs through legal reforms, and passed the Defamation Bill in 2024, further legislation is required to fully transpose the Anti-SLAPP Directive during its Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Although these 14 countries have been identified in the EU action, monitoring and analyses show that the overall picture for implementation of the Directive across the EU remains fragmented and uneven.

According to the European Anti-SLAPP Monitor, almost all EU Member States missed the May 2026 transposition deadline, with only a handful fully implementing on time.

IPI notes that even in those Member States where the Directive was implemented, such as Malta, these reforms only included minimum standards protecting against cross-border cases, and failed to include measures to safeguard against domestic SLAPPs.

In the wake of the EU’s opening of initial infringement action, IPI renews our call – made previously with Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) partners – for Member States to demonstrate their commitment to media freedom by accelerating their legislative processes in protecting against SLAPPs. This includes the 14 countries identified by the EU Commission and those in which reforms have been presented but not yet adopted.

Crucially, legislative reforms should both fully reflect both the letter and the spirit of the Anti-SLAPP Directive and introduce the substantive and procedural safeguards set out in the EU and Council of Europe Recommendation on SLAPPs.

A model here should be Poland, where last month the President approved a law which covers both domestic and cross-border SLAPPs, ensuring implementation of both EU Directive and Council of Europe Recommendation.

Member States which continue to delay or fail to transpose the directive should face legal action from the Commission, which must use all tools at its disposal to help safeguard media freedom across the bloc.

IPI, which has advocated at the EU and national level for measures to protect journalists and media from SLAPPs, will continue to monitor implementation in collaboration with European partners, including through MFRR media freedom missions.

Source: ipi.media/

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NGO WORK

No Heritage Without its People: Why Ngorongoro Cannot be a World Heritage Site and an Eviction Zone

Published

1 month ago

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July 20, 2026

By

The Tanzanian government, under the guise of “conservation,” restricts Maasai livelihoods and denies access to essential services forcing Indigenous residents away from their ancestral lands and turning their heritage into a playground for safari tourists.

As the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee begins July 19, UNESCO continues to legitimize the continued forced displacement of the Maasai from Ngorongoro. If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians, then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.

Increased international pressure is imperative to hold UNESCO accountable and protect the lives and rights of the Maasai!

Read our Open Letter to the World Heritage Committee.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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