Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
promote further innovation without restricting research through the exercise of rights
conferred by intellectual property. To the extent new traits and varieties involve genetic
engineering, a significant political obstacle constrains development and deployment of
climate resilient crops (Newell-McGloughlin, this volume). Intellectual property rights
are typically justified as an incentive for innovation; it is also possible that governments
can explore options such as prizes and advance marketing commitments.29 Strong intel-
lectual property rights do have externalities: primarily the anti-commons that restricts
access for use and research. The AIDS crisis in Africa demonstrated this point in regard
to pharmaceuticals; in the context of climate change, strong and enforceable intellectual
property claims in plant germplasm could become significant barriers in technology
development, transfer, and diffusion.
Conclusion: The Regime Complex in
Plant Genetic Resources and the Role
of Intellectual Property Rights
The increasing importance of intellectual property rights in accessing, sharing, and
exchanging plant genetic resources—and the politics of challenge and contestation of
these claims—constitutes a salient feature of the global politics of food. Contestation over
intellectual property claims and efforts to minimize their impacts are continuous and
they apply across various forums. One reason is that the global regime for plant genetic
resources has become more complex and less coherent since the early 1980s, in the pro-
cesses analyzed in this entry. The idea of regime complex has been developed by schol-
ars working on international relations and global environmental governance. The idea
is to capture the dynamic overlay and interplay among institutions and actors (includ-
ing states) interacting in different forums (Raustiala and Victor 2004). Evolution of the
regime complex in plant genetic resources has introduced more complexity with overlap-
ping treaties, conventions, and agreements. This institutional and legal outcome offers
scope for both developing nations and developed nations for forum shopping, coalition
building, and use of various multilateral settings to press their agenda. Who has gained
most in the negotiations, how effective have been efforts by developing nations to safe-
guard their interests in the context of the growing importance of intellectual property,
and how effective has been agricultural biodiversity governance in developing nations
given the evolving global regime complex and commitments made under different trea-
ties and conventions is a matter of debate. There are no easy answers to these questions.
Bièvre and Thomann (2010) argue that while developing nations have been able to
secure the adoption of agreements favorable to them in global arenas, these agreements
do not have effective enforcement. In WTO/TRIPS, the enforcement mechanism is
strong, but developed nations have managed to prevent issues that are of importance to
 
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