Traditional Knowledge Bulletin

Call for nominations for Members of the Permanent Forum 2011-2013
SPFII, 16 July 2009

The current membership of the Permanent Forum is due to expire at the end of 2010. Nominations are now requested for the three-year period from January 2011 until December 2013 from the Forum’s seven socio-cultural regions: Africa; Asia; Central and South America and the Caribbean; the Arctic; Eastern Europe, Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia; North America; and the Pacific. According to the rotation practice, Latin America will have an extra member for the 2011-2013 term. All correspondence should be sent to the UNPFII Secretariat. The deadline for submission of nominations is 1 February 2010. Further information …

Sixth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Article 8(j) and Related Provisions, Montreal, Canada, 2-6 November 2009
CBD notification, 6 July 2009

Eighth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing, Montreal, Canada, 9-15 November 2009
CBD notification, 6 July 2009

Indigenous and local community organizations wishing to participate in the sixth meeting of the CBD Working Group on Article 8(j) and the eighth meeting of the Working Group on ABS are invited to nominate a representative to attend by no later than 15 September 2009.

Indigenous and local communities representatives wishing to receive funding from the Voluntary Trust Fund to facilitate their participation in the meeting are invited to submit their application forms to the CBD Secretariat no later than 3 August 2009, together with a recent CV and an official letter of recommendation from the relevant organization. Download the CBD notification on the Working Group on Article 8(j) containing further information [pdf] … Download the CBD notification on the Working Group on ABS [pdf] … Download the application form for the Voluntary Trust Fund in all UN languages …

Conference May Boost WIPO Mandate on Food Security, Public Health
IP Watch, 15 July 2009

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: The WIPO Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues, held on 13-14 July 2009, heard comments on the role of TK for public health by several speakers. The “African renaissance can only be borne on the role of indigenous knowledge systems,” said Yonah Seleti, director general of South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology. Indigenous people “have enormous economic and social potential” in their knowledge, but the current intellectual property system fails to protect it, he said, highlighting his office’s “farmer to pharma challenge,” which is intended to unlock the value in biodiversity and traditional medicines. Collaborative research between traditional knowledge and modern medicine can yield great public health benefits, but IP agreements must find ways to protect traditional knowledge. Misappropriation of traditional knowledge must be stopped, said Vinod Kumar Gupta, head of the Information Technology Division at the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in India. To that end, the TKDL is cataloguing traditional knowledge in a patent-like format so that it is easier to identify as prior art, and has made the database available for patent examiners of the European Patent Office, while a similar agreement is expected soon with the US patent office. Read the article …

RPT-Want to predict the weather? Watch the dragonflies
Reuters, 16 July 2009

HANOI, VIETNAM: Many communities in Vietnam still predict floods, storms and drought the traditional way – by tracking nature. For example, in a drought-prone area of the coastal Ninh Thuan province, farmers believe that if the dragonfly flies high it will be sunny and if it flies low there will be rain. Many of these beliefs, which are kept alive through proverbs, folk songs and legends and which have so far been passed down orally, are now being recorded by a group of aid agencies as part of a project to see whether they still hold true in times of rapid climate change. For the next two months, a group of agencies led by Development Workshop France will visit 10 disaster-prone areas to collect information about traditional beliefs in the hope it could be used in programmes to reduce the risk of natural disasters. The idea of using local knowledge to create better ways to adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of natural disasters is slowly gaining ground as experts, scientists and aid workers scramble to find ways of predicting and dealing with the threat. Read the article …

Peru’s patent win strikes blow against biopiracy
SciDev.net, 17 July 2009

LIMA, PERU: Over the past few months, the Peruvian National Commission Against Biopiracy has shown authorities from France, Japan, Korea and the United States that products submitted for patents were developed using the traditional knowledge of Peruvian people. The products lacked the innovation and inventiveness required for patents. “This is a good example of how coordinated action between the state, the business sector and civil society can prevent inappropriately granted patents related to genetic resources and traditional knowledge,” Andrés Valladolid, technical coordinator at the commission, told SciDev.Net. The products are derived from Lepidium meyenii, Plukenetia volubilis Linneo and Myrciaria dubia – three plants well known among indigenous Peruvian populations for their medicinal properties. Read the article …

Enola Patent Ruled Invalid: Haven’t we Bean here before?
ETC Group news release, 14 July 2009

OTTAWA, CANADA: On 10 July 2009, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that U.S. patent 5,894,079 (the “Enola” bean patent), which claims a yellow bean of Mexican origin, is invalid because none of the patent claims meet the criterion of non-obviousness. It is recalled that the patent was first challenged in 2000, as the “Enola” bean was similar to a bean developed by farmers and widely known and used  in Latin America. The Court’s 7-page decision argues that anyone interested in reproducing or improving Mexican yellow beans would have done exactly what the “inventor” Larry Proctor did: “plant the beans, harvest the resulting plants for their seeds, planting the latter seeds, and repeat the process two more times.” “What makes absolutely no sense is that an invalid patent was allowed to stand for more than a decade – that’s half the lifespan of a patent!” argues Kathy Jo Wetter of ETC Group. “Furthermore, although farmers and seed companies on both sides of the border have been denied lucrative markets for ten years, they will not be compensated.” Read the news release … Download the decision [pdf] …

Every Queensland state school to teach indigenous culture
News.com.au, 16 July 2009

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA: Every state school in Queensland will teach indigenous culture in a radical plan to reduce the education gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Indigenous educators say the plan represents “a seismic shift” within the Queensland Education Department and offers new hope for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Read the article …

International Day of the World’s Indigenous People
10 August 2009 (UN Headquarters, New York, USA)

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous People will be observed at the UN Headquarters on Monday, 10 August from 2-5 pm. It is organized by the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in cooperation with the NGO Committee on the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and the New York office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The theme of the observance at UN Headquarters will be indigenous peoples and HIV/AIDS. Seats are limited; those wishing to attend are required to register by 31 July 2009 by sending an e-mail with full name at: indigenous_un [at] un.org. Further information …