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H2020Individual fellowship2021–2023

MICROB-COM · Microbial Commons: Building a legal instrument for farmers' rights on agricultural microbial resources

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2021-04-15 → 2023-04-14
EU contribution
€224,934
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Microbial Commons: Building a legal instrument for farmers' rights on agricultural microbial resources

The issue being addressed The agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual property rights (TRIPS) allows member states to exclude plants and animal resources, but not microbes, from patenting with an alternate sui-generis system of protection. This can have impact on global food security because microorganisms are of particular importance in agriculture through their roles in nutrient cycling and plant growth promotion. MICROB-COM made a critical evaluation of the appropriateness of the existing patent regime on agricultural microbes and, drawing from developments in International Environmental Law recognising the rights of nature, has explored the need for amendment of existing patent laws on agricultural microbes. Societal Importance New biotechnological innovations, protected by patents, are being employed in agriculture to increase global food production. Increasing penetration of intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes in agriculture has meant that living resources that were earlier perceived to be part of common heritage have been subject to exclusion and privatization. Patents over agricultural microbes can potentially restrict access of farmers to beneficial symbiotic and free-living microorganisms in the soil and impact global food security by making agriculture expensive and non-profitable to smaller farmers. It is therefore important that barriers to easy and economically viable access of microbial resources in sustainable agriculture are addressed on a priority basis. The following objectives were envisaged: • Analysis of the normative implications of the microbial commons for law. • The deficiencies of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the failure to incorporate rights of nature in the context of benefit sharing. • Developing a model microbial rights instrument recognizing intellectual property rights of nature’s ecological processes in the evolution of beneficial traits in agricultural microbes.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Farm management practices have been shown to drive the evolution of specific consortia of agricultural microbial resources that contribute to increased agricultural productivity. The ecological traits of agricultural micro-organisms have made them an important target for patenting. Farmers' rights are an outcome of the recognition of the role of farmer communities in the evolution of crop varieties. Indigenous farmers have acted as selection agents in the development of crop as well as agricultural microbial resources by increasing reproductive fitness of particular genotypes. However, unlike with crop selection, no formal recognition of farmers' rights or potential benefit sharing programme has been proposed for agricultural micro-organisms that evolved from farming regimes. The central thesis that this project seeks to prove is that multilateral trade and environmental agreements have failed in protecting the rights of indigenous farmers for their intellectual contribution in selection of beneficial agricultural biodiversity. The coming into force of TRIPS agreement and the Convention on Biological diversity has concretized the patenting regime of micro-organisms. In the absence of effective international and national legal enforcement, benefits are shared through mutually agreed contract arrangements which are invariably skewed against indigenous farmers. A commons approach to micro-organisms has potential to align farmers' rights on agricultural microbial resources with legal instruments developed for plant genetic resource collections. Microbial commons is conceptualized and builds on other work that is done in the areas of genetic resource commons and networked information commons in digitized environments in the field of genetic resources. This project aims to analyse deficiencies and barriers in multilateral agreements and develop a legal instrument for the incorporation of a commons regime for sharing of benefits from agricultural micro-organisms.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union