Poor nations urged to protect traditional knowledge

Kenya should develop laws which ensure traditional knowledge held by various ethnic groups benefits them first even when that knowledge is commercialised, experts now say.

“Control of bio-diversity should be based on communities. The benefits which come with traditional knowledge should benefit the community first before it serves commercial interests,” Marsden Momanyi, the spokesperson of African Technology Policy Studies Network.

In the current arrangement the person or company that patents the knowledge takes all the commercial gains.

The new calls comes in the wake of revelations that the UN agency responsible for safeguarding the rights of communities to benefit from intellectual property is encouraging a model that suits commercial interests.

In Kenya, like most African countries, traditional knowledge belongs to the ethnic group and was shared freely to ensure that it benefited all.

For instance, knowledge of what plants have medicinal value was not confined to one person. But if a drug manufacturer stumbles upon such knowledge and patents the formula, he takes all the monetary benefits.

New research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) warns that communities the world over risk losing control over their traditional knowledge because World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) insists on using existing intellectual property standards for managing access to the information.

The report says the model of safeguarding intellectual property rights advocated by WIPO “is a flawed approach as has been created on Western commercial lines,” said IIED’s Krystyna Swiderska who co-ordinated the research in Kenya and several Asia and Latin America countries.

The report says that traditional communities tend to protect knowledge and resources in entirely the opposite way, meaning that ideas and life-forms cannot be privatised and that access to them remains non-exclusive.

This ensures access to knowledge held by others which is essential for survival in often harsh environments.

The report warns that the loss of such customary approaches would lead to a lack of biological diversity and traditional knowledge which would limit the abilities of poor communities to adapt to climate change through, for instance, sharing climate-resilient plant varieties.

The research was conducted in India, China, Panama, Peru and Kenya, which stressed that ancestral rights to control knowledge cannot be extinguished, even if knowledge has been shared with others, because of its vital role in survival and identity.

In Kenya, the study was conducted among the Masai and the Mijikenda ethnic groups.

The findings are in line with concerns by local herbal medicine practitioners who told Business Daily that fear of theft of traditional knowledge is restricting them from disclosing their findings some of which could end up treating and successfully managing life threatening diseases.

The failure to come up with a way of assuring the practitioners that their knowledge will not be stolen, patented and end up benefiting only one person or company has also meant delay in integration of traditional and conventional medicine in provision of primary health care.

Kenya currently does not have a mechanism that would enable an inventor of traditional medicine to be rewarded, and the practitioners say the process of patenting their findings, then monitoring their use is tedious.

Medical practitioners and researchers involved in chemical analysis of traditional medicine at the University of Nairobi and Kenya Medical Research institute (Kemri) say that time is running out and the country needs a traditional medicine policy immediately.

The closest Kenya has come to initiating the process of compensation for traditional knowledge is through the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) regulations.

Genetic resources
They give licensing procedures to those planning to carry out activities involving access to genetic resources for the purposes of research, bio-prospecting, conservation, industrial application and commercial use. It however fails to define how benefit sharing should be carried out.

Although the UN Convention on Biological Diversity requires member countries to equitably share benefits from the use of genetic resources and related knowledge, the convention has no legally binding rules to manage access to biological resources and traditional knowledge 20 years after it was created.

This delay, researchers say, is accelerating the loss of bio-diversity and the unfair commercial exploitation of knowledge and genetic resources long protected by traditional communities.

“Intellectual property rights have been developed to suit commercial interests,” says Swiderska.

“Holders of traditional knowledge, who tend to be poor and marginalised, also deserve tailored rights, which should be based on customary laws and developed closely with the knowledge holders.”

According to Mr Momanyi, African countries should develop their own set of rules within the UN system which will protect the communities from being exploited by the multinational drugs companies or other entities because of the existing loopholes.