Dr Kamalesh Adhikari

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (Trans-Pacific Partnership or Partnership) is a major multilateral trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam that entered into force in December 2018. The Partnership, like many other bilateral, regional, and trans-regional trade treaties that have been enacted since the mid-1990s, is polemical, due in large part to its perceived effects on small scale agriculture, native biodiversity, and local and Indigenous peoples. Civil society criticisms have centred especially on how the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s provisions on intellectual property might encourage the privatisation of plants, seeds, and other genetic resources at the expense of customary practices. The present article analyses these provisions, while also discussing the treatment of traditional knowledge in the Partnership, which is relatively progressive in comparison to prior free trade agreements. The article concludes by deriving lessons that civil society activists, local and Indigenous communities, and domestic authorities could derive from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, towards the end of identifying policy space for the protection of traditional knowledge and native biodiversity.

Being concerned about the continuous neglect of landraces by modern and industrial agricultural, seed and intellectual property laws and policies, during the Sixth Scientific Meeting of Landraces and Indigenous Varieties the Thessaloniki Declaration was adopted. As a global call to conserve and sustainably use landraces and to protect the interests of custodian farmers, peasants, indigenous communities and people all over the world, this Declaration represents the views, concerns and voices of the participants of the meeting and various like-minded individuals and institutions, including peasants’ organizations, farmers’ associations, indigenous peoples’ organizations, scientists, academics, developmental practitioners, and governmental and non-governmental organizations from regions all over the world.

Farmers’ Rights formally appeared in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) as a means of recognising the past, present, and future contributions of farmers in conserving, improving, and making available the plant genetic materials that are important for food and agriculture.

Farmers’ Rights formally appeared in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) as a means of recognising the past, present, and future contributions of farmers in conserving, improving, and making available the plant genetic materials that are important for food and agriculture.

(2019) Reimaging the relationship between food sovereignty and intellectual property for plants: Lessons from Ecuador and Nepal. The Journal of World Intellectual Property 22(5-6) 396-418.

(2020) What does it mean to protect farmers’ varieties as intellectual property?. In Kamalesh Adhikari and David J. Jefferson. Intellectual property law and plant protection: challenges and developments in Asia. (pp. 177-205) Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429059520-10

(2020). Policy, politics, and implications of Pakistan’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Act. In Kamalesh Adhikari and David J. Jefferson (Ed), Intellectual property law and plant protection: challenges and developments in Asia. (pp. 104-123) Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429059520-6

(2020). Intellectual property law for plant varieties: challenges and developments in Asia. In Kamalesh Adhikari and David J Jefferson (Ed), Intellectual property law and plant protection: challenges and developments in Asia. (pp. 1-11) Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429059520-1

(2020) From neglect to protection: recognising the importance of farmers’ varieties in Sri Lanka. In Kamalesh Adhikari and David J. Jefferson (Ed),  Intellectual property law and plant protection: challenges and developments in Asia. (pp. 161-176) Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429059520-9