Native peoples call for an end to the sell-out of their resources and their knowledge

More than 120 representatives of native peoples from all over the world will call for an end to the sell-out of the rights of indigenous peoples at the 9th Conference of the Signatory States to the Convention on Biological Diversity which begins on Monday in Bonn. This was announced on Thursday by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Göttingen in the presentation of a new human rights report on biological diversity and indigenous peoples. In the discussion on an effective protection of species it is barely known that the survival of about 370 million native peoples is seriously threatened by the loss of diversity of species, said the human rights organisation in the 37-page report.

The Conference on Biodiversity, at which 188 signatory states will be taking part, offers the chance of effective protection of the rights of more than 5000 indigenous communities in 75 states. Not only the effects of the climate change and the destruction of the rain-forests are threatening the diversity of species and the survival of millions of native peoples. The efforts of pharmaceutical companies and large agro-industrial enterprises to make use in the form of patents of traditional knowledge and procedures which are medically utilisable are seen as a grave infringement on their cultures by indigenous peoples. For the native peoples are not asked beforehand, nor do they have any possibility of regress, nor are they given any fair share of the profits made in this way.

An increasing number of indigenous peoples fail to see why for generations knowledge passed on can be used only by strangers and they view this behaviour of the large companies as bio-piracy. The native peoples call emphatically for more effective protection of biological diversity and of their traditional knowledge. So they are demanding that biological resources may only be used if the native peoples who live from them give their prior consent. It is only in this way that undesired research and one-sided economic use of the traditional knowledge and medicinal plants of indigenous peoples can be prevented. This is important to prevent predatory cultivation of biological resources, which is all too often the immediate result of the scientific research into these plants.

Indigenous peoples are increasingly trying to take legal measures against bio-piracy. However it is only in a fraction of cases that they have managed to secure their rights effectively. So they are now waiting agog on the World Conference on the Protection of Nature, which offers the chance of ending this predatory cultivation and securing the survival of indigenous peoples.