The Politics of Genetic Resource Control

The question of how genetic resources ought to be owned and controlled has become a highly contested international political issue. The authors examine this issue from a normative perspective, assessing the four main principles that govern this controversial debate. The first principle, proprietarian intellectual property rights (IPRs), is based on the proprietarian/authorship ethic which replicates the individualistic assumptions of Western legal discourse. The second principle, communitarian IPRs, defends the rights of indigenous communities to own the genetic resources located within their traditional habitats. The third principle, national sovereignty, asserts that nation states have sovereign rights over all the natural resources lying within their territory. The fourth principle, the common heritage of mankind, reflects the Third World's claim that humanity as a whole has a right to share in the natural resources of the world. The authors challenge the dominant proprietarian ethic and adopt an intrumental approach which safeguards the autonomy of traditional communities and balances the sovereign rights of states with the wider interests of humanity as a whole. The book will be of interest to researchers in enviromental politics, development studies and political theory as well as to practitioners and policy-makers around the world in governments, nongovernmental organizations and pressure groups.