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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Potato Capital of the World Offers Up New Recipe
  • Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 22:18:17 -0700

Potato Capital of the World Offers Up New Recipe
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27069
Sanjay Suri Inter Press Service

Peru gave the world the potato, and the potato now
offers indigenous people around the world a new recipe
for securing their rights.

LONDON, Jan 18 (IPS) - Peru gave the world the potato,
and the potato now offers indigenous people around the
world a new recipe for securing their rights.

A new agreement between six indigenous communities and
the International Potato Centre in Cusco, Peru, heart
of the old Inca civilisation in the Andes mountains of
Latin America, recognises the right of these
communities over the unique potato strains that they
have developed and grown.

"No, this does not mean that these communities will now
procure patents over these varieties of potato,"
Alejandro Argumedo, associate director of the
Association for Nature and Sustainable Development
(ANDES), a Cusco-based civil society group led by
indigenous peoples, told IPS.

"These indigenous people are against patents," Argumedo
explained. "They represent a model of property that
does not fit into their worldview. Indigenous people
are used to exchanging and sharing information in open
ways. But this means a legal agreement that no one else
can claim intellectual property rights over their
knowledge."

The implications can be far-reaching, Argumedo said.
Whether it is varieties of corn in Mexico or basmati
rice in India, the agreement over these potatoes "is a
first legal sign of the restoration of rights that
indigenous people once had."

Peru would of course use potatoes to break new ground;
it is the official centre of the world of potatoes.

"Potatoes are important for us as food but also as a
cultural symbol," Argumedo said. "We have co-evolved
with potatoes. Peru gave the potato to the world, they
are so important in marriage and religious ceremonies.
They mean so much in Andean culture and iconography
that goes back thousands of years."

The Andes region in and around Peru has more than 2,000
varieties of potato, among more than 4,000 varieties
around the world. A potato park in Cusco produces about
700 varieties of potato.

ANDES helped broker the agreement with the
International Potato Centre, one of 15 consultative
groups for international agricultural research centres
responsible for the world's largest agro-biodiversity
gene bank collections.

The eminent reputation of the centre gives strong
international weight to the agreement. Although it does
not involve a government, it is legal under Peruvian
law.

The new agreement "means that Andean communities can
unlock the potato gene bank and repatriate biological
diversity to farming communities and the natural
environment for local and global benefit," ANDES said
in a statement Tuesday.

Though excluded and often oppressed, indigenous peoples
are the traditional custodians of biodiversity, and
this agreement recognises that "the conservation,
sustainable use and development of maximum agro-
biodiversity is of vital importance in order to improve
the nutrition, health and other needs of the growing
global population," ANDES says.

Several policy analysts and civil society campaigners
are preparing to push for similar initiatives at a
meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity to be
held in Bangkok next month, and at a World Intellectual
Property Organisation meeting to be held in Geneva in
June.

The new agreement, called the "agreement on the
repatriation, restoration and monitoring of agro-
biodivisity of native potatoes and associated community
knowledge systems", will challenge the trend of
"privatising genetic resources and indigenous knowledge
which has seen seed gene banks swallowed up by
unaccountable research bodies and corporations,
threatening local livelihoods and cultural ways of
life," ANDES said in its statement.

ANDES campaigned for the agreement with considerable
support from the London-based International Institute
for Environment and Development (IIED) and the
government of the Netherlands.

"Civil society groups, particularly those led by
indigenous peoples, should not be dictated to, but they
do need greater support from the rich countries," Dr
Michel Pimbert, director of the sustainable agriculture
and rural livelihoods programme at IIED, said in a
statement.

"Groundbreaking agreements, like this example in Peru,
require negotiation with all parties on an equal
footing," he said, "which means boosting the capacity
of local indigenous communities to argue their case for
access to the genetic resources they helped develop in
the first place."

http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27069





  • [Livingontheland] Potato Capital of the World Offers Up New Recipe, Tradingpost, 01/21/2005

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