Intellectual Property Rights and Agro-biodiversity

Agrobiodiversity is the backbone of a nation's food security and the basis of economic development as a whole. The Intellectual Property Rights (JPR) regime is encouraging commercialization of seed development, monoculture, protection of new plant varieties, microorganisms, and genetically modified organisms. As a consequence, our rich biological diversity is being eroded irreversibly. This paper seeks to analyze the impacts of the international legal framework for the promotion of intellectual property rights on India's legal regime concerning the control over biological resources and inventions derived from biological resources. The paper analyses these enactments in the context of the move towards the control of biological resources and derived products through property rights. It also focuses on the issue of control over biological resources and derived products and seeks to provide a broader analysis of the changing international legal framework and its impacts on national law and policy-making concerning the management of biological resources. There was strong support for CBO and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from such use. TRIPS agreement of WTO vs CBO and genderimplication of TRIPS was discussed. In addition, contribution of traditional knowledgeandpractices of local and indigenous communities for conservation was also emphasized for the effective maintenance of such knowledge systems.