Arun's Ravings: Plant have rights too and so do trees!?

"Right now, property rights of a corporation are superior to health and welfare rights, quality-of-life rights. No community has the ability to stop any destruction of the environment ... What we're advocating is a wholesale paradigm change: that Nature is not just property. I am saying natural communities have an inherent right to exist and flourish,"

A new concept that has entered my mind ever since I started an online course with the World Intellectual Property Rights Org (WIPO) the concept is called “Plant Rights” ^© Arun K. Shanker २००६

ALL VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE MINE AND MINE ALONE IT DOES NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL UNIT (CRIDA HYDERBAD) OF ICAR I AM ASSOCIATED WITH।

जो कुछ यहाँ likha है सब मेरे वीचार हैं इस में क्रीडा और इकार का कुछ लेना देना नही है

Do plants have rights? We are talking about plant var। protection rights and about animal rights। As human beings who exploit the natural wealth for our own benefit we have realized that the animals have rights and we have the moral and ethical responsibility to uphold their rights, but what about plants? Are we protecting the rights of the plants?

One of the important rights of an organism is to have freedom to express its genes. In what direction are we going as plant scientists to uphold this freedom of plants?
What is the benefit sharing agreement we have to accept morally with the plants which gives us innumerable genes that can be used for human and animal welfare. This is all the more important since we assume (or are we really ignorant?) that plant can't think
The truth is that plants have a much more complicated mechanism (biochemcial and molecular at the nano scale , ecological at the macro scale) to protect themselves
Please understand that this concept is not a radical view which says "do not eat vegetables" but it is a moral and ethical view which says that share the benefit and protect the fundamental freedom of plants to express their genes।


Plants constitute over 90% of the world's present and past biomass. Simply in terms of their bulk, whatever we learn about plants has the potential to tip the balance in any debate concerning the frequency of occurrence of a biological phenomenon.Nowhere else in biology than in plants do we find such convincing evidence that physical laws and processes link form and function and thus have confined the scope of organic expression within the boundaries that have never been breached.

Vegetation rights

On Plant Rights

The following poem Baxter Black
Coyote Cowboy Poetry 1986

The Vegetarian's Nightmare
(a dissertation on plants' rights)

Ladies and diners 1 make you
A shameful, degrading confession.
A deed of disgrace in the name of good taste
Though I did it 1 meant no aggression.

1 had planted a garden last April
And lovingly sang it a ballad.
But later in June beneath a full moon
Forgive me, 1 wanted a salad!

So 1 slipped out and fondled a carrot
Caressing its feathery top.
With the force of a brute 1 tore out the root!
It whimpered and came with a pop!

Then laying my hand on a radish
1 jerked and it left a small crater.
Then with the blade of my True Value spade
1 exhumed a slumbering tater!

Celery 1 plucked, 1 twisted a squash!
Tomatoes were wincing in fear.
1 choked the Romaine. It screamed out in pain,
Their anguish was filling my ears!

I finally came to the lettuce
As it cringed at the top of the row
With one wicked slice 1 beheaded it twice
As it writhed, I dealt a death blow.

1 butchered the onions and parsley.
My hoe was all covered with gore.
1 chopped and 1 whacked without looking back
Then 1 stealthily slipped in the door.

My bounty lay naked and dying
So 1 drowned them to snuff out their life.
1 sliced and 1 peeled as they thrashed and they reeled
On the cutting board under my knife.

1 violated tomatoes
So their innards could never survive.
1 grated and ground 'til they made not a sound
Then 1 boiled the tater alive!

Then 1 took the small broken pieces
1 had tortured and killed with my hands
And tossed them together, heedless of whether
They suffered or made their demands.

1 ate them. Forgive me, I'm sorry
But hear me, though I'm a beginner
Those plants feel pain, though it's hard to explain
To someone who eats them for dinner!

1 intend to begin a crusade
For PLANT'S RIGHTS, including chick peas.
The A.C.L.U. will be helping me, too.
In the meantime, please pass the bleu cheese.

Baxter Black
Coyote Cowboy Poetry 1986

The circular square and vicious of course!

One of the questions to be explored (at the workshop) is whether differential pricing is good for everyone - beneficial to the consumer in the poor countries but not be harmful to maintain incentives for innovation.

Some NGOs fear that the pharmaceutical corporations would agree, but on an autonomous basis without any governmental or intergovernmental interventions or supervision, to segment markets and charge differently in different markets, but in return secure what they could not in the Uruguay Round and TRIPS, namely ability to prevent parallel imports in any market.

The pharmaceutical industry was one of the prime forces (the US film and computer software industries were the others) behind the United States drive for the Uruguay Round multilateral trade negotiations and its trade agenda, that resulted in the drawing up of minimum global norms and standards of patent rights under intellectual property protection, and securing of monopoly rights for the patent owners.

A very clever media campaign that dubbed as pirates and counterfeiters all those challenging and differing with the efforts to write global standards, silenced many of the civil society organizations outside, and more so because the actual demands, issues and the course of negotiations were highly secretive and became public only as a fait accompli, with the full implications sinking in only now - as developing countries are finding themselves obliged to implement and disputes have begun to crop up at the WTO (and in the case of South Africa in its domestic courts).

As the poor developing countries battled the rich and powerful, nations of the world in virtually secret talks among a few (developed and developing countries) for nearly 8 long years in the Uruguay Round (UR) negotiations under GATT-auspices, where the influence of the majors and their corporation reigned supreme, and the IMF and the World Bank pressuring the developing world under the banner of free trade, the rest of the international system seemed to stand aside, unable or unwilling to confront the United States and the prevailing economic orthodoxy of neo-mercantalist liberalism..

At the WHO itself, after the departure of Hafdan Mahler as Director-General in the mid-1980s, the viewpoints of the big pharmaceutical corporations got a footing. And only after 1995, the WHO, under Nakajima, began looking at the problem of essential drugs and prices and TRIPS. And when Nakajima was replaced by Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland, she started with the view that health and intellectual property interests were reconcilable and the two organizations could work together. Within WHO, she promoted a round-table with the pharmaceutical industry for drugs to combat Third World health issues.

IPR policy for Public Good orgs

In the context of a widening and deepening university-industry interface, there has been a significant rise in industrial consultancy assignments, contract research, sponsored collaborations, and creation of cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams with university and industry participation.

A prerequisite for a harmonious working relationship between industry and academia is a clear, cogent and transparent framework for ownership of the new or original knowledge for fair sharing of benefits resulting from the commercial or business application of the research results of their joint endeavours. In a close working relationship, the collaborating partners need to freely share their respective knowledge, information and resources. To sustain creativity and innovation in such a working paradigm, using the system of intellectual property rights (IPRs) for fair and equitable sharing of benefits of new or original knowledge is a dire necessity in today's environment. This requires a paradigm shift in the value system of researchers in academic institutions. Only then can they hope to learn the art of maximizing value creation and realize tangible financial benefits from their intellectual assets.

The primary aim of an institutional IPRs policy is to create an enabling environment that recognizes and values creativity and innovation, and simultaneously assists in translating these in an orderly fashion into products, processes and services for the widest public good. Further, it helps to create an ambience that promotes and nurtures the emergence of new ideas, new lines of enquiry and research, scholarship and its practical application for solving technological problems; and this, in turn, promotes the emergence of the leaders and innovators of tomorrow.
In simple terms there are two ways by which economic benefit can
be attained 1. is by reducing costs 2. by increasing selling price. In this example it should
be noted here that there is a distinct difference between the farmer and the consumer ( in
this case any one who buys food from market). ICAR as a part of its mandate or even
fundamental duty should work towards raising the economic status of the farmer. In order
to do this the method to be adopted is only the first line of approach (is by reducing costs
incurred by the farmers) and on the other hand any increase in the selling prince will reflect and be borne by the consumer who also in this case is the taxpayer and by definition and in
principal is a stakeholder of the council. The conflict will arise here if the farmer uses
protected technology there by increasing cost of production (licensing will be forced to
increase selling price) and this cost will be reflected on the selling price and in turn on the
consumer. This will present a scenario wherein the stakeholder will be paying the price
for the technology developed essentially through his/her funded money.
In another more relevant scenario as described below :
1. A scientist of ICAR ( for example a farm machinery and power scientist)
develops a farm implement which is a low cost alternative or a costly method of
sowing or fertilizer application ( again this a hypothetical example)
2. The scientist applies for a patent and gets it
3. Then the council or the organizational unit (OU) ( Institute ) gets the licensing
rights
The OU here sells the license to single manufacturer
The manufacturer sells the fabricated machine (in this case the low cost seed drill or
fertilizer drill) to the farmer at a price which includes the licensing costs
Here again the stakeholder (the farmer in this case) will have to pay for the technology
which has been in principle developed by his /her own indirect funding
The other scenario is the OU sells the license to multiple manufacturers
Then the fabricated machine is sold at a competitive price (A manufacturer at X price and
B manufacturer at Y price etc.,) here we can a see a situation wherein some manufacturer
may compromise with quality to reduce price. In this scenario again the stakeholder
(Farmer) will pay for the technology which ethically he/she should be getting for free and
more so he / she may get a low quality machine
Both the above scenarios presents a situation wherein the stakeholder pays in terms of tax
to the govt which finds it s way as the fund for ICAR and also he/she pays for the
technology which is developed by his /her own funding. In more simple terms: we take
money form X develop a technology with that money and sell the technology back to the
same X
This could actually put us at odds with those for whom research is meant to serve.
In this context I trust I don’t have to go in to the details of the classical example of
mismanagement of public IPR: take-over of Golden Rice by AstraZencea ( I trust you
are fully aware of the details of the case ie Trojan trade reps )
The draft can have some very specific provisions to prevent such situations from
occurring this could be possible done by detailing a course of action when the costs of
handling or maintaining the protected IP surmounts or supersedes the monetary liability
of the org (ICAR) .
Suggestions
1. It would be useful if IPR subsidising can be given to the farmers and efforts can
be made to include this in the green box as genuine research expense which
essentially means that we should be able to subsidise a protected IPR technically
and also lobby in the WTO to get it included in the green box. This I say because
we (INDIA) cannot possibly give subsidies (In fact If I am right we are not close
to the permitted limit which we can actually give that is to say our green box has
still some empty space) as given by the EU and US in terms of money but we can
definitely increase and thereby fill our green box by giving IPR subsidies to the
primary stakeholders. These methods would involve mo monetary liability if the
IPR is generated by the council but whereas in case we buy the IPR and are
committed to forward it to the stakeholders them a difference method can be
worked out. VIRTUAL SUBSIDY
2. A clear cut limit on the basis of monetary liability may be set to the technology
patent and a policy of forced licensing introduced in case the org ( ICAR) sees a
threat of stakeholder conflict or Torjan trade rep situation.
3. What can and should be patented (at least a broad pre patent categorization may
be annexed)
4. A policy can be formulated to decide as to what should be licensed and what
should not be after obtaining of the patent. This way the IP of the inventor is
protected and at the same time ethics and morals of public good is followed ( eg
An inventor of low cost seed drill will get his due IP protection and by not
licensing or by subsidising the license the stakeholder is also protected )