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India presses for protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge at BRICS CGETI
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
March 18 , 2021
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India has put forth a cooperation framework for protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. In the wake of an aggressive effort to encourage traditional medicine knowledge for the treatment of Covid-19, the country has several instances where the science of Ayurveda was adopted both as a preventive and therapeutic intervention during this ongoing pandemic. In the area of plant genetics too, India sees that this area too is of considerable economic and social value.
At the recently concluded 15th edition of the BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI) under the chairmanship of India from March 9 to March 11, 2021, India had requested for waiver for all WTO (World Trade Organisation) members on certain provisions of copyrights, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information in the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement for prevention, containment and treatment of Covid-19.
“We must protect our traditional knowledge rather than reinventing the wheel. It has been observed that we have evidence based information in our traditional science. Unfortunately they are not archived, which raised certain controversies. We must try to retrieve them and bring them back to the mainstream,” Prof Bejon Kumar Misra, founder, Patient Safety and Access and founder, Mahamana Declaration on Ayurveda told Pharmabiz.
On a similar note was Dr DBA Narayana, chief scientific officer, Ayurvide Trust, who said, “Protection of traditional knowledge and inventive steps over and above that documented ones needs to be given protection. This has been the demand of the sector and scientists. India's leadership has been demonstrated by the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). Other nations in the BRICS can pick up the models of protecting yet promoting innovation for the good of their people. Lot more work is to be done in this area and the BRICS discussion are in the right direction.”
The 3-day BRICS event focused on priority areas for deliverables, schedule and scope of the micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This is because this segment of the industry is the backbone for every country’ economic growth. MSMEs are known to enable both export led growth and employment generation.
An official statement from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said that each of the sessions was then followed by detailed feedback sessions. At the BRICS event, India and South Africa, supported by the 57 WTO members, sought a temporary waiver of global intellectual property pacts to ensure uninterrupted flow of vaccines amid the ongoing pandemic.
Viewing that the IPRs (intellectual property rights) for Covid-19 vaccines like for instance Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna’s were seen as a bottleneck for access by the developing world, India has been calling to forsake the IPR aspect at the WTO meet held in December 2020.
In addition, the deliverables proposed are on BRICS Cooperation on Multilateral Trading System including cooperation for the TRIPS waiver proposal at WTO, Framework for Consumer Protection in E commerce, Non Tariff Measures Resolution Mechanism, Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary working mechanism, cooperation framework for protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge and BRICS framework on Cooperation in Professional Services.
The action plan is based on the document strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2025 adopted during the Russian presidency in 2021 in another deliverable proposed. Between March and September 2021, inter-sessional deliberations will be conducted to arrive at a consensus among the BRICS countries.
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