Planting the Commons: Towards redesigning an equitable seed exchange
(2016) International Workshop “The Commons, Plant Breeding and Agricultural Research” — Location: Maison Française d’Oxford, Oxford University (30.September.2016)
Files
FRISON-GlobalSeedCommons-MFO-Sept20162.pptx
Open Access - Microsoft Powerpoint XML
- 11.14 MB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- The overall goals of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture are food security and sustainable agriculture. The Treaty entered into force in 2004 and rules on the conservation, sustainable use, and access and benefit-sharing of seeds for food and agriculture. Due to the “special nature” of plant genetic resource for food and agriculture, Contracting Parties to the Treaty consider seed management as a “common concern of all countries”, which necessitates a multilateral regime approach. To this end, they created the multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing of the Treaty. This paper summarizes a doctoral research on the analysis of the common management system of seeds within the Treaty in order to evaluate how the Treaty reaches its set objectives, using the theory of the commons. The study is conducted at two levels: a legal and a stakeholder analysis of the Treaty and of its implementation instruments, leading to the identification of conceptual constraints to an effective implementation. Following this double reading of the Treaty, the research results are analyzed in light of the theory of the commons, with the aim to assess if and how the literature on the commons can contribute to help Contracting Parties reach the overall goals of the Treaty: i.e. food security and sustainable agriculture by improving what has been qualified as a Global Seed Commons. Two main outputs are put forward. The Treaty lies on a dual discourse where there is a clear will to design an effective global seed commons where seeds would be accessible for all its stakeholders, including smallholder farmers, in order to reach food security and sustainable agriculture, but where practice shows that the seed commons is only effective for researchers and breeders. There is a clear contradiction within the Treaty’s objectives and obligations, in particular regarding the limited recognition of Farmers’ Rights at the international level. Doing so, the Treaty is not able to reach its objectives, and does not mitigate the imbalance of rights opposing smallholder farmers and big agro-chemical multinationals on the issue of the appropriation of seeds and their related knowledge. Building on these results, I identify specific underlying principles from the analysis of the global seed commons, which I believe should be better applied in order to mitigate the identified conceptual constraints and contribute to the realization of the Treaty’s overall goals. I plea for a deeper and true global seed commons for all its stakeholders in order to face major social challenges such as producing sufficient and quality food in times of climate changes and persisting world hunger and poverty.
- Affiliations
Citations
Frison, C. (2016). Planting the Commons: Towards redesigning an equitable seed exchange. International Workshop “The Commons, Plant Breeding and Agricultural Research”, Maison Française d’Oxford, Oxford University. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/65085