Biodiversity Board to provide legal protection to traditional knowledge

To document and register the Indian traditional knowledge on biodiversity and to provide legal protection to the bio-resources, the Karnataka Biodiversity Board (KBB) will conduct a workshop on bio-resources in Udupi on February 9-10.

Addressing presspersons in Mangaluru on Monday, MD Subhashchandran, Member of KBB and in-charge of district-level access and benefit sharing workshops, said that the National Biodiversity Authority came out with access and benefit sharing notification on November 21, 2014.

Guidelines The notification clearly stipulated mechanism of obtaining legal permission for accessing biodiversity for commercial purposes. The notification also fixed rates of payments for sharing benefits with the local traditional knowledge holders on biodiversity, village forest committees, adivasis etc under the mediation of the authority and the State biodiversity boards.

Subhashchandran said the challenge is to document and register vast traditional knowledge on biodiversity and regulate the access to traditional knowledge and bio-resources by traders, corporate companies and contractors.

Bio-piracy He said the medical formulations from the traditional Indian medicinal plant ‘sarpagandhi’ (Rauwolfia serpentina) were granted patent rights in the US in 1959 without any financial returns to the traditional knowledge holders in India.

Many cases relating to the bio-piracy of Indian medicinal plants such as ‘amrithavalli’ (Tinospora cordifolia) , ‘kokum’ (Garcinia indica) , ‘uppage’ (Garcinia cambogia) , and ‘bilva’ (Aegle marmelos) were followed, he said.

The latest in the list of plants under exploitation is a once widespread Nothopegia nimmoniana , a small tree from Western Ghats region. The wood of this plant is in high demand in the US, Japan and Spain for the extraction of an alkaloid used in the preparation of a cancer drug. This tree is disappearing rapidly from the Western Ghats.

Subhashchandran said the collectors of this tree from forest are paid a small amount of ₹10-20 a kg, and the wood is exported at the rate of $1,500 a kg. He said the market price for a gram of drug made from the alkaloids from this plant is phenomenal.

Awareness drive The Udupi workshop will create awareness on the Biodiversity Act 2002, biodiversity rules, and access and benefit sharing mechanism on bio-resources, and will take steps to protect traditional knowledge for providing legal protection to the same.

The board conducted such a workshop in Uttara Kannada district recently. Around 60 participants recorded their traditional knowledge in that workshop, he added.