Rosemary Coombe and David Jefferson
Much socio-legal research on intellectual property in relation to food and agriculture focuses on the influence of global policy norms on domestic law-making and the expansion of new international trade opportunities for small-scale producers. Other studies have examined controversies and contestations around government actors claiming foods as manifestations of their national heritage. We depart from both mainstream analytical approaches, employing perspectives from legal anthropology on how ‘policy travels’ to consider new articulations of human rights and sustainability objectives. We evaluate and synthesise a growing body of ethnographic research (much of it done by and with international NGOs) that explores how Indigenous, ethnic minority, and other communities living in rural areas in the Global South articulate proprietary claims over seeds, crops, agricultural methods, and culinary knowledge as important forms of biocultural heritage in socioecological initiatives. These novel proprietary claims, exist inside, outside, and often alongside conventional intellectual property vehicles. Influenced by environmental development NGOs, farmers’ movements, and food sovereignty aspirations, communities assert biocultural rights norms to identify goods derived from collective territorial enterprise. Drawing from earlier research focused on Andean Community member states, we now consider examples from China, the Philippines, and Nepal of how biocultural heritage territories are designated, agroecology principles are asserted, biocultural goods are made and marketed, and agritourism initiatives promoted. Together, these examples demonstrate interlinkages between Andean and Asian communities as global policy norms of biodiversity conservation, traditional knowledge protection, climate change mitigation, and food security and sovereignty are interpreted through articulations of collective rights to heritage.
Presented in collaboration with ISHTIP.
