In short, the CBD is the privatization of biodiversity.
According to this treaty, all biodiversity is owned by someone; sometimes nations and sometimes privately. One thing for sure, the CBD is coming, and for the moment it’s not likely anyone can stop it.
The CBD caught a lot of us in the seed movement by surprise. It’s been underway for probably 30 or more years, and no secret, but most of us doubted it had anything to do with what we were working on. International treaties are always hard to just read and understand, and most of them have underlying intentions that aren’t always made clear. This treaty is no exception.
I’m no lawyer, and I’m not even writing this post with a copy of the treaty for reference, so it’s possible there are technical errors or omissions here. The purpose of this post is just to give an over all idea of what’s going on.
Parties
All UN member nations are a party to this treaty except the United States and the Vatican. The US is always reluctant to be legally bound by international treaties, and says it believes domestic law offers them the same protection.
This makes it one of the most universally accepted treaties in the world. It also creates an interesting situation in the US.
A great deal of this treaty is based on written agreements between parties, and since these are generally enforcible everywhere, even people in the US are going to feel the impact of this treaty.
Global Seed Vault at Svalbard
For decades now, using the CBD sister treaty, The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the genetic resources for agriculture have been stolen from around the world and stored at Svalbard. Now they are to be sold back to us using the CBD.
The costs of running a seed vault like Svalbard should not be underestimated. Stocks need to be maintained for distribution, and periodically all genetic resources need to be regrown or they will die in storage. As they are regrown, they need to be well isolated and kept genetically pure. History is full of projects like Svalbard, that once started could not raise sufficient funds to keep the genetic resources alive. In fact, there are not really many examples of successful long term genetic resource storage.
There is every reason to believe that Svalbard will eventually fail, and in fact they have recently been involved in large scale fund raising efforts. The global system for storing our genetic resources is apparently currently in the process of failing, slowly, not catastrophically.
The global system for storing genetic resources was supposed to be funded by it’s users. In practice that’s not happening. Industrial users of genetic resources are supposed to return a percentage of their profits, but the rate of this happening is very low.
Users of genetic resources that employ intellectual property rights are supposed to pay back a percentage of these profits, but the system of patenting seeds is in disarray now, and it’s unlikely to be benefiting Svalbard or genetic conservation to any great extent.
The Nagoya Protocol
One of the most unworkable parts of the CBD is the Nagoya Protocol. About half the nations who are a party to the main CBD treaty, are also a party to this protocol.
This protocol basically says for all species related to food, someone owns all the genes in all species.
Under this protocol, a seed company can continue to operate as they do now, but only if the customer buying the seeds doesn’t use them for ‘purposes of biodiversity’. In other words, seeds cannot be saved from the resulting plants and they can’t be used in breeding projects.
Otherwise, when not just seeds are at issue, but also biodiversity, transfer of the seeds generally has to take place on the basis of a contract. This contract can say almost anything, and writing these contracts is a big and expensive legal undertaking. Among other things, these contracts can specify restrictions and mandate royalties.
Over time as the seeds get sold, resold, and used for breeding projects, these contracts accumulate. Restrictions always remain and accumulate, and royalties get divided into smaller and smaller slices, and distributed to more and more people.
In fact, the administration of these contracts is so complex, it’s not really realistic for a single person to manage it themselves. In general you have to think in terms of cooperatives or other organizations managing the business and administrative aspects.
In case you might be dismissive about the Nagoya Protocol, and just ignore all the administration, the treaty has a surprise waiting for you. The treaty specifies the member states shall assess ‘sufficient penalties to ensure compliance’. In other words, if you don’t do the paperwork correctly, your national government must apply increasing penalties — even incarceration, limited only by the constitutionality of those penalties — until you get it right.
The Backers
Who’s behind the CBD and ITPGRFA?
The visible parties are mostly social studies related academics. This might sound a little strange, as many of us even with university degrees may have never have even taken a social studies class. I’m going to go a little deeper into this in other posts, but basically these are people who’s job it is to both study past societies and design future societies. A lot of the activity for these treaties comes out of The International Institute for Social Studies in The Hague (https://www.iss.nl/), and related people in Rome.
Behind the academics however are the wealthy and powerful families of the US and Europe, with unlimited funds — the 1%. For example Amy Goldman of the Goldman-Sax family is a prominent figure associated with the American Seed Savers Exchange and Svalbard, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation helped fund Svalbard, the Rockefeller foundation is deeply involved in many direct and indirect ways. There are many other wealthy families involved, also many European families.
What Can We Do?
This is a complicated question, and it depends a bit on how connected you are to biodiversity and where you live. This is probably going to be a topic of discussion for a long time.
There are a number of holes and weaknesses in these treaties, and different countries are parties to different parts of it. For example, people in the US may be in a position to undermine some parts of the treaty by supplying genetic material to people in other places. Many countries are not a party to the Nagoya Protocol and might find themselves in a similar position.
If you are the holder of a major collection of biodiversity, you may be able to do something creative by licensing it’s use. European seed saving organizations Arche Noah and Kokopelli have taken very different but clever approaches.
If you’re just a consumer, keep in mind the whole premise of these treaties is that biodiversity is precious, which it is, and something people will pay a lot of money for, which I find doubtful. As a consumer, keep your wits about you and think about what you’re paying for. In Europe, certified organic isn’t what it used to be, and maybe isn’t so interesting anymore. Don’t pay unnecessarily for your food, and try to buy as directly as possible from the source.
Everyone could benefit by educating themselves on fake news, and how the wealthy classes control people.
I don’t pretend all social studies people are bad, but many are at least a little suspect. Don’t be so quick to believe the things they say, and consider they are often the source of fake news of the wealthy classes.
