"Many factors affect the conservation of biodiversity, including demographic changes, technological developments, national agricultural policies, and economic, social, and cultural factors. Institutional aspects related to property rights and collective action play a key role in local plant genetic conservation outcomes... Policymakers should be aware of the links between property rights, collective action, and local conservation of local plant genetic diversity. It is important to take into account local regulatory frameworks as well as the existence and overlap of multiple legal systems, try to build on these, and avoid policies that might in fact reduce access to genetic diversity for local populations, in order to avoid eroding genetic diversity and increasing the vulnerability of the poor." from Text.Poverty alleviation ,Property rights ,Collective action ,

Dennis, Evan

Di Gregorio, Monica

Eyzaguirre, Pablo

McCarthy, Nancy

English

Research Papers in Economics

FOCUS 11  •  BRIEF 10 OF 16  •  FEBRUARY 2004
COLLECTIVE ACTION AND PROPERTY RIGHTS
FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Property Rights, Collective Action, and Plant Genetic Resources
PABLO EYZAGUIRRE,N ANCY MCCARTHY,M ONICA DI GREGORIO,AND EVAN DENNIS
G
enetic resources are the genetic material in plants and
animals that determine useful traits that people can
conserve, characterize, evaluate, and use to meet their needs.
These resources are not simply the genes encoded in DNA,
but particular expressions of the genes that farmers, scientists,
and plant breeders have recognized and selected. Research has
estimated that the value of increases in crop yields derived
from new genes and genetic modification since 1945 has
amounted to about US$115 billion a year worldwide.
Conservation of genetic resources contributes to plant
genetic diversity, which includes both the combination of
species that constitutes an ecosystem (genetic diversity across
species), as well as the number of different varieties within a
species. Development agencies, researchers, and policymakers
are growing increasingly concerned about the consequences of
the current erosion of genetic diversity.The 1997 FAO (Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) synthesis
of around 150 country reports states that nearly all countries
report that crop genetic erosion is taking place and that it is a
serious problem. Loss of biodiversity in cultivated and wild
species can increase plants’ vulnerability to insect pests and
diseases, worsen nutrition through declines in the variety of
foods available, reduce the capacity of plant resources to adapt
to changing conditions, and lead to loss of local knowledge
about diversity.These effects can in turn reduce food security,
threaten the sustainability of agricultural production systems,
and jeopardize the livelihoods of rural communities today and
for generations to come.
Many factors affect the conservation of biodiversity,
including demographic changes, technological developments,
national agricultural policies, and economic, social, and cultural
factors. Institutional aspects related to property rights and
collective action play a key role in local plant genetic conserva-
tion outcomes.
PROPERTY RIGHTS TO LAND-BASED RESOURCES
Land and water are crucial “partner resources” needed for the
conservation of genetic resources. In particular land tenure
and water rights are likely to affect in situ conservation (that
is, conservation in natural surroundings, where plants have
developed their distinctive properties) for a variety of reasons:
•  The type and strength of property rights arrangements
affect farmers’ time horizon and investment choices and,
as a consequence, crop diversity.
•  Stronger land use and management rights for farmers can
increase their ability to grow a variety of crops.Where
farmers’ investments are crop specific, however, security
of property rights might lead to less-diversified cropping
patterns.
•  Property rights, together with available genetic resources,
affect people’s capacity to manage variability and risk.
Many traditional communities present “patchwork land-
scapes” with various ecological niches that favor the use
of unique varieties and plant types adapted to those
niches. High genetic diversity reduces risk, and access to a
diverse pool of plant genetic resources improves the long-
term resilience of the agricultural production system in
the face of adverse shocks like drought.
Formal property rights (“laws on the books”) often coexist
with and differ from locally exercised property rights.The
existence of different overlapping arrangements and regulatory
frameworks (legal pluralism) must be taken into account in
order to assess their effects on biodiversity conservation.For
example,in Ethiopia sacred groves managed by the Christian
Coptic churches not only provide landless people with access to
nontimber forest products,but also assure protection to areas
with some of the highest amounts of biodiversity in the country.
Different property rights regimes have different advantages
and disadvantages for biodiversity conservation.For example,
local forest and pasture resources held as common property
enable farmers to avail themselves of a much wider range of
resources than they could if all land were cultivated.In Kenya
the plant Amaranthus graecizans L. is collected from the wild in
communal areas along roadsides and rivers,but it is not culti-
vated in gardens.Common property rights provide landless
poor with access and foster local conservation of this unique
genetic resource.Often when access to communal areas is
restricted,not only are livelihoods affected,but also species lose
their value as the traditions associated with them disappear.
State imposition of new property rights regimes that fail to
account for traditional rights can also affect the maintenance of
local knowledge of specific varieties.For example,in 1975 a
forest ecosystem in Uzbekistan was converted to a protected
nature reserve.As a consequence the surrounding communities
lost access rights to this land,which contains a wild plant species
that had been used locally to cure heart ailments.Having lost
access to this wild species,the local people over time lost the
knowledge of the heart-improving properties of this plant,and
with that,a low-cost health remedy.
THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION 
Whereas state provision can often sustain ex situ conservation
(collection and storage of genetic resources to ensure avail-
ability in the future), in situ conservation requires coordination
by farmers and other actors. Both formal and informal
networks can work to increase access to diversity and avail-
ability of genetic variation, or they can work in conflicting
ways, thus reducing diversity. In marginalized and remote areas
where farmers’ own seed systems continue to play a major
FOR FOOD,AGRICULTURE,
AND THE ENVIRONMENTPablo Eyzaguirre (p.eyzaguirre@cgiar.org) is a senior scientist and Evan Dennis (e.dennis@cgiar.org) is a consultant at the International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute in Rome, Italy; Nancy McCarthy (n.mccarthy@cgiar.org) is a research fellow and Monica Di Gregorio (m.digregorio@cgiar.org) is a
research analyst for the CAPRi Program and the Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI.
role in meeting farmers’ heterogeneous needs for seed supply,
collective action is especially important.
Germplasm information is composed of both scientific and
local knowledge. Because the state is often ineffective at
acquiring, documenting, and retaining local knowledge, collec-
tive action can provide the means to facilitate the maintenance
of local knowledge. Farmers’ organizations for seed manage-
ment, local seed exchange networks, and seed fairs increase
the information available about plant genetic resources,
contribute to local capacity to conserve local crop varieties,
and increase the possibilities for improving local varieties.
Finally, a group of farmers should be able to maintain more
diversity with a higher chance of accessing new populations
and a lower probability of loss of populations than any indi-
vidual. Strengthening local capacity to undertake collective
action may thus allow farmers and communities to maintain
greater genetic resource diversity.
FARMERS’ AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS TO 
GENETIC RESOURCES
Local conservation efforts are also affected by international
policies guiding the development of intellectual property rights
for genetic resources. Intellectual property rights, like all other
property rights, provide the rights to the stream of benefits
(including income) from the resource in question.Article 8(j)
of the Convention on Biological Diversity affirms the rights of
local indigenous communities to access and benefit from local
genetic resources.The recently signed International Treaty on
Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture also affects
local rights.
Tracing the contribution of conservation practices to
germplasm development is difficult,a situation that complicates
the assignment of intellectual property rights and affects the
equity of outcomes:
•  Who is eligible to claim rights over a specific type of seed? 
•  When can innovation in genetic resources be considered
the product of an individual or a firm, and when is it a
product of a collective effort by many individuals? 
•  If many individuals are involved, is it possible and effective
to define and assign collective rights to plant genetic
resources?
Although society has paid significant attention to the private
actions and ownership (mainly by firms) that underpin genetic
resource innovation using biotechnology,it has paid less attention
to property rights of agrarian communities and cultures for
whom genetic resources are essential livelihood assets.
In the case of biotechnology, genetic resource innovations
are treated as individual property. On the other hand, farming
communities use genetic resources to meet a variety of liveli-
hood, environmental, and cultural needs, and innovations in
genetic resources over time are often the product of long-
term collective efforts, such that no single individual can claim
to be owner or originator of the innovation process and the
resulting genetic resources.
The rules assigning property rights over genetic resources
to individuals or groups of users will affect people’s livelihoods.
One risk of failing to recognize local indigenous rights is that
external actors might appropriate exclusive rights over genetic
resources they did not, in fact,“innovate.”
Given the neglect of property rights of agrarian communities
and cultures,collective action can help empower farmers to
demand that government bodies guarantee rights to local genetic
diversity to farmers.The other side of the coin is that collective
action can also be used to limit use of germplasm by others,
thereby worsening access and benefits to society as a whole.
RISKS AND PROBLEMS OF EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY
RIGHTS TO GENETIC RESOURCES
Even if local indigenous groups have legally recognized rights to
genetic resources, privatization itself (or the assignment of
exclusive rights) can lead to reduced availability of germplasm.
In particular, assigning exclusive property rights to germplasm
might reduce access to plant genetic material for everyone,
and particularly for poorer farmers, given that often less-
informed, less-educated, and marginalized rural populations are
at a disadvantage in claiming ownership
Policymakers should be aware of the links between
property rights, collective action, and local conservation of
local plant genetic diversity. It is important to take into
account local regulatory frameworks as well as the existence
and overlap of multiple legal systems, try to build on these, and
avoid policies that might in fact reduce access to genetic
diversity for local populations, in order to avoid eroding
genetic diversity and increasing the vulnerability of the poor.  
For further reading see S.Brush,ed.,Genes in the Field:On-
Farm Conservation of Crop Diversity (Ottawa,Canada:
International Development Research Centre,2000);
International Potato Center (CIP)–Users’ Perspectives with
Agricultural Research and Development (UPWARD),
Conservation and Sustainable Use of Agricultural Biodiversity
(Manila,2003),http://www.eseap.cipotato.org/upward/Abstract
/Agrobio-sourcebook.htm;FAO,The State of the World’s Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Rome,1997),
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FaoInfo/Agricult/AGP/AGPS/pg
rfa/pdf/swrfull.pdf; J.W.Watson, and P. B. Eyzaguirre, eds.,
Proceedings of the Second International Home Gardens
Workshop: Contribution of Home Gardens to In Situ
Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources in Farming Systems,
17–19 July 2001,Witzenhausen, Germany (Rome: IPGRI, 2002),
http://www.ipgri.cgiar.org/publications/pdf/753.pdf.
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street, N.W. •  Washington, D.C. 20006-1002  •  U.S.A.
Phone: +1-202-862-5600  •  Fax: +1-202-467-4439
Email: ifpri@cgiar.org
www.ifpri.org
CGIAR System-wide Program on
COLLECTIVE ACTION AND 
PROPERTY RIGHTS
www.capri.cgiar.org

Property rights, collective action, and plant genetic resources

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/focus11_10.pdf

Property rights, collective action, and plant genetic resources

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics