Governing Seeds as a Commons for Food Security: A Normative Shift from Appropriation to Sharing

With a growing world population and increasing climate change threats, farmers need to access a wide diversity of seeds to produce enough food to feed the world: this requires access to the diversity of varieties of both the physical seed and its associated knowledge. Globalization has favoured private ownership over seeds and its associated knowledge, protected by intellectual property rights (e.g. Monsanto), as the main tool to manage seeds and to promote research and development. However, the increase of property rights over plant varieties has led to reduced access to seeds and to major loss of agrobiodiversity, thereby threatening future food security. This project analyses the current legal framework and governance systems related to seed management in light of the theory of the commons. It aims to re-instil the values of sharing, exchange and fairness within these systems. Two case studies (YuanYang rice terraces (China); International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, the Philippines)) are carried out to examine the importance of the role of commons' sharing values in local (YuanYang) and international (IRRI) rice management systems. The overall objective is twofold: (1) contribute to the theory of the commons in the area of food and agriculture governance; (2) improve the existing seed legal framework to enable the international community to reach their food security and sustainable agriculture objectives.

Keywords:INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, GOVERNANCE, SEED DEVELOPMENT

Disciplines:Law

Project type:Collaboration project