Protest against patents on life and biopiracy On Tuesday November 23, 2010, the conference 'Biodiversity: Opportinuties for a new economy' took place at Artis in Amsterdam. ASEED Europe made a picketline to protest biopiracy and patenting parts of nature. "Big multinationals that make business with biodiversity, that always boils down to privatising parts of it, for profit," says Linda Coenen of ASEED. "But the conference does not quiestion the idea of reducing nature to a commodity and the societal consequences that has." ASEED handed out a pamphlet with this message to the 100 conference participants. Many expressed understanding for the criticism and shared our concerns. The conference mainly focusses on HOW industry can get started with biodiversity. ASEED has serious doubts about this approach. Biodiversity and traditional uses are reduced to economic assets without questioning the desirability of this development. "Large multinational companies making money on biodiversity, that always turns out to patenting: the appropriation of pieces of nature," says Linda Coenen of ASEED. "The word patenting is not mentioned at all and criticism was put away in separate debate on Monday night instead of confronting the delegates from industry with it." With patents knowledge and plants are monopolized and made inaccessible for others. This tends to decrease biodiversity, and foodsecurity as well. That is not only happening in the South but also in Europe. The patenting of ...
Orignal From: Protest at Privatisation of Biodiversity
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