Using food regime analysis, this paper critically analyzes how corporate actors amass, secure and apply power in the global agrifood system through International Investment Agreements (IIAs). IIAs ...are a key enabler of increasing corporate power in the agrifood system. We focus on three sets of investment provisions in IIAs: (a) the stringent enforceability mechanism of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, (b) the expansion of the concept of expropriation, and (c) limitations or prohibitions on host countries to impose performance requirements on foreign investors. We argue that these provisions compromise fairness in the international economic system. Attracted by promises of technology transfer, economic growth and employment, host states often prioritize policies that favor foreign investors even if such policies compromise domestic policy space. We provide analysis and examples of escalating corporate power at different stages of the industrial and transgenic model of agriculture.
This study addresses freedom, work and organisation by problematising Amartya Sen’s pluralistic notion of (development as) freedom through a fieldwork study of a Filipino non-governmental ...organisation that promotes sustainable agriculture. In this context, peasant farmers face increasing threat from intersecting agrarian and climate crises, exacerbated by mainstream economic paradigms for agricultural development. For Sen, development encompasses the process of expanding the ‘substantive freedoms’ of people (freedom to), and removing sources of ‘unfreedom’ (freedom from). However, it is not clear in Sen’s work how such freedoms are relationally constituted and thus the manner of the ‘labour of agential becoming’ at the core of Sen’s thought. We therefore ask: how do agroecological work and organisational practices of grassroots development promote freedom for small-scale farmers under climate threat in the Global South? Our analysis identifies a novel form of freedom – labelled ‘freedom with’ – defined as a set of relational, multi-actor capabilities and organising practices that constitute alternative, future-oriented ways of doing and being. ‘Freedom with’ enables us to better understand how and why the labour of agential becoming works, offering a theoretical extension of Sen’s notion of freedom with implications for debates in our field on sustainability and beyond-capitalist organising.
Patents and other conditions of access to vaccines Arup, Christopher; Plahe, Jagjit
The Journal of world intellectual property,
March 2023, 2023-03-00, 20230301, Letnik:
26, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper reviews the experience with access to vaccines during the pandemic. Its inquiry is the extent to which pharmaceutical patents have hindered or enhanced access when compared to other ...factors or conditions like health spending, manufacturing capacity, and regulatory competence. To conduct the review, the paper queries the regulatory governance perspective when it suggests a decentralised field of legal pluralism will maximise access. It recalls the pre‐COVID‐19 experience with antiretrovirals to provide pointers to the present situation. It then examines the experience with COVID vaccines under the headings of invention, production, procurement, and distribution. The review finds while patents may hinder access to vaccines, other, essential conditions for access, like independent manufacturing capacity and commitment to procurement, are not established. Regulatory governance must now adopt a much more concerted, coordinated approach, mobilising both patent regulation and other key conditions to further access. The review is an opportunity to gather some of the copious commentary on this issue.
India has long played a key role in supplying low-cost pharmaceuticals to people in developing countries, gaining a reputation as 'the pharmacy of the developing world'. Yet, changes to India's ...intellectual property regime under the World Trade Organization's 1995 Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement mean that India's capacity to produce and supply affordable medicines has been undermined. We use a political economy approach to investigate the factors that are determining the future of Indian generic pharmaceutical companies as suppliers of affordable medicines in the 'post-TRIPS' environment. We argue that while there is some scope within this environment for legal safeguards to protect access to life-saving medicines, the future of the 'pharmacy of the developing world' is in question, not just because of the ownership rights awarded to multinational corporations (MNCs) under the TRIPS framework, but also because of the way the market system is tilted towards MNCs. MNCs can 'play' the system locally and across the world, including by exerting pressure on safeguards that India instituted to protect the affordability of medicines. Against this background, we explore the challenges faced by the Indian government in creating an environment that is more likely to ensure access to life-saving medicines.
This paper addresses climate change through collaborative work with social movement organisations in the Philippines. We contend that the tendency of work on climate change, social resilience and ...climate justice to ignore epistemological questions and proceed through technocentric dominant frames can lead to partial responses that support the status quo, contribute to slow (or fast) violence, and enhance ongoing processes of marginalisation. Instead, we argue, there is a need to co-develop analyses with those most affected. The experiences shared in this paper speak to complex knowings of climate and the intimate hurts of disaster, and provide rich scope for resistance and change. We find knowledges to be affective, emotional and relational, and deeply imbued with power relations. These insights lead us to theorise a topological angle on the knowings and beings of climate: to turn to emotional topologies. In seeking to elaborate on emotional topologies of climate, we draw on the concept of knowledge spaces to better understand meanings and practices of climate as emergent motleys of linked people, sites, affective process, activities and technologies. In the emergent nature of these spaces, there is scope for disruption, re-ordering and resistance.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Indian government was obliged to extend private property rights to plant varieties under the World Trade Organisation's Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. This paper ...analyses the implications of India's TRIPS-induced Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights (PPVFRs) Act for small producers. The Indian Act gives formal recognition to farmers' rights and upholds the principle of benefit sharing. This notwithstanding, it is argued that it will be very difficult for small farmers to benefit from the legislation since the Act is designed to protect the rights of parties that are able to prove that they are innovators in agriculture. The extension of private property rights to plant varieties will lead to higher seed prices and could lead to further erosion of genetic diversity in the country, negatively impacting farmers. Importantly, the Indian government's decision to accede to the International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties Convention (UPOV), coupled with the provisions of the 2004 National Seed Bill, severely compromise the farmers' rights provisions in the PPVFRs Act, putting into question the Indian government's commitment to protecting farmers' rights.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this first paper, we explain why traditional knowledge is an important theme in the study of Indian agriculture, especially given the crises routinely facing poor, smallholder farmers. We begin ...with an overview of some of the key authors who have written about the problems facing small farmers both within and outside India. Different authors have focused on different aspects of the benefits that can be derived from the local knowledge and skills of farmers, but these do not always pertain to organic farming. Our interest in organic farming is specifically about 'traditional' knowledge. With the industrialisation of agriculture in India and elsewhere, many poor, small farmers have been deskilled and placed into vulnerable positions. Traditional knowledge has been undermined, overwhelmed or has survived only in fragments. How 'traditional knowledge' might be retrieved, reinvented, reintroduced and modified so as to create a farmer-driven, sustainable and biodiverse agriculture is our concern. In the final section of this paper, we analyse the four situations we have been working on as examples of the possibilities and challenges facing the revival of 'traditional knowledge' in the villages of Kolkata, central India and Sikkim.
Small farmers, who are normally dependent on marketing intermediaries, have formed themselves into co-operatives in the Indian states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and have started to ...sell their produce directly to consumers via retail outlets, the Internet, urban franchises, mobile vans, rural food hubs and as branded products. The key engine for this marketing experiment is the Sahaja Aharam Producer Company Limited (SAPCO), a producer organisation. SAPCO has tried to create new supply chains that guarantee that the produce it sells complies with the quality standards needed to certify the foods as 'organic'. SAPCO is an initiative of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) which has taken up the bulk of the financial and administrative burden of managing the company. The revival of traditional knowledge for organic farming and the marketing of organic produce has invariably required the intervention of external agents such as CSA. In the final section, we assess the achievements of SAPCO from the viewpoint of the small farmers who belong to the producer co-operatives that make up SAPCO's membership. Our key research question is whether it has been possible to scale up the production and marketing of small farmers' output and create a new supply chain independent of local intermediaries.
The cost of medicines in Bangladesh is among the lowest in the world. Over the last forty years, Bangladesh, a Least Developed Country (LDC), has nurtured a local industry based on strong industrial ...policy and a pharmaceutical patent-free system. Of the 46 LDCs in the world, it is the only one to have a thriving industry of this kind. In this paper, we explore how a relatively poor LDC managed to take on the dominance of MNCs in the global production of pharmaceuticals. We focus on the 1982 National Drug Policy (NDP) which transformed the pharmaceutical sector in Bangladesh from one in which three-quarters of drugs were supplied by just eight MNCs to one where almost all domestic demand is met by local industry. The thriving local pharmaceutical industry also exports generic medicines to 147 different countries. In 2026, Bangladesh is due to graduate to 'Developing Country' status, at which time, as a member of the WTO, Bangladesh will have to abide by the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. Under TRIPS it will have to change its patent regime to allow for the registration of pharmaceutical patents by 2029. Using interview data with key Bangladeshi experts, we argue that TRIPS compliance could potentially wipe out this flourishing local pharmaceutical industry, leading to steep increases in the cost of essential medicines, with dire implications for the right to health. We explore policy options open to the Bangladesh government to protect affordable drugs in the country, in particular protection for the production of domestic generics in a post-TRIPS environment. We also argue that there are ways in which Bangladesh and India could co-operate to protect the affordability of high-quality medicines for domestic and international markets.
Abstract
Under Article 27.3(b) of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO), all members are required to extend private ...property rights to life forms. Using official WTO documents, this article analyzes the negotiating positions of WTO members on life patents during a review of Article 27.3(b) which commenced in 1999 and is currently ongoing. Initially, developing countries raised serious ethical concerns regarding life patents, creating a clear North-South divide. However, over time the position of Brazil and India moved away from the ethics of life patents to the prevention of bio-piracy, a position supported by China. Russia too is supportive of life patents. A group of small developing countries have, however, continued to question the morality of life patents despite this "BRIC wall," changing the dynamics of the negotiations from a North-South divide to one which now includes a South-South divide.
