For millennia, medicinal plants have provided a trove of treatments for human ailments, and the key to that treasure has been the traditional knowledge of the Indigenous peoples who have lived alongside these plants. More recently that knowledge has been taken, often without consent or recompense, by Western science as a springboard for the development of pharmaceutical agents. As a response to threats to biodiversity and Indigenous culture, international mechanisms have created, or are creating, enforceable rights for Indigenous peoples to control such knowledge. The key source of such protection is the access and benefit sharing (ABS) provisions of the Nagoya Protocol to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The presentation will be based on the book Protection of Traditional Knowledge at the Frontiers of Drug Discovery. Although that work is aimed at all those with an interest in the control of Indigenous genetic knowledge and the protection of Indigenous culture (whether academics, anthropologists or pharmaceutical researchers, and those seeking to make Indigenous rights work, as activists, legislators or practising lawyers) it also approaches wider issues relating to how one legislates to create rights within epistemically complex systems.
Peter Harrison is Associate Professor in Law at the University of York, UK. Following a PhD in Pharmacology for work on mechanisms of brain cell death in hypoxia, an EU post-doctoral fellowship in molecular biology at the CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, Paris, and qualification as a lawyer, he practiced law for 20 years with a particular focus on enforcing and exploiting intellectual property rights in the pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and chemicals sectors. He has litigated in high-profile patent cases in the English High Court and Court of Appeal, Trial and Appeal Divisions of the Federal Court of Canada, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the European Patent Office.