Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants, and Indigenous Knowledge.

The author of this book states in his introduction that Global Biopiracy examines the inherently predatory structure and processes by which powerful states, prodded by multinational corporations, have used patent systems to appropriate traditional indigenous knowledge of plant uses. Regrettably, in spite of this being a somewhat interesting narrative on the subject, the authors’ uni-dimensional anti-West, anti-North, anti-science, anti-capitalist perspective permeates the work. Thus is lost what might have been, in a less polemical work, the opportunity to stimulate a useful—even balanced—debate on a complex and important subject. The Green Revolution is dismissed as a conspiracy. The “theft” of germ plasm from “south” states to preserve the material was, according to this author, part of a calculated, generations- (nay centuries-) long agro-capitalist plot.

The entire politico-legal tradition of the West (with its concepts of universal emancipation, democratic nation-states, and quantitative science leading to “modern” medicine, clean drinking water, and reductions in infant mortality, to name a few) is always, in this book, presumed to be only exploitative of, and never beneficial to, the “south.” Thus the unbalanced perspective. As for recommended “solutions” it is surprising to find half of the equation—investment—almost completely ignored or, in the second last paragraph of the book, dismissed. The suggestion that the nebulous concept of TKUP (traditional knowledge of the use of plants) could somehow ground a sufficiently legally definable system that would attract enough investment to achieve the equitability goals the author proselytizes is, I suggest, simplistic in the extreme.

There are good alternative works on this subject. In Global Governance of Food and Agricultural Industries (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd 2006) Reba Carruth raises many of the same issues and analyzes them in a balanced way which most readers would find more useful than Mr. Mjbeoji’s work.

For a credible analysis of the history, motives, and methods of multi-national corporations I recommend Doremus et.al. The Myth of the Global Corporation (Princeton University Press 1998).

A comprehensive academic collection should include this work, if only as an example of highly researched, but single-minded, political advocacy over reason. Recommended with reservations.