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Beyond Intellectual Property: Toward Traditional Resource Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

 
Author(s)
Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield
Publisher(s)
IDRC
ISBN
088936799X
e-ISBN
1552500551

Available formats

If a stranger entered your community, and started asking questions about its people, its resources, and its history, what would you do?

In today's global marketplace, no stone goes unturned. Where there is commercial value, there are profits to be made. However, as entrepreneurs scour the world in search of new commodities, a voice of dissent is growing and striving to be heard. That voice belongs to the world's indigenous peoples, and it is voice that has been ignored long enough.

In Beyond Intellectual Property, authors Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield listen and respond to this voice. They offer sound and reasonable advice on how indigenous peoples and local communities worldwide should approach and deal with the myriad of issues surrounding intellectual property and traditional resource rights.

For indigenous peoples' groups, activists and policymakers in intellectual property, and all those concerned with the preservation of our planet's biological and cultural diversity, Beyond Intellectual Property provides an invaluable and eye-opening look into one of the most provocative and explosive issues of this century and likely the next: the patenting of life.

The authors

Darrell A. Posey is Titled Researcher for the Brazilian National Council for Science and Technology at the Goeldi Museum, Belém, Brazil. He is Director of the Programme for Traditional Resource Rights of the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics, and Society and a Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford. Dr Posey was Founding President of the International Society for Ethnobiology and is President of the Global Coalition for Bio-Cultural Diversity, under whose auspices he founded and coordinates the Working Group on Traditional Resource Rights. He was the recipient of the Sierra Club's first "Chico Mendes Award for Outstanding Bravery in Defense of the Environment" and is one of the recipients of the United Nations "Global 500" award.

Graham Dutfield is Research Coordinator for the Working Group on Traditional Resource Rights. He holds degrees in Latin American studies, from Portsmouth University, and environment and development, from Cambridge University. Mr Dutfield has addressed international conferences in India, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom on issues concerning the resource rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. His work has been published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the journal Biodiversity and Conservation.