This guide aims to help researchers working in tropical rainforests consider ethical issues in field-data collection and publication activities that involve indigenous or local knowledge.

Several cases of bio-piracy and an increasing focus on the rights of indigenous peoples mean that researchers are often called on to follow rules and regulations.

The guide is broken down into chapters that discuss the importance of creating a code of conduct, provide an overview of existing codes of conduct and international policy guidelines, and address issues related to informed consent. It also presents a protocol that can be adapted to the needs of researchers in various countries.

This paper suggests that research-based, small-scale interventions that help farming systems adapt to climate change can guide progress towards achieving food security and addressing the food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

It outlines lessons learnt from the Climate Change Adaptation and Development Programme jointly implemented by the UN Environment Programme and the UN Development Programme for Sub-Saharan Africa.

The authors argue for a shift away from top-down, corporate approaches to agricultural research and practice, in favour of a democratic approach that involves giving more decision-making power to local people, including farmers and indigenous people. Small-scale initiatives reduce tillage, protect the soil surface and alternate cereal crops with legumes that enrich the soil.

The paper suggests that communicating food security solutions to the public can help balance vested interests and level the field in favour of small producers. Managed effectively, the current drought in the Horn of Africa offers a window of opportunity to re-establish food security as a global priority.

This online book, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, explores Africa's potential for intensifying agricultural production through ecological agriculture — the integration of traditional, conservation oriented farming techniques with modern science and technology.

Building on discussions from the Conference on Ecological Agriculture, held in Ethiopia in 2008, it outlines past experiences such as lessons learned from the Green Revolution in Asia; trends in African agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development; and climate change implications for agriculture.

The book concludes that ecological agriculture can benefit smallholder farmers in several ways such as helping to increase Africa's productivity, and therefore improving food security, and helping farmers adapt to climate change by making agro-ecosystems more resilient to stress. But scaling up ecological agriculture will require policy support as well as additional resources and information.

This report synthesises the results of a review of 104 studies on gender and the adoption of agroforestry in Africa, and aims to identify strategies that challenge gender imbalances in development initiatives. It explores women's participation in agroforestry, including their ability to manage agroforestry practices, access to agroforestry information, and how they benefit from agroforestry.

The results highlight the substantial benefits that agroforestry can offer to rural women in Africa, mainly because it requires fewer resources than alternative enterprises. But women's participation is low, with limited access to information and markets, and a mixed record of successful management of agroforestry technologies.

The report provides several technological, policy and institutional recommendations for improving the efficiency of women's participation in agroforestry. They include domesticating important tree species, and ensuring that women have access to market information and microfinance. The report concludes by suggesting further research in areas such as measuring the income that women generate from agroforestry, and identifying the key ingredients of success stories across Africa.

This guide, published by Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education), outlines the expected impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples around the world, and showcases traditional methods of climate change mitigation and adaption.

Following a basic introduction to climate change and the bodies, mechanisms and processes used for addressing it, the authors outline how climate change is impacting indigenous peoples in diverse ecosystems. For example, food and water insecurity arising from increased flooding or drought, and loss of biodiversity and traditional knowledge from rising temperatures.

The authors discuss the likely impacts of climate change mitigation measures highlighting, for example, the limitations of market-based strategies such as the Clean Development Mechanism. They discuss a range of alternative adaptation measures already being practiced by indigenous people, providing several case studies and examples of innovative strategies used in different regions. For example, African farmers using zero-tillage practices to moderate soil temperatures, Asian farmers growing varieties of crops to minimise the risk of harvest failure, and Honduran farmers using agroforestry and terracing to reduce erosion.

The authors go on to discuss measures for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and emphasise the need for indigenous people to be fully engaged in the debate.

In this paper - which is targeted at national-level policy makers - the author explores the complex issue of traditional knowledge protection, and deems its protection to be necessary on utilitarian grounds.

The author argues that attempts to define traditional knowledge (TK) should focus on demarcating the nature of contribution that such knowledge could have to industrial research and development. The emphasis on the nature of the information itself serves as the best parameter of what the limits of "community/communities" are, and what sort of knowledge ought to be protected and made contractible through an intellectual property right.

The most effective options to protect traditional medicinal knowledge - the focus of the paper -  appear to be those of trade secrecy or a system of community intellectual property rights. Categories of TK that do not fall within such criteria could be documented into databases to prevent third parties from claiming patents on already existing knowledge.

But a well defined right is only the first step in empowering communities. A large onus rests on the design of institutions that will put this right into an enforceable framework. These institutions would have two tasks: to represent communities effectively and to provide rules of contract formation that take into account the difficulties of dealing with information as a resource. The author acknowledges that the effective operation of such institutions may not be at all easy to achieve.

Realising that traditional knowledge holders stand outside the fold of intellectual property rights and are most often negatively affected by them, the AAAS has created a handbook that attempts to make intellectual property issues and protection options more understandable and readily available for traditional knowledge holders, human rights organisations, and legal professionals.

Its ultimate goal is to help communities understand and identify potential protection mechanisms already present in the current intellectual property rights regime that may be applied to their knowledge.

For communities that do not wish to participate in the IP regime, it offers suggestions and options to avoid inappropriate claims on their knowledge by others.

This declaration was presented at the Peoples Earth Summit, a parallel event to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August to 4 September 2002. The declaration was coordinated by the South African non-governmental organisation, Biowatch, and reflects the views of participants at the South-South Biopiracy Summit held prior to the WSSD.

Key statements made in the declaration include:

• recognition of the fundamental role played by local communities, indigenous peoples, farmers and in particular women, and their traditional knowledge in the conservation and management of biological diversity to ensure food and health security;
• realisation that communities have not benefited from bioprospecting, and the bioprospecting has actually legitimised the unfair appropriation of biological resources and knowledge;
• opposition to biopiracy and the patenting of biological resources and knowledge, and the idea that benefit sharing is possible without patents; and
• the belief that community rights over biodiversity and indigenous knowledge are collective in nature, and therefore cannot be privatised.

• the international community to negotiate a legally binding agreement under the Convention on Biodiversity to prevent biopiracy, to ensure national sovereignty over biological and genetic resources, and to protect the rights of indigenous and local communities over their resources and knowledge;
• that prior informed consent of indigenous peoples and local communities should be a prerequisite for benefit sharing;
• a total ban on the patenting of life forms and the use of any intellectual property rights on biodiversity and traditional knowledge and for this to be reflected in and amendment to the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement; and
• for World Trade Organisation members to allow countries maximum flexibility to establish sui generis systems of protection for plant varieties.

In South Africa the demand for indigenous medicines and services is considerable compared with the demand for western health care services, and is growing due to population growth, poverty and beliefs. As a result, the demand for the popular plants used for indigenous medicines exceeds supply.

This publication by the FAO (one of the first comprehensive market surveys of medicinal plants in southern Africa) examines the demand for, and supply of, medicinal plants in Kwazulu-Natal, and the main marketing factors at play.

The indigenous medicine market is based on indigenous plants which are generally harvested from wild plant stocks. The available plant stocks are declining as they are not managed and little cultivation takes place. The study identifies three possible scenarios, which depend the actions of key players in the markets.

It identifies the most likely scenario as the commercialisation of indigenous plant production, which will cause prices to rise and exclude less sophisticated players from the market. The costs of this scenario will be borne largely by the current consumers, who will then lose access to basic medicine because of price increases and scarcity.

The study makes several recommendations for achieving a good balance between demand and supply.

This paper was presented by Anil K. Gupta, of the Honey Bee Network in India, at the Second WIPO International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Intellectual Property held in Geneva from 19-21 September 2001.

For a large number of communities and knowledge experts, says Gupta, globalisation has reduced the opportunities for expressing values. Their values no longer encourage them to conserve biodiversity and other resources and the knowledge systems associated with them. Furthermore, while these knowledge-rich, but economically poor, communities have provided leads for modern pharmaceutical and seed industries, they have hardly ever shared in the benefits.

The situation could be halted by introducing traditional knowledge digital libraries (TKDL), he says. Such a library system would explicitly acknowledge the providers, producers and reproducers of traditional knowledge, and would share the results of its documentation with them in the relevant local language. The IPR issues related to the TKDL are discussed extensively in this paper.

To carry forward the ideas presented in this paper, several policy and institutional changes will be necessary. One of the most difficult challenges in relation to TKDL is the extremely poor Internet infrastructure in most developing countries.

The degradation of soils poses a major threat to crop production in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In order to improve integrated nutrient-management practices, researchers need access to farmers’ knowledge and to understand their perceptions of soil fertility. A participatory survey was carried out in the semi-arid highlands of northern Ethiopia to identify and analyse local knowledge regarding soil fertility and local practices for managing it.

Farmers were found to classify their soils in three categories (fertile, moderately fertile, and poor). This classification is not limited to the soils’ perceived nutrient status. It is closely related to topography, and takes into account the soils’ depth and water-holding capacity. Soil fertility is also seen as dynamic, since a particular unit of land can become more or less fertile.

Land shortage and land fragmentation have forced farmers to abandon soil fertility management practices, such as fallowing, manuring, terracing, and using crop residues. The study found that experimentation with new practices (mineral fertilizer in combination with manure, for example) is an important type of site-specific learning that enables farmers to adapt new practices to the conditions in which they live and work.

(This article also has a summary in French.)

This paper discusses a number of policy issues surrounding the protection of traditional knowledge (TK) that may be relevant to future negotiations or a deeper treatment of this issue in various international fora.
The paper aims to:

• highlight various perspectives on the policy issues raised for developing countries and traditional and indigenous communities within them by the expansion of intellectual property rights (IPRs);
• outline some definitional problems and the rationale and objectives for protection, different strategies for the use of IPRs for such protection, and various modalities of a sui generis regime as well as alternatives to these;
• examine the possible functions of a regime on TK, its impact on the intended beneficiaries and key ethical, economic, environmental and social concerns;
• consider the possible contribution of overseas development assistance (ODA) in developing and implementing policies on the protection of TK.

The World Conference on Science (organised by UNESCO in cooperation with ICSU and held in Budapest in 1999) called for broad collaboration between science and society to meet the challenges of the future. In particular, it noted that traditional and local knowledge systems can make a valuable contribution to science and technology, and that there is a need to protect and promote this knowledge.

The General Assembly of the ICSU acknowledged this, but emphasised that traditional knowledge must be distinguished from approaches that seek to promote anti- and pseudo-science. A study group was set up to advise the ICSU regarding further action; this report is the outcome of their efforts.

The group’s recommendations include the following:

• the interaction between holders of traditional knowledge and scientists should be strengthened;
• ICSU should participate in the work of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO);
• ICSU and its member organisations should take active steps to promote joint partnerships between scientists and holders of traditional knowledge, as well as local scientists.

This paper is about the World Bank’s ‘Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program’, which was launched in 1998. It reflects on the experiences of the initiative, and the steps that could be taken to help communities and governments to integrate IK into the development process. The paper concludes that IK has been put on the international agenda but that some substantial challenges remain.

Priorities for the World Bank are:

• encouraging more countries to formulate and implement strategies for IK integration;
• enhancing the capacity of national and regional IK networks;
• promoting the local exchange and adaptation of indigenous knowledge;
• identifying innovative mechanisms to protect IK in a way that fosters its further development, promotion, validation, and exchange.

This paper has been prepared in the context of the World Bank’s Indigenous Knowledge for Development Initiative, which intends to develop a global knowledge partnership (a network of public, private and not-for-profit organisations from both developed and developing countries).

It highlights the involvement of the knowledge base of the poor and emphasises the importance of IK in development activities, stressing that integration of IK in development activities will improve their results.

The paper proposes a framework for action around four pillars: disseminating information; facilitating exchange of IK among developing-country communities; applying indigenous knowledge in the development process; and building partnerships.

A paper acts as an excellent introduction to IK-related issues, and the annexes provide several useful overviews and action plans for IK in development.

A French version is also available