Intellectual Property Rights and Ethnobiology: An Update on Posey's Call to Action

Abstract. Following the 1988 International Congress of Ethnobiology, at which the Belém Declaration had been adopted, Darrell Posey published a global call to action for researchers and policy makers to address outstanding issues related to the protection of Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) (1990a). ILK protections are today largely treated as a matter of intellectual property rights, a field whose global political landscape has undergone intense regulation and critical scrutiny since the time at which Posey was writing. This paper provides an update on the state of intellectual property policy as it relates to the “just compensation” of Indigenous and local communities, while also addressing how global bodies and various national governments have grappled with Posey's suggestions. Additionally, we highlight how the shortcomings of national and international policy to address outstanding issues related to intellectual property have affected cultural, ecological, and biological conservation. In conclusion, an update to Posey's suggestions is offered in light of the Belém +30 Congress (August 7–10, 2018) and of ongoing developments in intellectual property policy.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Journal of Ethnobiology

• Publication date

  2019-04-01

• Fields of study

  Political Science, Law, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2993/0278-0771-39.1.90
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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