[tnjm]

Doesn't the concept of biopiracy imply that the products of millions of years of evolution belong to modern nation states?

What if, instead, we either observe that they simply exist, or imbue them with their own rights, or consider them the birthright of all humanity?

We've seen that attempts to consider them as intellectual property for the purposes of ensuring their conservation have failed. We can also see that it hasn't driven the anticipated licensing revenue flows to poorer nations. But which approach would lead to greater good for humankind over a long time horizon?

[Angostura]

I don’t think it’s at all reasonable to accuse Kew of biopiracy - their collections were, in large part the product of pure exploration.

However, there certainly are cases in the Amazon of folks visiting native communities, quizzing them to extract hard-won knowledge about the potential medical efficacy of local plants, collecting samples and then disappearing off to commercialise the results.

It’s not the results of evolution that belong to a modern nation state, but the intellectual property of the communities certainly is valuable- as can be seen from the efforts made to extract it, rather than just collecting plant samples at random.

I think you are confusing things by conflating the thing and the knowledge of the thing.

The Higgs Boson exists, irrespective of human knowledge. That doesn’t prevent Peter Higgs from garnering some kind of reward for his work.

[tnjm]

I agree that indigenous knowledge is rightly the property of indigenous peoples themselves, but that wasn't my point. My comment referred specifically to the products of evolution: that's the genetic resources, not the knowledge of them.