Reclaiming the Commons

Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Two decades ago, at the height of globalization, there was an attempt by corporations, and the countries which represent their interests, to privatize and enclose our biological and intellectual commons. The result of this effort has become the massive destabilization of communities all over the world with the expansion of patents and intellectual property rights into the domain of biodiversity. Today, there is a renewed attempt by global corporations to establish a regime in which biological and intellectual resources flow freely from poor countries to rich ones; and from the poorest communities to the richest corporations, with-out regulation. Reclaiming the Commons details the thirty-year cultural, political, scientific, and legal journey to protect biodiversity and indigenous knowledge from the unethical framework corporations impose on humankind in order to lay claim to life on Earth. Vandana Shiva masterfully articulates the devastation this corporate greed has inflicted not only on agricultural communities, but on our planet and our very existence. Ultimately, she poses that the recovery of the commons is essential in restructuring our society into one that can flourish, while protecting and honoring all life on Earth. This, she says, lies in the collective recognition of common creativity and the rediscovery of our place within Nature.

Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to patent the rights to many plants, including basmati, neem, and wheat. The author presents details of the specific attempts made by corporations to secure these patents and the legal actions taken to fight them. The book goes beyond the legal struggle to position the necessary solutions to corporate control including the exploring the Rights of Nature and proposing a framework for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. It is the first detailed legal history of the international and national laws related to biodiversity and Intellectual Property Rights.