Author: Luigi Guarino

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The EU and “geographic indications”

CTA’s Brussels Office has a useful blog tracking relations between the EU and ACP countries in the fields of agriculture and fisheries. There was an interesting entry yesterday, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a permalink, so I’ll quote it in full:

In its March 2008 issue, ICTSD Trade negotiations insight indicates that EPA negotiations include discussions on intellectual property rights (IPRs). Within the chapters on intellectual property rights, the draft EU texts enclose detailed provisions on ‘geographical indications’. Geographical Indications (GI) is a designation which identifies certain qualities, characteristics or the reputation of a particular product to a specific geographical locality. For centuries communities across Africa have produced goods with a quality associated to a special area and which enjoy a strong reputation with national and international consumers, such as Nile Perch from Lake Victoria, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. Geographical indications are by essence a collective right. They allow for the protection of existing products and traditional methods of production and knowledge. GIs encourage variety and diversity of production and allow for a better redistribution of ‘added value’ in the production chain – from the raw material producer to the manufacturer. Yet, GIs come at a certain price: it can take time and effort to build a strong quality product including labelling and marketing. Moreover, a legal framework allowing for registration of indications needs to be put into place, which covers production methods, the technical standards of the product and a verification process safeguarding the specifications set. ACP countries or regions must begin by evaluating the potential benefits GIs could bring to key products such as fish. These must be weighed against the potential costs they could generate. But in the long term, if ACP countries can focus on developing, identifying and protecting GIs on the domestic market, the system could be a valuable tool for sustainable development and economic growth.

Source: ICTSD

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Development one cell at a time

We’ve blogged a few times about how mobile phones bring farmers and fisherfolk closer to the market, and how this can work for agrobiodiversity. But of course agriculture is not the only field which can benefit; people all over the developing world have realized this, and manufacturers have in turn noticed that, and are trying to cash in. There’s an article in the NY Times Magazine about an anthropologist hired by Nokia to help them design the kind of phones that poor people need — and could help lift them out of poverty. Jan Chipchase is his name and if the article piques your interest you can see him give a TED talk. He also has a blog that’s great fun, and which occasionally even refers to food and agricultural biodiodiversity.

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More on meta-analyzing diversity

You may remember a post a few days ago summarizing something of a milestone paper by Bioversity scientists and partners which analyzed ten years’ worth of data on the diversity of 27 crops on farms in 8 countries around the world. As you’ll see if you revisit the original post, there’s been interesting discussion of the paper in the comments section. But I’ve been engaging the writers by email as well and it might be worth recounting the gist of that conversation.

The main point, I guess, is that they consider the crux of the paper as not so much the discussion of how/why diversity is being maintained on farm, as the fact that the richness/evenness relationship makes it possible to estimate one from the other (though separately for different kinds of crops). They see this as establishing really quite a novel framework for discussing — and generating hypotheses about — crop diversity.

It seems to me the discussion has started already.