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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.