Thursday, December 15 2005 16:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Hong Kong: After taking a tough stand in agriculture and industrial tariffs, India today (Dec 15, 2005) opened another front at the WTO Ministerial here asking member countries to amend the TRIPS agreement and bring it in line with Convention on Bio-Diversity for preventing bio-piracy.

Raising the issue with Chilean Trade Minister Ignacio Walker, the WTO facilitator on the issue, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said harmonizing the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement with the CBD was vital to prevent bio-piracy and protect traditional knowledge of developing nations.

Nath underlined the imbalance in the TRIPS Agreement between private intellectual property rights and intellectual heritage of indigenous communities. This was a part of the unfinished agenda of development inherited from the Uruguay Round of GATT, the WTO's predecessor, he said.

At the plenary session yesterday, Nath had raised the members' attention towards the growing popular discontent among developing nations over bio-piracy and misappropriation of their traditional knowledge for commercial gain.

"This Ministerial must pave the way for the launch of negotiations on issues pertaining to the relationship between TRIPs Agreement and Conventional on Bio-Diversity", he said.

India has also opposed the 'list approach' for seeking tariff reduction on environmental, goods saying it was not beneficial for developing countries. The 'list approach' focuses only on goods and is seen as a backdoor method to bring in Non-Agriculture Market Access, officials said. India has submitted an alternate approach called 'environmental project approach', proposing that all environmental goods and services in the project should get tariff concessions.

India has proposed to incorporate three elements - together called 'disclosure requirements' - for amending the TRIPS agreement. These elements are 'disclosure of country of origin', 'Prior Informed Consent', and 'Benefit Sharing' arrangement, officials said.

The amendment, sought by many developing countries rich in bio-diversity, was essential to check bio-piracy and would pave the way for an international legally binding regime, they said.