Substantive progress eluded the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) Interregional Negotiating Group on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), which met from 18-21 September in Montreal, Canada. This third attempt at finding consensus on key aspects of the text was unsuccessful and negotiations were postponed to October 2010. At stake is a binding instrument aimed at protecting against extraction of biological resources without proper access to or benefits from products arising from them. Outstanding issues include what genetic resources may be excluded from the text, such as human genetic resources, or human pathogens, and the benefits to indigenous peoples and local communities who are often the most affected by biopiracy.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Biodiversity ABS Protocol needs political will to survive
Saez C: Intellectual Property Watch, 28 September 2010
First patent holder grants licences to UNITAID
Mara K: Intellectual Property Watch, 1 October 2010
The United States National Institutes of Health has become the first patent holder to join the newly created Medicines Patent Pool, a project of the drug-purchasing mechanism, UNITAID. Public health organisations, such as Medicins sans Frontiers, hailed the move as key step in the right direction but said there is still much work to do. The pool is intended to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for licensing on generic versions of patented HIV medicines. The hope is that by cutting down on the complexity and cost that often surrounds the licensing process – particularly when one drug can carry several patents from several different places –the pool will reduce the cost and increase the speed at which generic medicines can be made available. It is also hoped that the ease of licensing will help ease also the development of affordable formulations specific to children and to conditions in poorer countries where they are often needed. According to Guy Willis of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Authorities (IFPMA), the UNITAID Patent Pool is part of an increasing trend towards open innovation in research and development to create new medicines.
The global capitalist crisis and Africa’s future: Part I
Nabudere DW: Pambazuka News (497), 23 September 2010
This article argues that Africa today is trailing the rest of the world because, in part, the African leadership has failed to mobilise its people along the lines of a Pan-African agenda that informed the earlier phases of our political development. This is due to its weak ideological base, which, instead of drawing from such a heritage, is wedded to Western ways of knowing and doing things which we have derived from their educational institutions without questioning, including Christian and Muslim religious influences. While these external interventions have added to Africa’s modern culture, the article argues, they have also left a negative impact on African intellectual capacity to think independently unlike, say, the Asian intellectuals and political leaders who have links to their religions and cultures. This is due to the fact that Asia, unlike Africa, was less destabilised by way of religious intrusions, resulting in its intellectual and political leadership remaining more anchored to their religions, languages and cultures.
Trade and development report 2010
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: 2010
This paper points to the failure of the ‘post-Washington Consensus’ in the 1990s to reduce poverty, due to macroeconomic policies that promoted fixed investment, neglect of productivity growth and employment creation, a focus on price stabilisation, the absence of accelerated structural change and insufficient capital accumulation. Consequently, the development gap has widened over the past 20 years in South America and Africa. In most developing countries there is a pressing need to increase public sector provision of essential social services, especially those concerned with nutrition, sanitation, health and education. This is important not only for the obvious direct effects in terms of improved material and social conditions, the paper notes, but also for macroeconomic reasons. The public provision of such services tends to be labour intensive, and therefore also has considerable direct effects on employment. Government revenues from the extractive industries could be used not only for public investments in infrastructure, health and education, but also for the provision of fiscal incentives and improved public services under industrial policies aimed at diversification of economic activities. This would reduce countries’ dependence on natural resources. Growth in the modern sector is associated with higher private and public investment in fixed capital as well as greater government spending for the provision of education and health services and social protection.
A lifeline to treatment: The role of Indian generic manufacturers in supplying antiretroviral medicines to developing countries
Waning B, Diedrichsen E and Moon S: Journal of the International AIDS Society 13(35), 14 September 2010
This study set out to produce quantitative estimates of the Indian role in generic global anti-retroviral (ARV) supply to help understand potential impacts of such measures on HIV and AIDS treatment in developing countries. It utilised transactional data containing 17,646 donor-funded purchases of ARV tablets made by 115 low- and middle-income countries from 2003 to 2008 to measure market share, purchase trends and prices of Indian-produced generic ARVs compared with those of non-Indian generic and brand ARVs. The study found that Indian generic manufacturers dominate the ARV market, accounting for more than 80% of annual purchase volumes. From 2003 to 2008, the number of Indian generic manufactures supplying ARVs increased from four to 10 while the number of Indian-manufactured generic products increased from 14 to 53. Indian-produced generic ARVs used in first-line regimens were consistently and considerably less expensive than non-Indian generic and innovator ARVs. The study warns that future scale up using newly recommended ARVs will likely be hampered until Indian generic producers can provide the dramatic price reductions and improved formulations observed in the past. Rather than agreeing to inappropriate intellectual property obligations through free trade agreements, India and its trade partners - plus international organisations, donors, civil society and pharmaceutical manufacturers - should ensure that there is sufficient policy space for Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers to continue their central role in supplying developing countries with low-priced, quality-assured generic medicines.
African traditional knowledge and folklore given IP protection despite warning of traditional knowledge commodification
Saez C: Intellectual Property Watch, 12 September 2010
At the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) diplomatic conference on 9-10 August in Swakopmund, Namibia, the protocol on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Expressions of Folklore was signed by African nine states. ARIPO currently has 17 member states. Nine states signed the protocol and the remaining eight states will have to accede to the protocol. Some states have already initiated the process for the ratification and accession, according to a spokesperson for ARIPO, Emmanuel Sackey. The protocol will enter into force after six contracting states have ratified or acceded to it, Sackey said. The organisation is expected to take initiatives on traditional knowledge and link its initiatives with those undertaken by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) through its active involvement in the WIPO activities in this field. The protocol is meant to ‘protect creations derived from the exploitation of traditional knowledge in ARIPO member states against misappropriation and illicit use through bio-piracy,’ according to ARIPO. The protocol should also prevent the ‘grant of patents in respect of inventions based on pirated traditional knowledge (…) and to promote wider commercial use and recognition of that knowledge by the holders, while ensuring that collective custodianship and ownership are not undermined by the introduction of new regimes of private intellectual property rights.’ The United Nations has warned against the application of western legal and economic principles to collectively owned knowledge in traditional communities.
Africa’s trade in services and economic partnership agreements
Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM), Africa Region: 28 June 2010
According to this paper from the World Bank, an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is unlikely to offer much in terms of improved access to European Union services markets, especially for temporary movement of unskilled workers, a key issue for African countries. The main impacts of a services EPA for African countries would come from locking in openness to trade, providing precedents for regulation in key sectors, cooperation on competition policy and support for regional integration. According to the Bank, many of these goals could be pursued through a more cooperative approach with interested African countries, without necessarily negotiating and signing a broad EPA agreement.
Economic partnership agreements and food security
Matthews A: Trade Negotiations Insights 9(5), June 2010
The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries face a massive challenge in tackling hunger and under-nutrition, but many critics have argued that the commitments required of ACP countries under Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) will make this more difficult. This article investigates the threat to food security posed by these agreements. While some observers blame trade liberalisation for these problems, the article identifies the lack of investment to improve productivity and address supply-side constraints as the major limiting factor. It argues that the debate around the issue of EPAs and food security distracts from the more important question of what domestic initiatives ACP countries need to take to ensure that agriculture can play its role as an engine of economic growth and poverty reduction. Government should invest in agriculture rather than rely on trade restrictions for food security. The potential of EPAs to improve food security can only be realised by a focus on greater agricultural investment and improved institutions. Resources can be made available from the EU budget, the EU’s European Development Fund and bilateral external funders, but the prerequisite is that these requirements are prioritised by ACP countries.
Millennium Development Goal 8: The Global Partnership for Development at a critical juncture
MDG Gap Task Force: United Nations, 2010
This report by the United Nations assesses global progress towards meeting Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 8: Develop a global partnership for development. According to the report, only five member countries of the Development Assistance Committee have met their pledge, made in 2005, to pay 0.7% of their gross national as official development assistance, representing a major shortfall in funding. Market access (trade) has not improved, for developing countries, with no reductions in tariffs and no agreements having yet been reached at the Doha negotiations. The debt situation of many developing and transition economy countries deteriorated during the financial and economic crisis owing to the slowing down of the global economy and the fall in trade, remittances and commodity prices. In terms of access to affordable essential medicines, the report urges countries without significant pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity to take advantage of flexibilities in the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to import affordably priced essential medicines or, if they have the capacity, to produce generic pharmaceuticals and promote foreign investment to acquire new technologies for producing the medicines. With regard to new technologies, disparities between developed and developing countries remain. Large regional disparities in the use and uptake of information and communication services also persist. For instance, access to the Internet at broadband speeds remains very low in developing countries and is practically negligible in less-developed countries.
One MDG that can be achieved now: Market access for the poorest countries
Elliott KA: Trade Negotiations Insights 9(5), June 2010
This article explains how trade preference programmes can be made more effective for poorer countries. It is based on five principles put forward by the Center for Global Development (CGD) to make trade preferences more effective for less-developed countries: expand coverage to all exports from all least developed countries; relax restrictive rules of origin; make trade preference programmes permanent and predictable; promote co-operation between countries giving and receiving preferences; and encourage advanced developing countries to implement trade preference programmes that adopt the other four principles. It argues that extending full duty-free, quota-free market access to all least developed countries would have far more power if it is a project of the G-20, not just the G-8, and Brazil, China, India and Turkey are already showing the way. The author urges the G-20 to show its leadership on global development issues and to realise the Millennium Development Goal of using trade as a tool for development.