Raising the issue with Chilean Trade Minister Ignacio Walker, the WTO facilitator on the issue, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said harmonising the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights 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 on Wednesday, 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.
