how to reward biodiversity conservation using Honey Bee Network approach

1. Biodiversity,
grassroots green innovations and
poverty alleviation
role of institutions, initiatives and incentives
Anil k Gupta
Sristi and
Indian institute of management,
ahmedabad
anilg@sristi.org
www.sristi.org www.nifindia.org
www.indiainnovates.com

2. SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable
Technologies and Institutions, 1993) is a developmental voluntary
organization, set up to strengthen the Honey Bee Network of
grassroots innovators engaged in conserving biodiversity and
developing sustainable solutions to local problems.
http://www.sristi.org Note on SRISTI
biodiversity
Modern R
and D
Give me a place to stand, I
will move the word

3. Poverty and biodiversity
Has any global evidence emerged after
1989-1991 papers?
Gupta, A.K. (1991a) "Why does poverty persist in regions of high biodiversity? : a case for indigenous property
right system", Int. conf. on Property Rights & Genetic Resources sponsored by IUCN, UNEP and ACTS at Kenya,
June 10-16, 1991 ; Gupta, A.K. (1991b) "Sustainability Through Biodiversity: Designing Crucible of Culture,
Creativity and Conscience", International Conference on Biodiversity and Conservation held at Danish Parliament,
Copenhagen, November 8, 1991. IIMA Working Paper No.1005.; Ecology, Market Forces and Design of Resource
Delivery Organizations, paper prepared for International Conference on Organizational and Behavioural
Perspective for Social Development, Dec. 29, 1986-January 2, 1987 also in Int. Studies in Management and
Organization, 18(4) 64-82, 1989, Gupta Anil K 1997b Managing Ecological Diversity, Simultaneity, Complexity
and Change:. An Ecological Perspective. W.P.No. 825. IIM Ahmedabad. P 115, 1989

4. http://www.povertymap.net/publications/doc/iucn_2004/stunting.cfm

5. Narrow base of food basket
“Of the approximately 270,000 known species of higher plants, 10,000-
15,000 edible species are known, of which around 7,000 have been
used in agriculture, although only a few hundred are deemed
to be important at a national level.
Thirty crop species alone provide an estimated 90% of the world
population’s calorific requirements, with wheat, rice, and maize
providing about half the calories
consumed globally. Although several hundred species of animals have
been used for human food at one time or another, 14 species of
livestock currently account for 90% of global livestock production”.
Source:http://www.unep-wcmc.org/latenews/Biodiversity%20and%20Poverty%20Reduction%20UNEP-WCMC.pdf
Also see, poverty and biodiversity linkage
http://www.undp.org/biodiversity/biodiversitycd/BioBrief1-poverty.pdf 2006

6. Climate change, poverty,
biodiversity
“Overwhelming scientific evidence implicates greenhouse gases
generated by human activity in changing the global climate.
Simultaneously, record numbers of people subsist in poverty and
massive biodiversity losses continue largely unabated. Making
matters worse, these challenges reinforce one another. Climate
change can exacerbate poverty and accelerate biodiversity loss.
Poverty often forces local people to exploit their environment
unsustainably. And degraded environments in turn can contribute to
poverty and hasten climate change”.
First ever standards linking climate change, biodiversity and poverty seek global peer review,
08.06.2004, http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umwelt_naturschutz/bericht-
30050.html

7. Process:
The biodiversity is high in the rain forests,
mountains, some of the arid and semi arid
areas, humid areas, primarily due to
diversity in soil, climate and other physical
and social structures.

8. Why do markets for diversity not arise?
( except wine, cheese, honey to some
extent)
Can innovations help?

9. Why demand for diverse colors, tastes, shapes
and qualities of natural products not exist?.

14. Markets are ruthless

15. is manual always better than
machines?
Mead
beer
Wine
: fermentation of flavours
Mead source, south africa : http://iqhilika.co.za/index.htm

16. • Products of mass consumption particularly
when processed by machines have low
variability because throughput by
machines has to be of uniform quality and
maturity level ( for instance for processing
tomatoes to make ketchup, local varieties
will not be suitable because these are not
synchronous in maturity, have uneven
ripening status and thus, taste, color and
flavour can not be standardized).

17. • The cost of inventory, transportation, display in
shelves of a large varieties of say tomato is
obviously quite high compared to only one or
few varieties.
• Consumers who do not demand larger varieties
either because they have not been exposed to
the same or are unwilling to pay the extra costs,
also contribute to lower demand of biodiverse
products.

18. Bread, beer and wine:
Saccharomyces cerevisiae diversity reflects human history,
JEAN-LUC LEGRAS, DIDIER MERDINOGLU, JEAN-MARIE CORNUET,RANCIS
KARST, Molecular Ecology,
16 (10) 2091-2102, May 2007
• Fermented beverages and foods have played a significant role in most societies worldwide for millennia.
• To better understand how the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the main fermenting agent,
evolved along this historical and expansion process, we analysed the genetic diversity among 651 strains
from 56 different geographical origins, worldwide. Their genotyping at 12 microsatellite loci revealed 575
distinct genotypes organized in subgroups of yeast types, i.e. bread, beer, wine, sake. Some of these
groups presented unexpected relatedness:
• .However, up to 28% of genetic diversity between these technological groups was associated with
geographical differences which suggests local domestications.
• Focusing on wine yeasts, a group of Lebanese strains were basal in an FST tree, suggesting a
Mesopotamia-based origin of most wine strains.
• In Europe, migration of wine strains occurred through the Danube Valley, and around the Mediterranean
Sea. An approximate Bayesian computation approach suggested a postglacial divergence (most
probable period 10 000–12 000 bp). As our results suggest intimate association between man and wine
yeast across centuries, we hypothesize that yeast followed man and vine migrations as a commensal
member of grapevine flora.

19. Five key lessons from the
experience of honey bee network
a) Building a regional, national, and international
registry of traditional knowledge and innovations
based on biodiversity may help in reducing
transaction costs of the potential entrepreneurs,
investors, fellow learning communities and even
traders;

20. Innovations and traditional
knowledge
InvestmentEnterprise
GOLDEN TRIANGLE OF
CREATIVITY

21. Transaction costs
Searching information: biodiversity leads,
opportunities for investment, value
addition
finding suppliers
negotiation
Drawing up a contract
Ex -ante
Ex -
poste
Monitoring and enforcing compliance
Side payments
Conflict resolution
Redrawing the contract if nothing
else works

22. • How do we share the benefits?

23. How to reward:
Portfolio of Incentives for farmers’
innovations
non-material-collective
Policy changes
Pedagogic changes
material-collective
Trust funds
Venture and incubation
funds
Collective awards
Supp for Institution
building
endowments
non-material-individual
Recognition
Honour
Memorial
material-individual
Ipr or non ipr based awards
Awards
R and d grants
Endowments
Forms of incentives
Material non material
Target
Of individual
Incentives
collective

24. b) Compliance with the Prior Informed
Consent of the communities to respect
their knowledge rights for eventual benefit
sharing, keeping in mind the share of not
only individual knowledge holders, but also
their communities, nature conservation,
and the ones who add value and augment
innovations/ Traditional knowledge etc., in
a transparent manner;

25. c) pooling the best traditional practices and
grassroots innovations where necessary to
develop new natural products for diffusion
through commercial and non commercial
channels. These could be through small and
medium scale enterprises, having benefit
sharing contracts with small or medium scale
corporations; even large corporation,
cooperatives and other forms of economic
initiatives

26. Horizontal markets
d)development of lateral or horizontal markets
instead of reliance only on verticals; so that
many of the self help micro finance groups move
towards micro-venture finance based
entrepreneurial groups
( we have heard a great deal about micro
finance, when did we last hear about micro
venture finance? ) ,

27. e) Open source technology banks as well as IP
protected knowledge base to support livelihood
options of disadvantaged communities
.
In order to pursue these objectives, SRISTI has organized Traditional
Food Festivals,
Shodh Yatras (walk through the villages every summer and winter, so far we
have walked about 4,000 km in India),
natural product development in Sadbhav-SRISTI-Sanshodhan -laboratory,
create demand for richer and diverse food of poor people in urban areas to
create market and non market based models of poverty alleviation and
sustainable resource use practices.

28. Recipe competitions
Traditional food festival

29. Shodh yatra : learning walk, 19th walk
in Jammu and kashmir, June, 2007

31. Local Knowledge: Global Institutions
Why should local knowledge experts disclose
their knowledge to institutional experts

32. Asymmetry in standards of IP
protection
• organized sectors vis a vis unorganized
sectors of knowledge
• knowledge produced in long past and the
one developed in recent past
• Knowledge , innovations and practices
produced by individuals vis a vis by
communities

33. 1.How does one address the tensions in dealing with public, community and private proprietary knowledge around local
community, public and privately managed biodiversity resources?
PUBKOAR-12PUBKPR-11PUBKCR-10PUBKPR-9Public
CKOA R-8CKPR-7CKCR-6CKPR-5Community
PK-OA R-4PKPR-3PKCR-2PKPR-1Private
Open accessPublicCommunityPrivateKnowledge
right regimes
Resource right regimes

34. 1) Protection of Traditional Knowledge
Within the Traditional knowledge systems, there are innovations and
improvements by individuals and communities which need
protection so that potential investors can have incentives to invest and
recover one’s investments.
IF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE is public domain, then there is no
reason for any exploiter of this knowledge with in or outside the country
to have obligation to compensate or reward the knowledge provider.
Further, the TKs in many cases when blended with modern science
and technology can generate immensely valuable solutions for societal
problems and opportunities for improving livelihood opportunities for
knowledge holders.
Another very important ethical, moral and institutional issue is as to why
should traditional knowledge holders be expected to disclose their
knowledge to national research institutions when these institutions
can not protect their rights?
See the Experience of National Innovation Foundation, India (
www.nifindia.org )

35. Ethical correction required in
knowledge economy
lessons of honey bee network
All university and research institute scientists in developing and
developed countries, working on Traditional knowledge must be
advised to use PIC form ( see www.nifindia.org ) so that they do
not publish the results of their research without complying with the
following guidelines
• (a) share it back with the knowledge holders
and providers in local language,
• (b) take prior informed consent of the
traditional knowledge holders, and

36. • (c) ascertain uniqueness of their results so
that intellectual property rights protection
opportunities are not missed.
• (d) feel obliged to share part of their
pecuniary gains if any, through the licensing
of such technologies produced through value
addition in traditional knowledge, back with the
specific communities or a national or
international fund.

37. • (e) help in managing this fund may be managed by
non-bureaucratic body responsible for sharing it fairly
and without much transaction costs with traditional
knowledge holders.
• (f) change the guidelines of AAAS, SSRC of
developed countries and other research bodies
around the world urgently to reflect this ethical
correction.
• (g) develop collecting society model developed for music
for reducing transaction costs of the knowledge
holders

38. Every patent applicant is obliged to disclose whether the resource and/or
knowledge obtained from third parties for developing the patent claims have
been obtained lawfully and rightfully.
The ‘lawful’ access would imply that whatever laws exist in the source
countries, have been complied with. The ‘rightful’ would imply that the prior
informed consent of the knowledge providers has been obtained.
Disclosure requirement in patent applications

39. • International registry of sustainable technological innovations and traditional knowledge
• SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) had
made a proposal for INSTAR (International Network for Sustainable Technology Applications and
Registration) in 1993. The purpose is to provide a low transaction cost system to innovators and
traditional knowledge holders to obtain worldwide protection and have incentives for disclosure.
Traditional knowledge holders in many developing countries which do not have capacity to set up
such systems in next decade or two would suffer if such a registry was not there
• In TRIPS there is a provision for an international registry to be negotiated for wines and spirits.
There is no reason why such a negotiation should only concern itself with the interests of a
particular European country at whose behest, this clause was incorporated in the TRIPS.
•
[1] National and international registry systems have been proposed to incorporate the elements of
innovation patent system so as to provide incentives to local communities, herbalists and
developers of plant varieties to share their knowledge without forgoing the benefits possible
through intellectual property protection. The issue still remains as to whether knowledge produced
over a long period of time through cumulative contribution of communities in a given region should
get only a short duration protection and that too with limited claims. There are several other
reasons why a registry may help the innovators and TK holders even if with shorter duration
protection:

40. • the possibility for potential investors, entrepreneurs and R and D partners to
seek collaboration with innovators and TK holders would be very low if they
did not have access to registry which would reduce transaction costs (TC) in
the process,
• the possibility of willing partners filing joint IPRs for longer duration may also
be low if the registry was not there,
• the technological obsolescence factor being high, many leads might not have
much value if not explored within ten years any way,
• the possibility of learning from one another might increase if there was a
registry. Many times this goal gets neglected in the debate and to us in Honey Bee network,
lateral learning among the local innovators and communities is a central concern. Surviving
collectively is some thing that registry can facilitate.
• The cost of filing patent can be very high. For example, a US patent application in 90s could be
about 20,000 USD while in EU, it could cost twice that amount. However, this cost varies a great
deal and in thirty two countries it was found to vary from USD 355 to 4772 in 1990s (Helfgott,
1993). We need to devise ways of reducing these costs for small innovators and traditional
communities. INSTAR, an international registry might offer one way.

41. Grassroots to global( G 2 G),
new mantra
• So far the globalisation has meant generally squeezing
of spaces for small innovators and entrepreneurs. It has
been by and large a one-way street. The Honey Bee
Network has been trying to reverse this process. It is
trying to create a new ethics and institutional culture in
which grassroots innovations developed by often
uneducated or less educated or valorised to address
global as well as local demands.
• Already the innovative products from Indian grassroots
have reached five continents. But, a great deal remains
to be done.
•

42. Poor not just as consumers alone,
but as providers
• the mechanism of mentoring small, scattered and disconnected innovators
without access to much education, banking or communication systems is
not easy. Distributed mentoring is a challenge that we have to meet, if
Grassroots to Global (G2G) has to become an international reality. In other
words, if triangle of linking innovation, investment and enterprise has to be
formed across the world, then transaction costs of each actor will have to be
reduced considerably using on-line and off line platforms (see Tianjin
declaration, China, May 31, 2007, www.sristi.org).
• Assume that a Norwegian entrepreneur selects an innovation from India
and wants to set up an enterprise in South Africa with investment from say,
US, then a G2G model would have come about. Likewise, if entrepreneurs
in developed countries can find applications for ideas of grassroots
innovators in third world, then a poverty alleviation model will emerge which
would look at poor as provider of solutions. Diversity, development, dignity
will manifest when ethics, equity, excellence, efficiency, empathy,
environment and education fuse.

43. Sristi’s Formula of sharing of
benefits
• Innovator 30 per cent
• Nature 05
• Community 05
• Innovation Fund 20
• ( to help other healers,
• Herbalist, innovators)
• Research & Field Trials 15
• Overhead expenses 15
• Contingency Fund 05
• Women knowledge promotion Fund 05
• Total 100

44. composition
• Herbavate Cream Composition
• 1Each 10 gm contains;1Oil extract equivalent
to: 1Calotropis gigantea (Aak). :4gm,. Curcuma
longa (Haldi). :0.5gm,. Pongamia glabra
(Karanja). :0.1gm,. Solanum xanthocarpum
(Kantakari). :0.2gm,. Camphor (Kapoor). :2%
w/w,. Apricot oil. :0.04ml,. in a cream base
• All ingredients have proven efficacy in
Ayurveda.

45. Mind to market:
the case of herbavate

46. Herbvate: a skin ointment
• Herbavate s based on the knowledge of seven
innovators from six districts Sabarkanth, Panchmahal,
Dang, Mahsana, Patan and Bhavnagar of Gujarat.
Herbavate exhibits remarkable properties against
eczema and variety of inflammatory and infectious skin
conditions.
• The innovators of Herbavate: 1. Amratbhai Shankarbhai
Rawal, Mehsana Gujarat. 2. Kunjubhai Kakadiyabhai
Bhoya, Dang Gujarat 3. Pujabhai Dabhi, Sabarkantha,
Gujarat 4. Karshanbhai Parmar, Sabarkantha Gujarat 5.
Laxmanbhai Pagi, Panchmahal, Gujarat 6. Lilabhai
Rawal, Patan Gujarat 7. Lakhabhai Becharbhai Khatana,
Bhavnagar Gujarat

47. Growth pr0moters
Technology
developed by
sristi lab by
pooling local
knowledge of
farmers and
herbalists
licensed to
Matrix agro-
chemicals
Raw materials
sourced form
people
Benefits to be
shared during
dec 1-4, 2007

49. What can be done with it?

50. • Summing up:
What is the resource in which poor are rich?
knowledge, values, ethics

51. • What do we do:
• Document, valorize, pool the best
practices, develop new products and take
these to social and economic markets

52. • Benefits sharing will take place only when
value is added and markets are made to
work in favour of poor
– Honey bee network has shown, it is possible

53. Journey of augmenting grassroots
innovations continues
• Creativity counts
• Knowledge matters
Innovations transform
Incentives inspire
• Join honey bee network, help creative knowledge rich economically poor
people learn from each other
• honeybee@sristi.org www.sristi.org www.nifindia.org
www.indiainnovates.com
• Gian.org