The Bt Brinjal Case: The First Legal Action Against Monsanto and Its Indian Collaborators for Biopiracy

Walid Abdelgawad (1)

1 CREDESPO - Centre de Recherche et d'Etude en Droit et Science Politique

In an unprecedented case, the National Biodiversity Authority of India (NBA), a statutory body set up under the Biological Diversity Act 2002 to regulate access to and use of biological resources, decided to initiate a legal action for biopiracy against the U.S. transna-tional seed company Monsanto and its Indian collaborators. The aim of these proceedings was to denounce the use by these entities of indigenous varieties of brin-jal to develop their genetically modified eggplant species , Bt Brinjal, without prior authorization. ''Biopiracy'' generally refers to illegal appropriation of biological diversity and the traditional knowledge of local communities from developing countries by multinational corporations and research institutions. 1 This definition mainly takes two shapes: (1) access and use of biological material or traditional knowledge without the authorization of the country of origin and indigenous communities that hold and develop these resources; and/or (2) lack of benefit sharing, or unjust and unfair sharing of benefits, with the countries and communities who provided resources. These forms of biopiracy are expressly prohibited by Articles 15 and 8(j) of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) 1992 2 and, more recently, the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the CBD at its tenth meeting on 29 October 2010. 3

Mots clés: Biopiracy; Convention of Biological Diversity; bioprospecting agreements

Domaines: Droit

Walid Abdelgawad. The Bt Brinjal Case: The First Legal Action Against Monsanto and Its Indian Collaborators for Biopiracy. Biotechnology Law Report, 2012, 31 (2), pp.136. ⟨10.1089/blr.2012.9926⟩. ⟨hal-01131401⟩