Traditional Knowledge and Its Protection - Thesis Example

Download file to see previous pages Focusing mostly on agricultural and medical research, the paper tries to examine the non-stop interactions between diverse epistemological customs, colonial interventions, and the marginalization of traditional knowledge. In this context, better treatment is needed for promoting traditional knowledge than just giving incentives in terms of intellectual property rights.

It also discusses the incorporation of the protection systems of indigenous knowledge into conservative intellectual property rights in the milieu of globalization. Arguments on the adoption of conservative intellectual property rights to protect traditional knowledge; disagreement on the assimilation of traditional medicine as well as Western biomedicine in the patent regime; summary of the World Intellectual Property Organization along with the Convention on Biological Diversity is also given.

Traditional knowledge may be referred to as the knowledge, improvement as well as the practice of local communities all around the world. This is developed from experiences that are many centuries old and accordingly adjusted to the local culture and the environment. It maybe is owned collectively and acquires the shape of tales, songs, traditions, proverbs, standards of a particular culture, values, customs, laws of the community, local language, and agricultural processes, as well as the development of plant species and different kinds of animals. Traditional knowledge is mostly practical, mainly in fields like agriculture, fisheries, health, horticulture, forestry, and environmental management in general. (http://www.undp.org/biodiversity/docs/ABS/Grenada%20-%20Traditional%20Knowledge%20Draft%20Report.doc)

There is today an increasing appreciation of the importance of traditional knowledge. This knowledge is important not only to those who rely on it in their everyday lives but to contemporary industry and agriculture as well. A lot of extensively used products, such as plant-based medicines as well as cosmetics, are prepared using this traditional knowledge. Other important products that are based on traditional knowledge consist of agricultural and non-wood forest products as well as handicrafts.

Indigenous and local communities' skills, as well as methods, give vital information to the global community and a sensible model for policies of biodiversity.  ...Download file to see next pages Read More