Category Archives: Food

Civil and Political Rights, Climate Change, Complexity, Energy, Environmental Justice, Environmental Law, Environmental Protection, Environmental Rights, Equality, Food, Global Warming, Intellectual Property, Natural Resources, Policy Issues, Public/Private Divide

Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and Climate Change (ed. Abbe E. L. Brown)

Leave a comment

Editor

Abbe E.L. Brown

Keywords

development studies, law and development, environment, climate change, innovation and technology, technology and ict, academic law, environmental law, human rights, intellectual property law, law and development, politics and public policy, human rights

Abstract

Many disciplines are relevant to combating climate change. This challenging book draws together legal, regulatory, geographic, industrial and professional perspectives and explores the role of technologies in addressing climate change through mitigation, adaptation and information gathering. It explores some key issues. Is intellectual property part of the solution, an obstacle to change or peripheral? Are there more important questions? Do they receive the attention they deserve? And from whom? This innovative book will play an important role in stimulating holistic discussion and action on an issue of key importance to society.

1. Low carbon futures for all? Strategic options for global availability of environmental technologies 29 Keith Culver

2. The puzzling persistence of the intellectual property right/climate change relationship 59 Navraj Singh Ghaleigh

3. Failure is not an option: enhancing the use of intellectual property tools to secure wider and more equitable access to climate change technologies 84 Jon P. Santamauro

4. Partnership and sharing: beyond mainstream mechanisms 108 Anna Davies

5. Public–private partnerships for wider and equitable access to climate technologies 128 Elisa Morgera and Kati Kulovesi

6. Climate change, technology transfer and intellectual property rights: a modest exercise in thinking outside the box 152 Krishna Ravi Srinivas

7. Access to essential environmental technologies and poor communities: why human rights should be prioritized 181 Oche Onazi

8. Achieving greater access: a new role for established legal principles? 198 Abbe E.L. Brown

9. The ‘new normal’: food, climate change and intellectual property 223 Baskut Tuncak

10. Intellectual property: property rights and the public interest 249 James McLean

11. A view from inside the renewable energy industry 265 Mervyn D. Jones

12. A private institutional investment perspective 271 David A. McGrory

Citation

2013. Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and Climate Change, ed. Abbe E. L. Brown. Cheltenham: Elgar.

Paper

Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and Climate Change

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmail
Access to Justice, Environmental Law, Environmental Protection, Food, Health, Human Rights, Intellectual Property, International Law, Sustainability, Sustainable Development

Unraveling the Nagoya Protocol: A Commentary on the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity (E. Morgera et al.)

Author(s)

Elisa Morgera, Elsa Tsioumani, Matthias Buck

Keywords

access, benefit-sharing, environmental sustainability, sustainable development, international law, human rights, intellectual property rights, health, food, oceans

Abstract

The Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing is an international environmental agreement that concerns environmental sustainability, other sustainable development issues and equity. It addresses a complex subject matter that affects a range of research, development and commercial activities and is relevant to different areas of international law such as human rights, intellectual property rights, health, food and oceans.

Unraveling the Nagoya Protocol identifies textual, contextual and systemic interpretative questions and suggests solutions that aim to give a coherent and balanced meaning to the text of the Protocol. Offering a systematic discussion of the Protocol’s legal innovations against the background of general international law, this commentary aims to be of use to international biodiversity law scholars and practitioners, as well as to international lawyers that approach access and benefit-sharing for the first time

Citation

E. Morgera et al. 2014. Unraveling the Nagoya Protocol: A Commentary on the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Martinus Nijhoff.

Paper

Unraveling the Nagoya Protocol: A Commentary on the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmail
Environmental Rights, Food, GMO, Health, Human Rights

Scrutinizing the Impact of GMOs Through the Prism of Human Rights (R. Patowary)

Author

Rashmi Patowary

Keywords

Earth Jurisprudence, Food, Genetically Modified Organisms, Health, Human Rights

Abstract

Necessity is the mother of invention. The booming population triggered the need to carve out efficient ways to feed the growing millions. Biotechnology answered this need with the creation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They are organisms whose genetic make up has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. Such alterations enabled to create agricultural products (both plants and animals) that were resistant to diseases, harsh seasonal changes and had better nutritional qualities. Thus, it improved food both in quantitative and qualitative terms. But under the garb of these numerous benefits, one should not ignore the potential risks, which these organisms pose to the human health and the environment at large. GMOs provide a risk to human health as it can cause allergic reactions. It also causes significant loss to biodiversity and dismantle the sensitive balance of a food chain.

Human Rights, the inalienable rights bestowed to mankind, preserving its dignity and sanctity faces dilemma in the midst of the benefits and risks of GMOs. The human right to ‘food’ and the human right to ‘health’ are quite relevant in this context. For instance, the benefit of condensing better nutritional qualities in food through the creation of GMOs apparently seems to protect the right to food. But, taking note of the possible threats of allergic reactions (the nature and gravity of which, is not known) and loss to biodiversity, may pose a long-term hidden challenge to the human right to health. Furthermore, human beings are an entity of the ever-changing and mysterious nature. The health and strength of our lives are connected to that of the earth. Thus, a loss of biodiversity and disruption of the sensitive food chain will also have repercussions on our right to food as well. The triggering of genetic mutation will also have effects upon other living organisms, which challenges the greater cohesion inherent in nature. This paper makes a humble attempt to study and analyze subtle but pertinent observations.

The Cartegena Protocol is the first and main international legal instrument regarding biosafety. It broadly covers protection of biodiversity and to regulate the manufacture, import and export of GMO based food products. It emphasis upon the concept of precautionary principle and introduces ‘labeling’ of food containing GMOs. The paper attempts to search solutions and evaluate the efficacy of solutions in existence in the International Legal Framework. The paper will also briefly evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of domestic legislations of India with regard to biosafety. It will try to analyze and evaluate the scales of justice in the light of earth jurisprudence.

Citation

(2014) 07/06 OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development 79-86

Paper

Scrutinizing the Impact of GMOs Through the Prism of Human Rights

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmail
Climate Change, Food, Human Rights, Socio-Economic Rights

A Greener Revolution: Using the Right to Food As a Political Weapon Against Climate Change (G. F. Dumas)

Author(s)

Graham Frederick Dumas

Keywords

Right to Food, Economic and Social Rights, Climate Change, Human Rights and Climate Change

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of human rights, specifically the right to food, as tools for political leverage to encourage states to act on climate change. The right to food is especially appropriate because of the direct impacts it suffers from climate change; as the climate shifts, much scientific research suggests that food production will incur certain deleterious effects. Yet, as the example of India shows, the right to food has been difficult to adjudicate in the past. Indeed, despite favorable caselaw from India’s Supreme Court, and despite an intensive Court-run program designed to force Indian states to distribute food according to the welfare schemes in place, little progress has been made. This is due in part to the unwillingness or inability of the political branches of government to ensure food security to certain segments of the population. At the same time, Brazil has shown a marked improvement in the implementation of the right to food; it has done so well, in fact, that the FAO has held up Brazil as a model for other states. Much of Brazil’s success on the right to food comes from the fact that the program is almost entirely political, rather than judicial. Indeed, buy-in from the political branches of government is arguably the essential component of a successful program to ensure less-justiciable rights like the right to food. For that reason, I suggest that the connection between climate change and the right to food be used by domestic and international activists to increase political pressure on the governments of large, greenhouse-gas-producing states, in an effort to make some of the costs of inaction visible to politicians through the ballot box and the media. Such campaigns are not perfect, and they should not be used to the exclusion of court-focused activism; they should, however, be the backbone of a comprehensive assault on the political status quo regarding climate change.

Citation

(2010) 43 New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 107.

Paper

A Greener Revolution: Using the Right to Food As a Political Weapon Against Climate Change

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmail
Climate Change, Environmental Security, Food, Health, Human Rights, Socio-Economic Rights

A Moral Imperative: The Human Rights Implications of Climate Change (S. C. Aminzadeh)

Author

Sara C. Aminzadeh

Keywords

climate change, environment, human rights, social rights, food security, public health, livelihoods

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly identified as one of the major crises facing the international community in the 21st century. Even conservative forecasts predict dramatic effects to environments, economies, and people around the world. Although climate change is already understood as an environmental problem, and increasingly as an economic one,  the social and human rights implications of climate change are given little discussion. Yet climate change threatens food security, public health, property, and the livelihoods and lives of members of affected communities. Like other environmental issues, climate change threatens the human rights of those living in affected communities.

The ultimate goal of climate change advocacy is to encourage nations to scale back their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a point where GHG concentrations in the atmosphere stabilize and then decrease to a level that prevents dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. However, the sheer size of the problem and the cost of mitigation have forestalled meaningful engagement and cooperation on the issue. Lawyers and environmental advocates have begun to use litigation and other legal avenues as a way to forge progress. One particularly innovative example is a team of lawyers who recently used a human rights approach to climate change in a petition filed on behalf of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). 

This note aims to continue the discourse prompted by the Inuit Petition and explore related issues on climate change and human rights…

Citation

(2007) 30 Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 231.

Paper

A Moral Imperative: The Human Rights Implications of Climate
Change

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterestlinkedintumblrmail