Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources:the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources

Estelle Bienabe, Cerkia Bramley, Johann Kirsten and Dirk Troskie

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This is the scientific report from a research programme which explored the current lack of a suitable public system for protecting GIs in Southern Africa. In contrast to the European Union, the current South African legal framework only provides for the protection of GIs as collective and, in certain circumstances, as certification trademarks. The lack of a public system through which to valorize GIs was identified as excluding resource poor farmers (but also commercial larger scale farmers) from a potentially useful tool for improving their market access. The need for a public system of protection also emanates from the significance of the wild resources found in South Africa and Namibia, which are often the only source of income for resource poor communities and which is threatened by bio‐piracy. It thus appeared important to assess the merits of developing an institutional framework for protecting GIs in Southern Africa and to evaluate the needs for a sui generis legal system. Secondly, an analysis was done of the local dynamics based on specific agro‐food products. Two central questions were therefore addressed in this study: "How can local communities successfully protect their resources and differentiate their production through GIs?" and "What is the nature and extent of the required institutional and legal framework to achieve this objective?”.

Keywords: Geographical indications; indigenous resources; intellectual property rights; collectivae action; Southern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-env, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/31615/1/MPRA_paper_31615.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources: the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources (2011)
Working Paper: Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources: the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:31615

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().