Vandana Shiva, “Bioprospecting as Sophisticated Biopiracy,” Signs 32, no. 2 (Winter 2007), 307-313.

• 307 – “Bioprospecting is a term that was created in response to the problematic relationship between global commercial interests and the biological resources and indigenous knowledge of local communities — and to the epidemic of biopiracy, the patenting of indigenous knowledge related to biodiversity.”
• “It is derived from prospecting for minerals and fossil fuels. However, unlike fossil fuels, living resources are not useless unless exploited by global commercial interests for global markets. Biodiversity is the basis of living cultures. It is the foundation of the living economies of two-thirds of humanity, who depend on biodiversity for their livelihoods and needs.”
• “Viewed by indigenous communities, bioprospecting is seen as an expropriation of their collective and cumulative innovation, which they have utilized, protected, and conserved since time immemorial.”
• 308 – “Thus bioprospecting leads to the enclosure of the biological and intellectual commons through the conversion of indigenous communities’ usurped biodiversity and biodiversity-related knowledge into commodities protected by intellectual property rights (IPRs).”
• “Bioprospecting is being promoted as a model for relationships between corporations, which commercialize indigenous knowledge, and indigenous communities, which have collectively developed the knowledge. It is being presented as an alternative to biopiracy. However, bioprospecting is merely a sophisticated form of biopiracy.”
• 310 – “Taking knowledge from indigenous communities through bioprospecting is only the first step in developing an IPR-protected industrial system that markets commodities that have been developed through local knowledge but are not based on the ethical, epistemological, or ecological structures of that knowledge system.”
• 311 – “In the case of agricultural resources and knowledge, which multiply by sharing and do not intrinsically reduce the givers’ share, the community of uses is always expanding. Thus, seeds travel across communities, increasing their uses and innovations, becoming available to all communities that have shared their biological and intellectual contributions.”