Kelowna

Attempts to set up databases of traditional knowledge are coming under attack from the very groups they are intended to benefit.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Geneva-based body that promotes intellectual property rights, is keen to establish databases in which indigenous groups would record their cultural knowledge. Patent examiners would be encouraged to check a country's databases to see if a new idea, such as a plant-based medicine, is part of the traditional knowledge of that nation.

But delegates at the World's Indigenous Peoples conference, held on 16–19 October in Kelowna, British Columbia, described how some groups are concerned that the databases could be used to exploit their cultural heritage. Some Canadian tribes, for example, already have individual databases. But a national project, conducted on a shoe-string budget by the Centre for Traditional Knowledge at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, has suffered because indigenous groups are reluctant to make their databases available. The groups fear that secret traditions associated with plants or substances will be stolen, according to government officials working on the project.

Verna Miller, a custodian of traditional knowledge for the Nicola Tribal Association in Merritt, British Columbia, adds that her tribe guards its secrets so closely that even she doesn't know the password to its database — only the tribal elders have it.

Overcoming such diffidence may be difficult. Advocates for indigenous groups fear that the databases could be used by Western companies and scientists aiming to profit from traditional knowledge. Controversial cases, such as the award and subsequent retraction of a US patent for a turmeric-based wound remedy used in India (see Nature 389, 6; 199710.1038/37838), have generated widespread mistrust of patent organizations such as WIPO. “I can't think of a more inappropriate place for discussions on traditional knowledge,” says Debra Harry, executive director of the Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism in Wadsworth, Nevada.

WIPO officials say they hope that involving indigenous groups in the development of the databases should help. The organization is consulting over 50 developed and developing countries about their requirement for databases and has set up a web portal for patent examiners, which already links to established databases in India and China. Two indigenous groups have also been granted observer status at meetings of the WIPO committee on traditional knowledge. “We want to make sure people are confident they have input to the process,” says Tony Taubman, head of the organization's traditional knowledge division. “It would be fatuous to sit in Geneva and dream up a one-size-fits-all solution.”

WIPO will next year publish reports on the databases and on other issues, which it hopes will clarify how traditional knowledge can be protected. But delegates at the Kelowna meeting are yet to be convinced that the idea will work. “I am highly sceptical that a national database will fly,” says a Canadian scientist who works closely with indigenous groups. “At the heart of the debate is control of the knowledge. We have a long way to go. This takes commitment I haven't seen at a provincial or national level.”

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