Meaning, Scope, Nature, Issues and Concerns of Biodiversity — Intellectual Property Rights II Notes

Meaning, Scope, Nature, Issues and Concerns of Biodiversity

In the 1990s, a US company obtained a patent on the wound-healing use of turmeric — a remedy every Indian grandmother had used for centuries. India objected, produced ancient texts, and got the patent revoked in 1997. The story shows the double face of biodiversity: it is a priceless natural inheritance, and it is under constant threat of being taken and monopolised by others.

What biodiversity is, and why the law worries about it

Biological diversity (“biodiversity”) means the variability among living organisms — the sheer variety of life a country holds. The law and the CBD 1992 read it at three levels:

Genetic diversity — variation within a species (different varieties of rice, breeds of cattle).
Species diversity — the variety of species in a region (tigers, neem trees, gut bacteria).
Ecosystem diversity — the variety of habitats and ecological communities (forests, wetlands, coral reefs).

Section 2(b), Biological Diversity Act 2002: “biological diversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources and the ecological complexes of which they are part and includes diversity within species or between species and of eco-systems.”

In Simple Terms: Biodiversity is all the different life in a place, counted three ways — genes, species and ecosystems. India, with only 2.4% of the world’s land, holds nearly 8% of its recorded species; it is one of 17 mega-diverse nations.

Scope and importance

Economic value — food crops, medicines, timber, cosmetics; genetic resources are the raw material of biotechnology.
Ecological value — pollination, soil formation, climate regulation, clean water.
Scientific and cultural value — traditional knowledge, research, heritage.

Issues and concerns

Loss of biodiversity — habitat destruction, pollution, over-exploitation, invasive species and climate change drive extinctions.
Bio-piracy — outsiders taking resources/knowledge and patenting them abroad without benefit-sharing (topic 7).
Access and benefit-sharing (ABS) — ensuring the communities and country that conserved a resource share in the profits from its use.
Weak documentation — undocumented traditional knowledge is easy to appropriate.

🧩 WORKED EXAMPLE — why a country needs an ABS law

Facts. A foreign firm collects a rare Western-Ghats plant used locally for fever, isolates its compound, and markets a drug abroad, sharing nothing with India.

Rule. Biodiversity is a national resource; a State has sovereign rights over its biological resources (CBD 1992, Art.15), which the BD Act 2002 protects through access regulation and benefit-sharing.

Apply. Un-regulated access lets the firm capture all the value and monopolise a resource the community conserved — the mischief the Act targets.

Conclusion. Such access must go through the NBA and yield fair and equitable benefit-sharing — the core policy of Unit II.

flowchart TD
    ROOT["Biodiversity"]:::root
    ROOT --> A["Genetic diversity (within a species)"]:::leaf
    ROOT --> B["Species diversity (variety of species)"]:::leaf
    ROOT --> C["Ecosystem diversity (variety of habitats)"]:::leaf
    ROOT --> D["Concerns: loss, bio-piracy, ABS, documentation"]:::concern
    classDef root fill:#FFF8DC,stroke:#000,stroke-width:1px,color:#000;
    classDef leaf fill:#E6F3FF,stroke:#1E3A8A,color:#000;
    classDef concern fill:#FDE2E2,stroke:#C0392B,color:#000;
    linkStyle default stroke:#888,stroke-width:1px;

Case Laws

Divya Pharmacy v Union of India (2018) — even Indian entities must share benefits; upheld the ABS regime under the BD Act.

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