Biodiversity Program Accomplishments

An import aspect of our accomplishments includes our Research & Publications and strategic work through our other programs.

Some of our accomplishments are highlighted below.

Promotion of Convention On Biological Diversity

Since 1993, CIEL has worked to promote implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity , a legal framework for a comprehensive ecosystem-based approach to conservation. Our work in this area included:

• Partcipation in the Conferences of the Parties of the Convention
• Assistance to the Convention Secretariat in preparing background information and papers on these issues
• Promotion of the Convention's benefit-sharing principles through research, advocacy and advice to indigenous activists, environmental activists, and governmental officials.

In 1997 at the intergovernmental workshop on traditional knowledge in CIEL presented recommendations, Using Intellectual Property as a Tool to Protect Traditional Knowledge.

Analysis and Recommendations in Marine Law

In 1999, CIEL prepared two white papers for WWF-US on key legal issues facing negotiators of a new fisheries agreement in the Central and Western Pacific, Effective Decision-Making and Effective Dispute Resolution. The papers reviewed precedent in international law as well as creative options for effectively designing and implementing regional fisheries management organizations and arrangements -- one of the top priorities in international conservation law today.

Reform Trade Rules and Liberalize Trade

CIEL seeks to 1) reform trade rules so that they support rather than impede conservation and sustainable use. 2) ensure that trade liberalization is paralleled and balanced by stronger frameworks for conservation and sustainable use of biological resources affected by trade.

• For additional information on work relating to trade and conservation, including CIEL's precedent-setting amicus briefs filed with the WTO Dispute Settlement Body in the "Shrimp/Turtle" case, see the Trade and Sustainable Development Program.
  
  
• November 1999 CIEL filed a citizen's submission to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC was set up by the United States, Canada and Mexico under NAFTA's environmental side agreement to investigate failures of environmental law enforcement that might result from the pressures of free trade. CIEL's petition complained that the United States had failed to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act against logging companies. It was supported by 8 other groups from Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.
  
  
• In cooperation with Greenpeace, CIEL prepared recommendations on how to reconcile international trade rules with fisheries conservation, Fisheries Conservation and Trade Rules: Ensuring that Trade Law Promotes Sustainable Fisheries, for release at the WTO ministerial conference in Geneva in 1998.
  
  
• In 1997, CIEL published a study on the potential impact of trade policy on the use of timber product ecolabeling to encourage sustainable management of forests, Applying Trade Rules to Timber Ecolabeling, and in the same year served as NGO advisor to the US delegation to UN talks on forests.

Ayahuasca Patent Case

March 1999 legal challenge to a US patent claimed on the "ayahuasca" vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, which is native to the Amazonian rainforest. CIEL filed this request for reexamination of the patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office on behalf of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment (the Amazon Alliance). COICA objected to the patent because it purported to appropriate for a U.S. citizen a plant that is sacred to many indigenous peoples of the Amazon, used by them in religious and healing ceremonies.

In March 1999, CIEL, COICA and the Amazon Coalition also asked the PTO to carry out a broader review of the impacts of its policies and procedures on traditional knowledge. In August 1999, CIEL followed this request up with detailed recommendations for changes to PTO procedures on "prior art" that would better protect traditional knowledge.

 

Policy Reform Recommendations

In 1996, we published What Price Biodiversity?, which proposed reforms to US law and policy. We also co-authored a policy brief with Conservation International, Encouraging Private Sector Support for Biodiversity Conservation: The Use of Economic Incentives and Legal Tools.