Latest / Hydroponics Daily / The Nagoya Protocol

Transcript

The Nagoya Protocol · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
• 0:03
  Today, we're going to talk about the Nagoya Protocol, which sounds like it's
• 0:07
  a spy novel that's going to be turned into a film starring Tom Cruise or something like that.
• 0:13
  But no, the Nagoya Protocol is a United Nations policy that's been made law
• 0:18
  into legislation in a lot of countries, including the European Union,
• 0:23
  lot in South America, Asia.
• 0:27
  It's been signed, but not ratified in Australia.
• 0:31
  It's not been signed by the USA or Canada, which surprises me.
• 0:38
  But it's because Canada seems to be fairly hot when it comes to environmental policies.
• 0:43
  It's an environmental policy that's law in these countries now that states that
• 0:48
  when you commercialize a genetic material, that you have to put some money back
• 0:55
  to where that genetic material came from.
• 0:57
  And the people who helped commercialize it or come up with the idea of using it.
• 1:02
  So it all stems from a company called Eli Lilly. He was a pharmaceutical company in America.
• 1:08
  My dad used to work for them when they were based in Liverpool.
• 1:11
  And they had a product that was, they went to Madagascar and they got the madagascan
• 1:16
  periwinkle and they found they thought it could be used for diabetes and actually
• 1:21
  it was used against i think non-hodgkinson's lymphoma and a number of other
• 1:24
  diseases and its scientific name is vinca and these these chemicals extracted from it were like.
• 1:30
  Vincistrine and vingblastine and they commercialized them they made a lot of
• 1:35
  money but they never well did they put back enough money back into the madagascan,
• 1:41
  community, certainly extremely poor country, where its genetic resources were
• 1:46
  used to cure diseases in the Western world.
• 1:48
  And so this is like the example used. But why is it important to hydroponics?
• 1:53
  Well, any genetic material, in theory, you have to comply with these laws.
• 1:58
  So these are laws. Whether they're actually implemented and followed through
• 2:02
  on is a different matter.
• 2:04
  You know, the European Union loves to legislate and doesn't necessarily love
• 2:09
  to implement and make those laws actually...
• 2:14
  If somebody was breaking those laws, whether they would actually be prosecuted is another matter.
• 2:20
  I think that's one of the problems between the EU and the UK.
• 2:23
  Normally, when we have a law, we tend to implement it and prosecute people who break it.
• 2:28
  Whereas having a law in principle is mainly what the Nagoya Protocol is happening.
• 2:33
  No one's being prosecuted for using opium poppies in their gardens and things like that.
• 2:40
  And certainly if you say you had a crop from Afghanistan or Pakistan or the
• 2:47
  Himalayas or from certain parts of the Caribbean or Thailand, for example,
• 2:52
  and you were using it and making a lot of money from it, in theory,
• 2:55
  you'd have to give the money back to the communities where
• 2:58
  that came from that's not happening that i'm aware
• 3:01
  of even things crazy like barley people
• 3:05
  have looked at giving money back to certain parts of
• 3:07
  the world where barley came from it's never going
• 3:10
  to happen in a million years you can't imagine the big breweries suddenly
• 3:13
  devoting a certain amount who's to say how much
• 3:16
  do you actually give back it's an area i mean i've been to numerous talks on
• 3:20
  this and been bored rigid by people from places like defra where they've got
• 3:25
  people who their job is just to look at this regulations if it's going to be
• 3:29
  a law it might as well be implemented and it might as well be you know have
• 3:33
  some weight behind it certainly large.
• 3:37
  Multinational companies if they're going to be ripping out plants and
• 3:40
  animals from developing countries and commercializing
• 3:44
  them they definitely need to be giving back but do people
• 3:47
  who are growing food and growing medicine for
• 3:50
  their own use do they need to be giving back i'd say probably not
• 3:53
  and so i don't think the nuances are reflected
• 3:56
  that's been the nagoya protocol if you
• 3:59
  want to find out more there are ample resources online
• 4:02
  about it it's the sort of thing that university departments will spend at endless
• 4:07
  times studying you could probably do a master's in it at some university but
• 4:12
  yeah that's nagoya protocol next time you see that referenced you know exactly
• 4:17
  what it's about it's about giving money to countries where genetic materials originated,
• 4:22
  That's been Hyde Upon His Daily for today.