Pamplona Meeting, August 2004
From left: Yosi Margalit (external speaker, Israel), Miltos
Ladikas (UK project partner), Doris Schroeder (projectcoordinator), Udo Schuklenk (South Africa project partner),
Dafna Feinholz (Mexico project partner), Carolina Lasen
Diaz (external advisor, Spain), Fatima Alvarez-Castillo
(Philippines project partner).
In August 2004, the group met at the 9th ISSEI (International Society for the Study of
European Ideas) conference in Pamplona, Spain. The aims of the meeting were threefold:
1. To raise awareness about benefit sharing issues amongst lawyers, political scientists,
philosophers, economists and related disciplines in Europe.
2. To receive feedback on papers written.
3. To discuss all relevant issues for the second half of the project.
Carolina Lasen Diaz
Carolina Lasen Diaz and Doris Schroeder co-presented a
paper entitled Sharing the Benefits of Genetic Research:
From Biodiversity to Human Genomics, outlining main
differences between benefit sharing with regard to human
versus non-human resources.
Doris Schroeder
The presenters main recommendation was that the
Convention on Biodiversity's and Bonn Guidelines' approach
to benefit sharing is not suitable for the area of human
genomics. Instead the approach of the Ethics Committee of
the Human Genome Project is preferable.
Dafna Feinholz
Dafna Feinholz and Fatima Alvarez-Castillo co-presented a
paper entitled Genomics and Benefit Sharing with
Developing Countries – Still a long way to go, particularly
for women summarising the main obstacles to women's
involvement in benefit sharing negotiations.
Fatima (Tim) Alvarez-Castillo
Miltos Ladikas
Miltos Ladikas' paper on Participation and CapacityBuilding Issues in Benefit Sharing criticised the top-down
approach to capacity-building as envisaged by the Bonn
Guidelines. By reviewing the debate on participation in
Europe, Miltos argued that the Bonn Guidelines follow a
failed concept of participation that is based on one-way
education and communication flow.
He suggested targeted information campaigns and the instigation of community debates as
the main step towards institutional building, and trust building exercises as a precondition for
successful benefit sharing agreements.
Michael Cloete
Michael Cloete, an external speaker from the University of South Africa, presented a paper
on Globalisation, Democracy and the Possibility of Dialogue: An African Perspective
criticising free market liberalism and introducing the audience to the African philosophy of
Ubuntu. One of his questions was whether an alternative economic system could be built on
the world view of Ubuntu. The essence of Ubuntu can be described by the belief: "I am
through others", explaining the philosophy's focus on solidarity and obligations. Michael's
main demand from the paper was that new terms of "development" have to be negotiated,
terms that are not dominated by libertarian financial institutions, such as the International
Monetary Fund.
Udo Schuklenk
In Benefit Sharing – Defining “Communities”, Udo Schuklenk developed three main points:
1) Benefit sharing practices regarding traditional knowledge of indigenous communities have
the potential to be divisive due to their focus on ethnic communities. 2) The patent system
and the concept of communally owned traditional knowledge are incommensurate and to try
and ascribe ownership of publicly available knowledge to ethnic groups of individuals can
lead to unjust distributions of benefits. 3) Democratically elected national governments are
the only possible legitimate body to represent indigenous communities in benefit sharing
negotiations (making the current concept of benefit sharing redundant).
Yosi Margalit and Miltos Ladikas
Yosi Margalit, an external speaker from Israel addressed the
issue of representation and participation of indigenous
communities in politics by concentrating on Bedouins in
Israel.
ISSEI Main Panel - Welcome Session
ISSEI seeks to study the inventive and creative aspects of
the European mind in science, religion, philosophy, art,
literature, sociology, politics, history, economics and
psychology.
Doris Schroeder
During the Welcome Session, the project co-ordinator
briefly introduced the project and the main issues on benefit
sharing to the plenary audience.
ISSEI Audience
It is with great sadness that we want to note that Sascha Talmor from Israel, one of the cofounders of ISSEI and one of the organisers of the Pamplona conference, passed away
unexpectedly on 20 August 2004.