The North/South divide: a political stake

The purpose of this section is to highlight that the North-South divide renders reaching food security and sustainable agriculture objectives necessarily more complex to attain. The differences in political discourse and objectives between countries of the North and countries of the South³⁴ complicate the negotiation and implementation of international environmental treaties (Gonzalez, 2015: 408).

Regarding the international negotiations on biodiversity (in general) and on access and benefit-sharing in particular, De Jonge and Louwaars (2009: 28-40) recognize that there is a South-North imbalance in resource allocation and

exploitation (see also Esquinas-Alcazar, 2005: xxv). Studying the perceptions of different stakeholders, they have identified six principles underlying ABS. The first three are 1) the South-North imbalance in resource allocation and exploi­tation, 2) biopiracy and the imbalance in IPRs and 3) an imbalance between IP protection and the public interest. These principles are driven by the perception of imbalance and a motivation to increase equity. The last three principles are 4) the need to conserve biodiversity, 5) a shared interest in food security and 6) the protection of the cultural identity of traditional communities. This second set of principles concentrates on other aims such as nature conservation, food security and the preservation of traditional cultures.

The above identified first three tensions confirm this analysis in that the mentioned tensions (between ‘public seeds’ versus IPRs; advancements in bio­technology versus small-scale farmers; and informal exchange networks versus over-regulation of access to seeds) are crystallized in the more general divide between the gene-poor but economically and technologically rich Northern countries and the gene-rich but economically and technologically poor South­ern countries.

Over the last century, parallel developments took place within three related fields (the economic, environmental and agricultural fields), which all led to a conviction of dispossession by and of the ‘poor’ and the ‘small’. In the environ­mental field, bioprospecting activities - initially aimed at contributing to the conservation of genetic resources - were rapidly associated to biopiracy cam­paigns, which sole objective was seen as procuring more benefits to big com­panies from the North. People from developing countries voiced that these companies were stealing their resources and their associated traditional knowl­edge without any authorization or compensation.

In the agricultural field, the rise of GMOs and other modern biotechnologies, coupled with the expansion of patents over plants, has increased farmers’ concern that they have been dispossessed of the seeds they had conserved, developed and improved over millennia, without any recognition for their role or compensation. The shift of the control over seeds and their access, from the collectively managed access by farmers in their fields, to individual and excluding rights of mega-companies in their laboratories has crystalized the North-South divide. Stoll writes that

[t]he recognition of plant breeders’ rights and the proprietary character of breeding lines were of comfort to the breeding industry - which in those days was mainly situated in the North. The so-called “farmers’ rights” and the concept of a sovereign right on GRs can be roughly considered a counterclaim of the South.

(Stoll, 2009: 7)

In the economic field and from a global perspective, recent studies published by Oxfam (2014; 2016; also see Hardoon et al., 2016) emphasizes the growing economic divide between the majority of the world’s (poor) population and a very small percentage of it benefiting from most of the global wealth.³⁵ As regards to food, the lack of resources to grow or purchase sufficient food to

Challenges in the exchange of PGRFA 65 satisfy their dietary needs plunges 805 million people in chronic undernourish­ment (FAO, 2014b: 11).

[t]he contemporary global agrifood system is capital intensive, centralized and consolidated, sourcing labor and natural resources where they are cheapest and selling where they bring the highest prices. In markets for other goods, if people can’t generate a demand, they go without the particular good.

(Aoki, 2011: 478)

These developments have strengthened the above mentioned ascertainment of inequity and widened the South/North divide in international negotiation and failure in the implementation of international environmental treaties. Gonzalez concludes her analysis with these words:

[a] systematic examination of international environmental law from a North-South perspective can expose the historic and contemporary inequi­ties that have compromised the effectiveness of international environmental law and hindered our ability to address the pressing environmental problems confronting the global community. This article has provided an overview of the origins of the North-South divide in colonial and post-colonial eco­nomic law and policy and the failure of sustainable development to remedy its social, economic and environmental consequences. The objective is to provoke further discussion and analysis about new approaches to interna­tional environmental law that will promote environmental justice in an era of growing economic inequality and looming ecological collapse.

(Gonzalez, 2015: 434)