Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the
Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and
cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and
indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents
and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of
biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to
patent the rights to many plants, including basmati, neem, and wheat.
The author presents details of the specific attempts made by
corporations to secure these patents and the legal actions taken to
fight them. The book goes beyond the legal struggle to position the
necessary solutions to corporate control including the exploring the
Rights of Nature and proposing a framework for a Universal Declaration
of the Rights of Mother Earth. It is the first detailed legal history of
the international and national laws related to biodiversity and
Intellectual Property Rights.