Conserving Diversity of Sustainable Development: The Case of Plants of Insecticidal and Veterinary Medicine Importance

The debate on north-south relations, sustainable development and maintenance of biodiversity has assumed renewed seriousness in the light of current controversy on intellectual property rights. While the right of the nations have been taken into account, rights of the poor people who have produced or maintained much of the ecological knowledge have not been adequately acknowledge. The paper provides list of several hundred plants which have been used for veterinary medicine or plant protection purposes by the local people in India and elsewhere. Our continuing work on documentation of local technical innovations and ecological knowledge systems indicates considerable potential for building upon peoples’ knowledge for developing sustainable technologies. We recognize the need for cataloguing this knowledge more systematically so that inter-disciplinary screening can take place for extending in some cases the frontier of science. Institutional arrangements will need to be made so that the producers and preservers of this knowledge are not denied fair returns from the local resource or a local practice when it is commercialized. We also argue that the descriptors of germplasm used in various gene banks need to be modified to acknowledge and catalogue the cultural and ecological knowledge of the people associated with a given local crop variety or an animal breed. It is also hoped that systematic research on plant-derived pesticides might help in reducing and in due course eliminating the hazardous chemical pesticides. A strong case is made for redefining the framework for conservation of bio-diversity so that stakes and insights of local people become the basic building block of future developmental strategies and interventions.