Red de Coordinación en Biodiversidad, el Bloque Verde y FECON

The Biodiversity Coordination Network (Red de Coordinación en Biodiversidad) is a Costa Rican civil society network that has fought against the appropriation, commodification, and privatization of biodiversity and knowledge since the mid-1990s. The informal Network was formed during negotiations that led to the 1998 Biodiversity Law, widely recognized as one of the most comprehensive attempts in the world to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Biodiversity Coordination Network brought together various sectors of Costa Rican civil society, including environmentalists, indigenous organizations, peasant organizations, and academics, using the law to establish protections and rights to offset the powerful market logics and private interests taking shape around early bioprospecting deals such as the infamous Merck/INBio contract.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, following the establishment of the WTO and Costa Rica’s intellectual property rights obligations under the TRIPS agreement, the Biodiversity Coordination Network spearheaded opposition to Costa Rica’s eventual adoption of UPOV-91 and led opposition to patents over life forms more generally. UPOV-91 was presented in the Costa Rican congress twice, each time going nowhere because of the Network’s firm opposition. During the negotiations for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Biodiversity Coordination Network was told that negotiators would not include UPOV-91 in the CAFTA agreement. In late 2003, the Network presented a proposed law to congress which sought to establish a truly sui generis system of plant variety protection that would comply with Costa Rica’s obligations under TRIPS agreement while safeguarding the rights of farmers. The innovative proposal failed to gain ground however when it was announced that the CAFTA negotiating team went against its pledge and included UPOV-91 in the final text.

The Biodiversity Coordination Network worked tirelessly as part of the anti-CAFTA movement, contributing invaluable expertise about UPOV-91, the Budapest Treaty, intellectual property and the privatization of life in general, and on the impacts of CAFTA on biodiversity and the Biodiversity Law. Since the October 2007 approval of CAFTA in a popular referendum the Network has continued to oppose CAFTA’s “implementation agenda,” which includes adhesion to UPOV-91 and the Budapest Treaty, and eventual reforms to the 1998 Biodiversity Law to facilitate intellectual property over biological life. The decade-long efforts of the Biodiversity Coordination Network culminated in February and March of 2008 when a campaign called “I sign for life” (“Yo firmo por la vida”) was launched on a national level in order to collect signatures and try to force a referendum over Costa Rica’s adoption of UPOV-91. This campaign was coordinated by the Bloque Verde and Federación Ecologista y de Conservación de la Naturalez (FECON). While UPOV91 was approved in congress in mid-April, effectively putting an end to the campaign, a combination of environmentalists and anti-CAFTA activists collected over 100,000 signatures and sparked widespread awareness about not only UPOV but the dangerous extension of intellectual property regimes over life forms.

Costa Rica’s passage of CAFTA forces the country to adopt TRIPS-plus style intellectual property regimes, evidences by UPOV91 and the Budapest Treaty, as well as make reforms to the 1998 Biodiversity Law. Amidst these circumstances, the Biodiversity Coordination Network has truly been and will continue to be a lone voice in the belly of the beast.