Description
Book SynopsisThis book focuses on analysing how legal systems set the terms for interactions between human beings and plants.
The story that the book recounts is one of experimental lawmaking in Ecuador, a country where over the past decade, governmental officials and civil society advocates have attempted to reconfigure how human individuals and institutions relate to nature, by following an eco-centric approach to lawmaking. In doing so, Ecuadorian legislators, administrators, and judges have taken seriously the ontologies of non-human entities, including plants, through a process that has required the continuous navigation of tensions with certain logics that pervade conventional legal regimes. The book endeavours to disrupt these conventional assumptions and approaches to lawmaking by taking seriously alternative strategies to reconstitute interactions between people and plants. In doing so, the book argues in favour of an ecological turn in laws that govern vegetal life. The a
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A Note on Methodology
Structure of the Book and Chapter Summaries
Part 1: Conventional Approaches to the Governance of Human-Plant Interactions
Chapter 1. Taking Plants Seriously in Law
1.1. Challenging the Epistemology of Plants
1.2. Recognising Nature as a Subject with Rights
1.3. Eco-centric Ecuador: Constitutional Protections for Pachamama
1.4. Towards an "Ecological Turn" in Law
Chapter 2. Turning Plants into Intellectual Property
2.1. Plants as Inventions
2.2. The Emergence of Systems for Plant Breeders’ Rights
2.3. Alternatives to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Model of Intellectual Property for Plants
Chapter 3. Universalising an Instrumental Approach to Plants in Law
3.1. The Contraction of Policy Space for Intellectual Property Lawmaking
3.2. The Expansion of UPOV as Explained by Free Trade Agreements
Chapter 4. The Logic of Plant Genetic Resources
4.1. The End of the Common Heritage Approach
4.2. The Emergence of the Global Biodiversity Treaties
4.3. The Instrumental, Economic, and Proprietary Logics of Plant Genetic Resources
Part 2: Experimenting with an Eco-Centric Approach: An Ecuadorian Story
Chapter 5. Reconfiguring Intellectual Property in Ecuador
5.1. The Ingenios Act: Intellectual Property Meets Sumak Kawsay
5.2. The Making of the Ingenios Act
5.3. The Aspirations of the Ingenios Act
5.4. The New Institutionalism of the Ingenios Act
5.5. The Ingenios Act: Reimagination or Recapitulation?
Chapter 6. The Ecuadorian Approach to Intellectual Property for Plants
6.1. The Reconstitution of the Plant Variety in the Ingenios Act
6.2. The Limits of Intellectual Property for Plants in the Ingenios Act
Chapter 7. Alternatives to Conventional Legal Imaginaries for Human-Plant Interactions
7.1. Seed Law as an Alternative to Intellectual Property
7.2. Traditional Knowledge Protection as an Alternative to Intellectual Property
7.3. Food Sovereignty as an Alternative to Intellectual Property
Chapter 8. Lessons from the Ecuadorian Experiment with an Ecological Turn in Lawmaking
8.1. Pachamama Goes to Court: Adjudicating the Rights of Nature
8.2. What the Rights of Nature Jurisprudence Means for Plants
8.3. Lessons from Eco-Centric Experiments in Lawmaking
Bibliography
Appendix I: Tables
Appendix II: Figures
