Intellectual property rights and environmental planning

Increasingly, public and private concerns throughout the world are seeking ways to tap the knowledge of indigenous peoples concerning their use of the natural environment. An understanding of indigenous knowledge systems related to resource use is seen by many as offering benefits to government planners, commercial enterprises, as well as to academic researchers. In some cases, the collection of this information has led to profitable results through the development and marketing of sites used to expand the “ecotourism” industry. Pharmaceutical companies have also turned to tribal peoples to examine their traditional medicinal uses of botanical and mineral resources in the hopes of developing effective and profitable drug treatments. Since research on indigenous knowledge systems has in some cases led to undesirable results there has also emerged a growing desire among tribal peoples themselves to gain more control over the collection and use of information they have so freely provided in the past. The debate over this control of information has centered on the call to ensure the intellectual property rights for indigenous people over their own traditional cultural knowledge. This short paper briefly describes this issue and the effects this call for intellectual property rights may have on government resource managers and environmental planners.