Climate Change and Protection of Traditional Ethnomedical Knowledge in India: A Critical Socio-Legal Reappraisal

Abstract

The communitarian ethnomedicinal traditional knowledge systems comprise an essential component of indigenous culture, faith and identity. While indigenous ethnomedicinal traditional knowledge systems promise to revolutionise modern medicine, the bioresources of these medicinal systems are increasingly at threat due to climate change and inadequate legal protection of indigenous communities’ traditional knowledge. Based on secondary sources, this paper attempts to critically analyse the existing legal mechanisms to ensure more significant and more equitable protection of traditional knowledge of indigenous communities in India. It also attempts to reform the revelatory foundation and existing conceptual and normative framework to locate international and supranational principles and national legal procedures with the local praxis. This sociological jurisprudential analysis argues for transforming the present predominantly commercial approach of the Intellectual Property Laws to a more communitarian cultural rights-based and envisioning greater protection to tangible bioresources and intangible indigenous ethnomedical traditional knowledge and also for preservation against climate change-related environmental and socio-cultural disruption.KeywordsClimate changeBiodiversityIntellectual property lawsTraditional knowledgeIndigenous ethnomedicine