Traditional Knowledge Heritage Of National Pharmaceutical Benefit-sharing

Access and benefit-sharing (ABS) for genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge has become a key issue for many international forums. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) firstly established the principle of access and benefit sharing for genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in 1992. Following CBD, UN/FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), UNESCO (United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization), WHO (World Health Organization), WTO (World Trade Organization) and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) have all set up special forums for ABS (access and benefit sharing) and patent issues on genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, requiring the Parties to respect and admit the rights of indigenous people and local communities for providing genetic resources and traditional knowledge. The issue on ABS for genetic resources and traditional knowledge is involved in broad domains such as politics, socio-economics, religion and cultures. It had become a comprehensive subject concerned by academic institutions, governments, and non-governmental organizations.China has been focusing the researches on ABS for Chinese traditional medicines (CTM) which includes traditional Chinese medicine, ethnic medicine and folk medicine). CTM is one of the world's three major systems of traditional medicines. As short of relevant domestic legislation, and other reasons, Chinese traditional knowledge is suffering from "bio-piracy", and its inheriting and use also face many problems, in particular, succeeding to and making use of ethnic medicine. China is underway to establish a national-level ABS system to protect Chinese traditional medicine from bio-piracy and misappropriation, and to promote the sustainable development of Chinese medicine and ethnic medicine. Mainly, the existing studies focus on inheriting and ABS for knowledge of ethnic traditional medicine, and it is expected that the researches are helpful for international & national legislation.This study is different from others with a view of intellectual property. It collected first-hand information and data about ethnic medicines for ethnic groups of Dong, Miao, Yi, Meng and Tibetan, with perspectives and approaches of ethno-botany, ecology, anthropology, ethnology through field work, people interviews (88 persons), questionnaire etc. During 30 months, the field work was conducted at more than 100 minority villages in such provinces and autonomous regions as Guizhou, Hunan, Sichuan, Liaoning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Based on the first-hand information and data, this article, at first, has studied the actual status, characteristics and trends in inheriting the knowledge of ethnic traditional medicine, analyzed the intrinsic factors to impact the knowledge inheriting. Secondly, it has also studied the status on ABS for traditional knowledge of ethnic medicines. Thirdly, it has, in particular, explored the impacts of inheriting CTM knowledge on ABS. Finally, it put forward the solutions on ABS with the view of inheriting CTM knowledge.The study shows:1) The potential risk of CTM knowledge loss is different with various ethnic groups. CTM knowledge for Dong, Miao, Yi nationalities has no literal records or narrow use of characters and are inherited by traditional models, while it has literal records for CTM of Meng and Tibetan nationalities and it is mainly inherited by modern models. Therefore, the former has higher possibility of losing or comedown than the latter. To protect traditional knowledge of ethnic medicines, both documentation and modern education are used for documentation, conservation and development. However, documentation and modern education are changing CTM's property rights from private-owned or collective-owned to public. Consequently, ABS for traditional knowledge of ethnic medicine faces severe challenges.2) The public knowledge is the main information sources of business development for ethnic medicine. It reflects that the rights of CTM inheritors or holders are neglected by the relevant academic institutions, industries and governments. In the other hand, the right of CTM is lowly valued, because the existing benefit-sharing is mostly one-time payment by monetary rather than long-term benefit-sharing, i.e. technical cooperation or stocking-sharing.3) Documentation and modern education potentially pushes CTM into public from private-owned or collective-owned, and this will fundamentally change the CTM's property rights from private into public.4) Because of co-existence of traditional and modern transmission models, the rights should be differentiated as private property, co-property and public property. The public property should be defined as state-owned by laws.5) Given the diversification of the property rights, the holders of the rights should be classified as primary and subordinate, and their rights and responsibilities should be definitely regulated by laws.6) Traditional medicine knowledge includes not only medicine knowledge but also religion and the knowledge about protection and sustainable use of biological resources. Therefore, the purposes of benefit-sharing should not be limited in the balance of interests between stakeholders, but also we should take into account the protection of biological diversity and sustainable use of biological resources, as well as promotion of the ethnic culture.