ABSTRACT
Biodiversity and indigenous peoples have an intimate link in most of Asia. Almost 70 per cent of the estimated 250 million indigenous peoples in the world live in Asia. The region is also one of the richest in the world in tenns of biodiversity, with species richness among terrestrial orders generally in the 40-60 per cent range of global diversity. But as the world’s indigenous peoples are increasingly threatened by the destruction of the forests many of them call home, their irreplaceable knowledge is threatened as well. By ignoring the rights of indigenous and other long-term forest dwellers and insisting that forest resources are state-owned, national governments have provided economic and political elites with easy legal access to forest resources and short-term profits have been made by the favoured few. But the costs in terms of forest degradation have been staggeringly high. The disappearance of the tribes and their cultures implies one cost that even the most narrowly pecuniary of economic planners should appreciate: the loss of knowledge of how to use the diverse forest species. This article explores these issues by assessing the intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples in Asia and the legal mechanisms which are open to them to protect these rights.
