Expanding IPR to indigenous groups is not the goldilocks solution – capitalism has functionally failed in the sphere of IP!

However, creating intellectual property rights for indigenous knowledge extends a device of early European capitalism to societies that are often in part precapitalist. Ironically, proponents of these rights seek to address problems caused in part by the expansion of capitalism by employing a tool of capitalism. The idea that more capitalism is needed to cure its own problems is certainly not novel, but it is one that anthropologists and indigenous people should approach with caution. The severity of the obstacles to implementing intellectual property rights suggests two conclusions. First, the direct route to using these rights, as outlined in the bottom-up and middle-ground approaches, is less tenable than the more indirect top-down approach. This conclusion stems from the fact that intellectual property depends on state support and intervention to achieve balance between the interests of scientists, industry, consumers, groups who are recognized as having indigenous status, and groups who are not. Indirect compensation for indigenous rights appears to be palatable to states with biological resources, as shown in the FA0 agreement on farmers’ rights. On the other hand, nation-states are likely to be reluctant to allow indigenous people to have a monopoly on rights to biological resources. Nations that must enforce these rights will weigh the increased cost of biological resources and more difficult access to them against the needs of the majority urban populations for cheap food and medicine. States are unlikely to accept either the goal of equity for indigenous interests or the burdens of managing direct compensation. The second conclusion is that a great deal of applied and basic anthropological research is needed in this area. Achieving the conservation and/or equity goals for indigenous knowledge will require the enlightenment of states and users of biological resources in industrial countries, and anthropologists can play a critical educational role. The basic research agenda is perhaps even more challenging. Any internationally sponsored effort to meet conservation or equity goals for indigenous people will require the transfer of funds from the industrial users of genetic resources (Barton and Christensen 1988). Such a transfer may be accepted by industrial users if it promises conservation and continued access to biological resources. However, these users and sponsoring agencies are likely to ask some hard questions that only better ethnobiological research can answer: 1. How are resources and knowledge distributed among indigenous people and others in a biologically diverse region? 2. How are biological resources managed by indigenous people and others, and how is management affected by social change? 3. How will the increased costs of implementing indigenous intellectual property rights benefit indigenous people and others? 4. What local means regulate access to knowledge and resources? Are these compatible with intellectual property? A large percentage of ethnobiological research has been descriptive and qualitative ,and analysis has emphasized the structure and evolution of folk knowledge as something isolated from the ecology and management of biological resources. More ecological and process-oriented ethnobiology faces the severe problem of lack of historical data. More quantitative data would be useful, but quantitative research methods for these ethnobiological questions are not readily available or applicable on a broad scale. Conventional ethnobiology has generally not taken advantage of new biochemical tools for describing the diversity and structure of plant populations. The failure of intellectual property rights to meet their economic goals in fully capitalist, industrial societies invites skepticism about the ability of these rights to achieve either conservation or equity goals in less developed countries. This skepticism is amplified by the four obstacles noted above. Intellectual property rights are but one means of advancing the cause of indigenous interests. Intellectual property is attractive because of its ubiquity in the expansion of world capitalism, but other ways of constituting rights, such as guaranteeing human, cultural, or land rights, might be more effective in meeting the goals of conserving indigenous knowledge and providing more equitable treatment for indigenous people who have been generous with their knowledge and resources.