The link is unique and linear—the aff creates new social conflicts and opportunities for knowledge extraction in non-state systems outside the Western IP regime.

First, the creation of new forms of property rights is likely to interfere with the operation of the existing local systems in a variety of problematic ways. The narrow economic focus that the global intellectual property regime brings to bear on the regulation of traditional knowledge creates the risk that the real benefits of local knowledge and innovation for development may fail to eventuate for the same reasons that the economic focus of the development project itself has not resulted in the anticipated benefits for the global South (see Collier 2007; Easterly 2006; Escobar 1995). In particular, it glosses over key issues about distribution of benefits and ensuring equitable access to resources. The establishment of new market-based regulatory systems over tangible resources, such as land, has a history of enabling resources that were once of broad benefit to large numbers of people to be effectively captured by a small and closed group of people. This small group is often comprised of male elites and then of foreign corporate interests at the last stage of the commodification process.12 Similar consequences are likely to flow from a market-based approach to traditional knowledge regulation.

In this respect, there are real lessons to be learnt from the work of those who have investigated the problems created by the transformation of customary tenure into western-style property regimes (Fitzpatrick et al. 2012; Platteau 1996, 2000) and also the breakdown in social relationships caused by the transformation of labour into a market-based paradigm in Melanesia (see, for example, Curry and Koczberski 2012). The expanding bodies of literature in these fields demonstrate that the social tensions caused by disputes over how to calculate and distribute resource rents have led to the phenomena known as the ‘resource curse’, whereby developing countries that are resource rich often struggle to translate their wealth into broad-based development and social conflict eventuates (see Bainton 2010; Filer and Macintyre 2006; Regan 1998). However, although generally pessimistic, there are a number of hopeful directions emerging from this literature—for example, the diverse economics approach that rejects what J.K. Gibson-Graham has termed ‘capitalocentricism’ and explores alternative economic models that coexist with capitalism in a variety of contexts (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006). These demonstrate the possibilities and benefits of experimenting with ways to adapt global or western regulatory schemes in ways that are more congruent with existing regulatory structures, and which take into account a relational perspective, as developed below.

These observations lead me to suggest that attempting to regulate local knowledge and innovation through a purely economic, positivistic framework risks creating significant harm through the disruption of the social relationships upon which this knowledge and innovation is currently produced. Disregarding existing relationships jeopardises valuable knowledge-exchange networks, social capital and trust that are not only essential to meeting economic objectives, but also social, cultural and political needs, and also are an important incubator for future knowledge and innovation generation. As Leach and Davis note:

different registers of value locate knowledge in relation to something else and this can create hierarchies, appropriation, replacement or elision of pre-existing values. While knowledge may create value, new value does not always supersede previous value, sometimes an entity carries more than one value, more than one set of relationships (2012:221).

Reducing the way in which knowledge is viewed to an economic perspective thus risks prioritising one set of values over others, and in turn reordering existing relationships. This is certainly not to say that existing systems need to be kept unchanged, or that without support or adaptation they can meet all the new demands that regulation of intangible resources involves today. However, in creating regulatory frameworks in this area, cognisance does need to be had of the existence of such systems and the various social, political and economic roles they play.