From The Administrator

Adding Connectivity to Creativity

At the heart of the concept of "South-South" knowledge-sharing is the search to unlock, in the words of the pioneering worlds conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) which UNDP organized almost 25 years ago-"the creativity" of the developing world. The South has an immense reservoir of traditional wisdom, problem-solving skills and new technologies that are worth sharing globally. The challenge is how to add connectivity - to encourage such trade and cooperation, and reduce or eliminate obstacles such knowledge-sharing.
In this context, the current international debate over patients' rights to essential drugs versus intellectual property rights is inescapable. The very concept of intellectual property is a recognition of the need to provide protections - and rewards -for creativity. As such, it is a principle just as important to developing countries as developed ones. In practice, however, across fields such as pharmaceuticals, electronics and biotechnology, Southern countries appear to be finding it increasingly difficult to afford and benefit from technologies and ideas produced by big multinational companies. The World Bank estimates that, when broader intellectual property rules negotiated as part of the Uruguay Trade Round come fully into effect in the next few years, $40 billion more per year will be transferred from poor countries to Northern corporations - a sum approaching aid flows in the other direction.
There are no easy answers. On the one hand, opponents argue that such restrictions - and imbalanced income flows - are clearly discriminatory to developing countries, locking them out of ideas and technologies that are critical to accelerating growth and poverty reduction. On the other, defenders of the global standards say that a strong patent system in the long run fuels innovation and provides an excellent way for developing nations to attract investment and encourage raid technology transfers while protecting their own products. A third view, which is gaining increasing weight, is that free trade, open financial markets and intellectual property protection are worthy goals which should not, however, be pursued as part of a one-size-fits-all approach or on a rigid timetable. All three approaches - and a number of broader suggestions on how to reform existing rules - are articulated in this issue of Cooperation South, which seeks to help stimulate debate on how to build an intellectual property system that maximizes benefits for developing countries while giving due recognition to the importance of protecting creativity, wherever it may be found.

Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator
United Nations Development Programme