Navigating the Landscape of Indigenous Knowledge - A Legal Perspective

Australia is a party to a number of international treaties and declarations which recognise the significance of traditional and Indigenous knowledge and cultural expressions, and emphasise the need to respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous and local communities. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 (CBD) provides member nations with the opportunity to establish regimes that would regulate foreign and domestic access to valuable genetic resources and traditional and Indigenous knowledge while establishing benefit-sharing mechanisms relating to that access. The CBD has also led to significant international debate on the interrelationship with intellectual property rights, particularly patent rights and plant breeders rights, which are often the end goal of the desire to access such genetic resources