“The East Asia Plant Variety Protection Forum and UPOV 1991” – new book by TWN

Southeast Asian countries are under growing pressure to adopt stricter laws that benefit developed countries at the expense of farmers’ rights and national priorities.

The book *”The East Asia Plant Variety Protection Forum and UPOV 1991″* exposes how Japan’s efforts for regional harmonization aim to champion the adoption of UPOV 1991 – a rigid intellectual property system designed for industrial farming in wealthy nations.

The book unpacks who is behind this agenda and the commercial interests driving it.

It highlights how the Forum’s pro-UPOV activities threaten to erode national sovereignty, undermine food security, and entrench a rigid, inappropriate plant variety protection (PVP) system across the region – one designed to serve the commercial interests of Japan and other developed nations, particularly the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United States.

It calls on SEA countries to critically reassess their participation in the Forum, advocate for meaningful reforms to safeguard their policy space, and, if necessary, withdraw to protect their national interests and ensure implementation of a PVP system that is aligned with domestic agricultural needs and that safeguards the interests of farmers and food sovereignty.

*Read now* https://shorturl.at/dFNus