UPOV, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, is a global system of plant breeders’ rights. It gives legal monopoly rights to companies or institutions that develop “new” plant varieties.
In Sarawak and across Malaysia, many Indigenous communities strongly oppose joining or aligning national law with UPOV 1991. For them, this is not a technical trade issue. It is about control over seeds, food, land, and culture. Here’s why.
1. It prohibits traditional seed-use practices
For generations, Indigenous farmers have:
- saved seeds from their own harvests
- exchanged seeds with relatives and neighbors
- replanted seeds year after year
UPOV-style laws can make these everyday practices illegal when a seed is a protected variety. Farmers may need permission or may be forced to pay royalties just to reuse seeds they grew themselves.
Communities see this as deeply unjust. What has always been normal farming behaviour suddenly becomes a legal offense.
2. It hands corporations control of seeds
UPOV gives exclusive rights to plant breeders, often large agribusiness companies. That means companies can:
- decide who can monopolize the market with certain crop varieties
- charge royalties for seed use
- sue farmers for “infringement”
For Indigenous communities, this turns something shared and ancestral into private corporate property.
3. It enables biopiracy of Indigenous crops
Many commercial crop varieties are developed from Indigenous landraces that communities have bred and conserved for centuries. Under UPOV:
- the company that slightly modifies a plant can gain legal ownership over its existence
- the community who originally bred the plant receives no recognition or benefit
This is essentially legalized biopiracy: extracting value from Indigenous biodiversity and knowledge without consent or benefit‑sharing.
4. It undermines food sovereignty and climate resilience
Traditional seed systems are diverse, locally adapted to floods, droughts, pests, and poor soils, and freely shared within communities. UPOV-style systems push farmers toward uniform commercial seeds, dependence on external suppliers, and higher costs for fertilizer and pesticides. For communities in Sarawak, this is not an abstract policy debate. It is about whether farmers can keep saving seeds, whether elders can pass on knowledge, and whether future generations will control their own food. Opposing UPOV is about protecting everyday practices that make Indigenous food systems resilient, sovereign, and alive.