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Email the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Novartis

Vital medicines are priced out of the reach of poor people. This is in violation of the promises made five years ago by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to make life-saving medicines available and affordable to all. As a result, millions of poor people in developing countries are dying because they can't afford the medicines they so desperately need. Global drug company, Novartis, must stop denying India the right to produce cheaper medicines for poor people worldwide!

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do/campaign/mtf/a2m.htm?ito=2505&itc=0

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 261)

ag-IP-news Agency

ag-IP-news Agency, is a pilot project that has been exclusively established to cover Intellectual Property news, events and activities. To maintain professional standards and credibility in covering Intellectual Property issues, an experienced and highly qualified team of journalists is currently running the Agency. Together with professional journalistic skills and vast knowledge in Intellectual Property issues, the team guarantees instantaneous coverage of IP events through their vast connectivity to the IP society. ag-IP-news Agency aims at realizing the easier said than done job: neutral and objective coverage of Intellectual Property news.

http://www.ag-ip-news.com/

(Added: Fri Apr 13 2007   Hits: 71)

Blue Water Project

The Blue Water Project is an international civil society movement to protect the world's fresh water from the growing threats of trade and privatization. It works with activists in both North and South and is currently working with partners worldwide on using a human rights framework to protect people and nature for generations to come.

http://www.blueplanetproject.net/

(Added: Mon Apr 14 2008   Hits: 42)

Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

This book is about how to upgrade our economic operating system so that it protects the planet, shares income more equitably, and makes us happier, while preserving the strengths of capitalism as we know it. The key to the proposed upgrade is to rebuild the commons, that dwindling set of natural and social assets that benefit everyone. The book is for sale, and, in the spirit of enlivening the cultural commons, available free online. (Peter Barnes, Berrett Koehler Publishers, October 2006)

http://onthecommons.org/files/Capitalism_3.0_Peter_Barnes.pdf?PHPSESSID=fada17b1247c427929afab5af6acb71c

(Added: Tue Oct 24 2006   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 157)

Club of Rome Position Paper on WSIS (PDF)

14 August 2003. The "Club of Rome" (CoR), one of the most prestigous think tanks world-wide, now has also taken a position on the WSIS. In the statement that was published today, the CoR is adopting a number of core priorities of the civil society groups involved in the WSIS process. The CoR is e.g. asking for a stronger commitment to publicly available knowledge (global commons or public domain), is demanding that privacy will be secured inthe information society and is suggesting an environment-friendly use of information technologies. On top of that, the CoR states that "the greater involvement of Civil Society with its many NGOs and other organisations, which have considerable expertise in specific fields, is increasingly essential in implementation processes." The statement ends with the sentence: "NGOs and civil-society organisations should be empowered to play an increased role." (PDF 168KB)

http://www.worldsummit2003.de/download_en/CoR-WSIS-Statement-Final-14-8-03.pdf

(Added: Mon Aug 18 2003   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 222)

Corporate conquest, global geopolitics: Intellectual property rights and bilateral investment treaties

This article examines how bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements which contain specific investment provisions reflect geopolitical concerns and redefine rights and privileges for transnational corporations, including with respect to commercial control over biodiversity through intellectual property rights. (Aziz Choudry, Seedling, January 2005)

http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=1464

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 210)

Defend the Global Commons

This biannual publication documents grassroot struggles around the world to defend water as a common resource.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/publications/newsletters/defend

(Added: Wed Oct 25 2006   Hits: 125)

Digital Library of the Commons

The Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) provides free access to an archive of international literature on the commons, common-pool resources and common property. Features for authors and readers include advanced searching; browsing by region, sector, and author name; an author submission portal for uploading a variety of document formats; and a service that uses email to alert subscribers to new documents in their area of interest.

http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/view/subjects/cpr-ltu.html

(Added: Tue May 01 2007   Hits: 142)

EcoEquity

EcoEquity is a new organization aimed at advancing the principle of equal rights to global common resources. More immediately, we've founded EcoEquity to fill the need for a U.S.-based organization focused on clarifying and promoting the principles of equity necessary for a just and effective climate treaty. We see ourselves as being simultaneously members of the climate movement and the global justice movement.

http://www.ecoequity.org

(Added: Thu Oct 07 2004   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 183)

Fighting disease gets a boost

Black fever, also known as kala-azar, is the world's most deadly parasitic disease after malaria. Each year it kills about 500,000 people, who rapidly lose weight and die painfully with swollen livers and spleens. Years ago a treatment for black fever was found; however, the pharmaceutical companies saw no profit in it because all those who suffer from black fever are poor. So the drug was shelved. Now a remarkable new kind of charity, a not-for-profit pharmaceutical company called the Institute for One World Health (IOWH), has resurrected the shelved drug. The drug costs $10 per patient, less than one-tenth of any available alternative. Having proved the concept in India, the IOWH is moving on to tackle malaria and diarrhoea. (Ken Burnet, Guardian, October 2006)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/outlook/story/0,,1925277,00.html

(Added: Wed Oct 25 2006   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 118)

Global Commons Institute

The Global Commons Institute (GCI) is an independent group concerned with the protection of the global commons. The global commons is the common heritage of all humanity. It comprises those features of the geo-biosphere - such as forests, biodiversity, oceans and global atmosphere.- that in combination form the global climate system GCI was founded in 1990 after the Second World Climate Conference. Since that time GCI has contributed to the work of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

http://www.gci.org.uk/

(Added: Wed Mar 03 1999   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 261)

Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights

Arts Foundation Laureate Barry Barclay (Ngati Apa; Pakeha) brings his lifetime of experience making films on Indigenous subjects to his latest project, a book offering solutions to the complex and difficult problems that arise when the treasures of Indigenous peoples, especially Maori, enter a commercial world which seeks to reproduce and disseminate them. (Auckland University Press, 5 December 2006)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0512/S00016.htm

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 99)

Patents versus Patients: Five years after the Doha Declaration

Five years ago, members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) signed a ministerial agreement to ensure that intellectual property rules would no longer obstruct developing countries' efforts to protect public health. This report finds that since then, however, little has changed. Patented medicines continue to be priced out of reach for the world's poorest people. Trade rules remain a major barrier to accessing affordable versions of patented medicines (generic medicines). The prevalence of debilitating and life-threatening diseases in poor countries is growing, but medicines are simply not available. Urgent action is needed. (Oxfam, November 2006)

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/health/downloads/bp95_patents.pdf

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 114)

Pharmaceuticals as commons

This speech looks at patents and their origen. It explores how patent protection is justified, and argues that it is important to view pharmaceuticals as a common good that should be publicly and freely availably to all those who need it. Achieving this would mean a different social system based on human need and not profit. Under a truly cooperative system based on this principle, patents wouldn't be needed - inventors and researchers would be assured a living, and pharmaceutical institutions would freely share their discoveries. However, proposing a removal of patents under the current system is also problematic. (Marina Carman, Commons Institute, September 2004)

http://www.mercury.org.au/tci_speeches.htm#carman

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 100)

Poverty as a Copyrights Free Zone?

This article argues that we need to mobilise the airwaves against poverty, under-development and corruption that continue to tug Asia down. There's a good starting point: release all copyrights on TV, video and online content relating to poverty and development issues - at least until after 2015. (Nalaka Gunawardene, MediaChannel.org, 15 June 2006)

http://www.mediachannel.org/affalert424.shtml

(Added: Wed Oct 25 2006   Hits: 87)

Public goods, global public goods and the common good

This paper examines the extent to which introducing the new concept of "global public goods" in international development is helpful for understanding human well-being enhancement. It argues a successful provision of global public goods depends on this recognition that the 'good life' of the communities that people form is a constitutive component of the 'good life' of individual human beings. The paper considers some implications of the concept of the common good for international development, and suggests that the rediscovery of this concept, and identification of how to nurture the common good, constitute one of the major tasks for development theory and policy. (Séverine Deneulin and Nicholas Townsend, ESRC, September 2006)

http://www.welldev.org.uk/research/workingpaperpdf/wed18.pdf

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 94)

Putting the right price on nature: environmental economics

Growing populations and an increasing demand for greater material wealth are placing unprecedented pressure on the earth's natural systems. But assigning values to such systems is a difficult process - not least because they are generally thought of as free goods that everyone has a right to use. Environmental economics offers a number of tools to help policymakers ensure that the benefits we obtain from ecosystems are properly valued, enabling a framework to be built for sustainable use and conservation of the environment. (Anantha Duraiappah, SciDev Net, October 2006)

http://www.scidev.net/dossiers/index.cfm?fuseaction=policybrief&policy=132&dossier=11

(Added: Fri Mar 09 2007   Hits: 217)

Reclaiming the Commons

The spirit that the many different campaigns and movements of the anti-globalisation movement share is a radical reclaiming of the commons. As our communal spaces-town squares, streets, schools, farms, plants-are displaced by the ballooning marketplace, a spirit of resistance is taking hold around the world. People are reclaiming bits of nature and of culture, and saying 'this is going to be public space'. (Naomi Klein, Talk at Centre for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA, April 2001)

http://home.mira.net/~deller/ethicalpolitics/blackwood/klein.htm

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 147)

Ruled by the Market?

In the first essay, David Bollier makes the case for why we need to protect our public resources from private encroachment. In the following nine essays, academics comment on his essay and make their own arguments on the nature of the market and the ownership of the commons. (Boston Review, Summer 2002)

http://bostonreview.net/ndf.html#Market

(Added: Mon Sep 11 2006   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 97)

Stop Privatization of Generic AIDS Medicines in Brazil

Brazil's exemplary model for fighting AIDS in the developing world is being threatened by pricing practices of three United States pharmaceutical companies: Merck, Abbott and Bay Area-based Gilead. Ask George and Charlotte Swig Shultz to change the course of the global AIDS epidemic.

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/brazil/brazilaidsmeds.html

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 209)

The clamour for 'commons'

Privatisation digs deeper into our lives, and at the same time everything these days seems to be proclaimed a 'commons' (that is, something to which everyone, or everyone in a certain context, has right of access): water, air, seeds, even food, health and education. It's a very popular notion, at least in the anglophone part of the world. Part of the trend towards 'reclaiming the commons' is an effort to fight against privatisation. And that is good. But if the movement to recognise and build old or new commons does not handle the concept carefully, it could actually facilitate privatisation. It is especially crucial to distinguish 'commons' from 'public' and to remember that 'commons' are supposed to be about communities. (Brewster Kneen, Grain, Seedling, October 2006)

http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=439

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 121)

The Commons Institute

The Commons Institute was established in recognition that the concept of the commons is currently under threat in our society. Despite being the source of benefit to most communities around the world, including ours, we are seeing the enclosure of the commons. This includes the disappearance of public space and the privatisation of resources such as water that were once considered a human right. The Commons Institute was established with three broad objectives: 1. To provide public education and training on the benefits of the commons; 2. Conduct research and publish reports on the commons; and, 3. To investigate the feasibility of establishing a publicly accessible commons register - a place that we as a society can register 'commons' - much like private property and patents are registered.

http://www.mercury.org.au/tci%20home.htm

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 97)

The Tragedy of the Commons

The parable of the tragedy of the commons, which demonstrates how free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through over-exploitation, was popularised through this controversial article. (Garrett Hardin, Science, 1968)

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/sotp/pdfs/162-3859-1243.pdf

(Added: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 88)

What Al Gore Missed: The Ecological Importance of the Cultural Commons

The recommendations for reducing consumerism that appear at the end of Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, represent how language may contribute to enclosing the cultural commons. No one can deny that Gore's list of behaviors for reducing consumerism is good common sense. But a list of what thoughtful people are already doing is no substitute for suggesting a more radical approach to reducing our dependence upon the consumerism that is contributing to global warming-which his book documents so well.

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=20070124060458368

(Added: Wed Feb 14 2007   Hits: 240)