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"Reclaiming the Commons: In Defense of Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to patent the rights to many plants, including basmati, neem, and wheat. The author presents details of the specific attempts made by corporations to secure these patents and the legal actions taken to fight them. This book goes beyond the legal struggle to position the necessary solutions to corporate control including explorations of the Rights of Nature and proposing a framework for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. It is the first detailed legal history of the international and national laws related to biodiversity and Intellectual Property Rights"--

Introduction: Converting abundance into scarcity -- Water rights: the state, the market, the community -- Climate change and the water crisis -- The colonization of rivers: dams and water wars -- The World Bank, the WTO, and corporate control over water -- Food and water -- Converting scarcity into abundance -- The sacred waters.

It is 20 years since environmental issues were first put on the international agenda at the Stockholm Conference, and concern for planetary survival has shifted from desertification to acid rain to ozone depletion to biodiversity. The official responses to all the various crises, however, has largely been one of offering technological and managerial 'fixes,' which often fail to address or solve the basic ecological issues.Genuine, viable improvements can only be implemented at ground level, by those most strongly affected by the problem. Because of their location 'on the fringes,' and their tr