Planting the commons: towards redesigning an equitable global seed commons

Over the last decade, attention has been paid to the (re)discovery and promotion of common ownership regimes as a potential solution against the limits of individual property rights over seeds. The literature on the commons has extensively studied examples of local common-pool resources following Ostrom’s lead, and Ostrom’s design principles have been used to analyze the governing mechanisms of seeds in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. However, various limitations, including that of scale or of diversity in the stakeholders involved in the commons, render the parallel insufficient to fully understand why the Treaty is not reaching its objectives of food security and sustainable agriculture. I believe that in the current state of the debate, discussion on (common) property rights over seeds remains crucial to understand these failures. Therefore, using the literature of the commons, this chapter explores how to enable the Treaty stakeholders to create a sustainable and inclusive global seed commons so as to best reach their set goals of food security and sustainable agriculture. Building on a thorough transdisciplinary study of the Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing of the ITPGRFA, six invariable principles are identified as core elements of an efficient global seed commons: (1) sustainability; (2) interdependence; (3) the anticommons dilemma; (4) the physical and informational components inextricably bound to the use of seeds; (5) the Global seed community and (6) diversity, heterogeneity and complexity. It is argued that these invariable principles should be better articulated in the tools, rules and procedures of the global seed commons in order to realize the Treaty’s overall goals. The six invariable principles are not design principles which have to be adapted to a specific resources commons regime. In my view, these invariable principles express the very essence of seeds evolution: they constitute core principles enabling the existence of seed diversity. Humans cannot continue to avoid respecting them when designing the commons regime to govern the global seed commons. In conclusion, I plead for a truly ‘global seed commons’ to be redesigned using the identified invariable principles, during the ongoing review process of the Treaty, i.e., one that voices all its stakeholders. Only then could major social challenges be faced, such as producing sufficient and quality food in times of climate changes and persisting world hunger and poverty.