Rights, Sovereignties, and Seeds: Protecting Seed Systems Under International Law (UNEARTH)

The overall aim of UNEARTH is to reconceptualize global seed governance under international law to ensure the protection of seed systems, health, and biodiversity into the future.

People have been cultivating seeds for thousands of years. Sowing, breeding, saving and exchanging seeds are intimately woven into cultures, local histories and food systems. Yet over the course of last century, pressure to breed genetically uniform varieties for wider markets led farmers to abandon many plant varieties. While roughly 6000 plant species can be cultivated for food, today fewer than 200 have significant production levels globally. During the 20th century, 75% of agricultural crop diversity was lost, and now nearly 86% of the world’s plant species are under threat of extinction. Gone too are many traditional practices of seed cultivation and exchange as commercial contracts forbid small-scale producers from reusing, sharing or selling seeds.

A whole landscape of international law regulates seeds specifically – distinct from food – yet it has not been systematically researched as a matter of general international law. UNEARTH will fill this research gap by theorizing alternative legal paradigms for managing seeds under international law. It will examine how commodity seed systems have been facilitated by systems of international law (international trade agreements, intellectual property rights) and are now being challenged by it too. Emerging and resurgent human rights norms, such as the right to seeds and the right to economic self-determination, alongside movements in international legal theory, challenge the validity of business-as-usual commodity seed practices.