Day 3: Long-term ethical, legal and policy changes needed to move from the current scenario to the desired scenarios
What are the long-term ethical, legal and policy changes that need to happen to move from the current scenario towards the desired scenarios?
Examples:
- Ethical: what are the ethical questions we should make to contribute to increase food and nutrition security and better livelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable farmers around the world by harnessing their access to and use of agricultural data? How should our mindset change in the long term about data rights? Should data rights be recognized as human rights? Should we still consider receiving a service in exchange for surrendering data an ethically acceptable business model?
- Legal: what do you think are the best legal approaches to achieve the desired scenarios? How to recognize and implement farmers’ intellectual property rights over their data and traditional knowledge? How should the licensing scenario change?
- Policy: what strategies and priority areas of intervention would you recommend at the policy level? Do you think there should be more governance and by whom? Do you think international agreements could help?
Changements éthiques, juridiques et politiques nécessaires à long terme pour passer du scénario actuel aux scénarios souhaités.
Quels sont les changements éthiques, juridiques et politiques à long terme qui doivent être apportés pour passer du scénario actuel aux scénarios souhaités?
Exemples:
- Éthique: quelles sont les questions éthiques que nous devrions poser pour contribuer à accroître la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle et améliorer les moyens de subsistance des agriculteurs les plus pauvres et les plus vulnérables du monde en exploitant l’accès et l’utilisation des données agricoles? Comment notre état d'esprit devrait-il changer à long terme en ce qui concerne les droits relatifs aux données? Les droits sur les données devraient-ils être reconnus en tant que droits de l'homme? Devrions-nous toujours envisager de recevoir un service en échange de la remise de données, un modèle d'entreprise éthiquement acceptable?
- Juridique: quelles sont selon vous les meilleures approches juridiques pour réaliser les scénarios souhaités? Comment reconnaître et mettre en œuvre les droits de propriété intellectuelle des agriculteurs sur leurs données et leurs savoirs traditionnels? Comment le scénario de licence devrait-il changer?
- Politique: quelles stratégies et domaines prioritaires d'intervention recommanderiez-vous au niveau des politiques? Pensez-vous qu'il devrait y avoir plus de gouvernance et par qui? Pensez-vous que les accords internationaux pourraient aider?
Cuáles son los cambios que se requieren a largo plazo a nivel ético, legal y político para transformar el escenario actual en los escenarios deseados?
Ejemplos:
- Éticos Cuáles son las preguntas éticas que debemos hacernos para contribuir a aumentar la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional y mejorar las condiciones de vida de los agricultores más pobres y vulnerable, a través de mejorar su acceso y uso de datos agrícolas? Cómo debería cambiar nuestra percepción a largo plazo sobre los derechos sobre los datos? Deberían reconocerse los derechos sobre los datos como derechos humanos? Deberíamos considerar el recibir un servicio a cambio de la entrega de datos como un modelo económico ético aceptable?
- Legal: Cuáles piensa Usted que son las mejores aproximaciones legales para alcanzar los escenarios deseados? Cómo reconocer e implementar los derechos de propiedad intelectual de los agricultores sobre sus datos y conocimiento tradicional? Cómo debería cambiar el escenario actual de las licencias?
- Político: Qué estrategias y áreas prioritarias de intervención recomendaría a nivel político? Cree Usted que debería haber mayor gobernanza y por quién? Cree Usted que acuerdos internacionales puedan ayudar?
On the issue of codifying traditional or indigenous knowledge. Just as with all data that is deemed sensitive, ensure that it is stored on a secure system, put in place clear rules about data sharing and appropriate licensing agreements.
The exact same holds true for farmer level data on how they manage their fields/animals/crops/farms in relation to their individual identifiers. The informed consent realted to the data collection ,should have specified for what purposes the data may be used and often by whom.
The purposes of data use and who uses the data is a key element here.
Ethics and privacy concerns come into play mostly with data that contains personally identifiable information. Let's not throw away the baby with the bathwater.
I agree that Indigneous and traditional knowledge and farming practices should have special exemptions under any proposed scheme (along the lines of the CGIAR approach of open as possible but closed as necessary which allows for restrictions)
Change in food habits,and using some of such which avoid fat,fatigue,or generate blood sugar are the Ethical issues.
Legal,the society is to have a pro farmer systems either made under rules,including consumption,generation and insurence.
The policies shall address to meet the demands of huge human power growth existing and likely to grow.The governments have to meet the challenges by implementing pro farmer-pro consumer policies.
What a complex and large topic we have today! I feel rather speechless and don't envy Leanne Wiseman who started today's e-consultation. I like a lot in what I read in Wiseman's start and other people's replies, but find it very difficult to react too. I find it difficult, because I don't know what the current scenario is (which scenario? whose? And where?) and what the future scenario should be (Valeria resumed a whole bunch of them very well). So, what is the present starting point and what is the goal? If we don't know that, it's going to be hard to answer today's question....
So, I'm simply going to share how we do it, and I'd love to hear what you think about it or how you do it. Since March I am leader of a workpackage on ethics in a large-scale IoT pilot in Europe (IoF2020) and we chose not to start from the big picture, but to start with smaller ones. Our project includes 19 use cases, divided over different 'branches' of farming: arable, meat, vegetable, fruit and dairy. The ethics part starts with questions that partners in the use cases ask, for example about whether they should share their data with the other partners in the network. Starting from these questions we want to talk about what impacts they want to realize, for their own organizations as well as for society. And then we start thinking about how we get from the present situation to the future one. If the partners in the use case favor certain impacts, this imposes requirements on their cooperation, and on the technology itself.
So that's how we do it. We start in use cases and from there we try to acquire insight in the values at stake and the impacts participants want to realize. And then we think about what values the technology should serve (value-sensitive design is the approach) and how the collaboration between the partners around it should be organized.
From these individual use cases we can generalize. Hopefully at the end of our project we can offer a catalogue of designs for IOT that serves different collaborations, so that stakeholders have something to choose. And guidelines and codes of conduct should be assessed to see whether they support the desired collaborations.
This approach has downsides, of course, but what I like is that it allows for different solutions in different contexts. And it starts with needs and values of people in the network around smart farms, as well as farmers themselves. From there we generalize towards designs of IOT that can be implemented in different locations, and guidleines and codes of conduct that help future innovators to think about what they want in their contexts.
This provides a very interesting example of one way to go forward with this broad and ambitious topic. From my experience, we untertook a large research project that examined a number of case studies of 17 different Australian agricultural industries (from dairy, fish, forestry grains etc) and discovered there were very different attitudes in each industry to what data they needed to access and what data they wanted to share and how best to go forward. Issues of connectivity were also included as one of the potential barriers to adoption. Like your workpage, we have drawn some general recommendations for a national approach for an agricultural data policy which each industry can then adapt for their own situations. For anyone interested in the survey results or of any of the findings, they are available here: https://www.crdc.com.au/precision-to-decision While many different agriculural industries are prepared to share common data, there are some sensitivites with certain crops in terms of biosecurity and environmental compliance where industries are less willing to have that data shared.
I do find a paralell which the notion of accessing genetic resources - while these, like raw data, cannot be owned, the Plant Genetic Treaty does provide an international framework for access and benefit sharing which provides Model contracts for countries to use. Benefits come back to the countries and the communities from where the resources were sourced.While there are obvious differences with data driven farming, on one level a broad principled based approach based on notions of transparency fairness equity would be one step forward in providing a long term solution for our farmers
Let us try to delve into one of the questions for today in more detail:
The notion of farmer's rights is one that is already recognised in Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant genetic resources recognizes the enormous contribution that the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world, particularly those in the centers of origin and crop diversity, have made and will continue to make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources which constitute the basis of food and agriculture production throughout the world. It gives governments the responsibility for implementing Farmers' Rights, and lists measures that could be taken to protect, promote and realize these rights:
Could it be possible that these rights be extended to protect the data generated on farms? some have even argued that the data itself would fall under this treaty
Could rights in their farm data be potentially be an extension to an already exisiting international framework?
This could avoid the potential difficulty of considering new sui generis farmer data rights scheme whether that be an extension of copyright in intellectual property (which would be unlikely) or a new property right ? could this be seen as being at odds with the approach taken to personal data protection more generally as we have seen with GDPR and CDR
Most laws view property as being tangible. When we try to frame those laws for intangibles such as data and information, we tangle ourselves. In my opinion (and as opined earlier) in the consultation, laws should be framed around use of data and tangible benefits accrued to the user along with this declaration of "rights" and their infringement may be the most appropriate legal approach.
As regards farmers' data let us first make it clear that an individual farmer's data is not of much value beyond his/her use. The value emerges from aggregation. Thus, to me, this should be termed and considered as a community's intellectual property right. Since it is "right", its practical implementation is in its infringement. It will be the Sovereign/States' power to judge and punish the infringement. However, going by current trends of data and information shared,exchanged and used internationally, when let us consider infringement is outside the realm of the State's power there will be a need and International arrangement, agreement or treaty with a functional regulatory mechanism that will be needed to judge and punish these types of infringements.
In my opinion, we now need an International Treaty on flow, sharing and exchange of data and information related to agriculture, food and nutrition. The ITPGR is inadequate in its provisions to deal with data other than that related to genetic resources. Also it has been found practically difficult to act against infringements and for that reason many countries are not cooperating in amending the treaty to include more genetic resources. Along with international treaties, we must have more robust regulatory mechanisms possible like the WTO.
The other alternative, not entirely out of the box, would be to form Universal human collectives eliminating individual property ;-). Some very famous philosophers have already examined this idea.
Another 11th hour comment. There’s been a prevailing discussion on government and questions around their role in the provision/enabling the data environment. In the absence of any reference to it I would like to table the concept of a Spatial Data Infrastructure as a governance model for government data or public sector data (PSI).
I have found that most countries in the world (even in less developed countries) there is some traces of SDI and the structure of data governance exists and is aligned (once again in varying degrees) to international initiatives.
For example the UN-GGIM aims to address global challenges regarding the use of geospatial information, including in the development agendas, and to serve as a body for global policymaking in the field of geospatial information management. With regional entities (and member states) for Asian-Pacific (Afghanistan, American Samoa, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Cook Islands, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Macao, China, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nauru, Nepal, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Marianas, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu and Viet Nam.) , Arab states (Algeria, Bahrain, Comores, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, State of Palestine, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. ), Europe (Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Republic of Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, The Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ), Americas (Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Maarten, St Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela. ) and Africa (Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea- Bissau, Kenya, Kingdom of Eswatini, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe ).SDI references beyond UNGGIM (http://ggim.un.org/ )
If data is non-rival and excludable, and therefore tends towards monopoly, then there is a trade-off that needs to be analyzed between increasing responsiveness to consumer demands and decreasing price gouging. The traditional defence of natural monopolies staying private is that they are still more responsive to consumer needs than governments because consumers still have a choice – though a limited one – of whether or not to purchase the product. It is harder the get money from a consumer in natural monopoly context than it is to get revenue from taxation. While it does not speak directly to responsiveness to consumer needs, the EU’s conclusion that its distinct database rights (distinct from say, copyright protection) did not increase production of databases casts doubt on the private sector’s responsiveness to economic incentives in this context. Therefore, policy solutions should at least involve less private sector business control of data. This could be achieved by increasing government provision of data or by encouraging farmers form cooperatives and share data, as done by social enterprises like Abalobi.