Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:54:39.087Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kava Pirates in Vanuatu?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2009

Lamont Lindstrom
Lamont Lindstrom
Affiliation:
University of Tulsa. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cultural property activists have worried about the bioprospecting, or even biopiracy, of kava (Piper methysticum), a plant exchanged and consumed for many Pacific social and ritual purposes. By the 1990s, kava and concoctions made from the plant's component kavalactones were increasingly popular products within global markets for recreational and medicinal drugs. Starting in 2002, however, a number of European countries among others banned kava imports after initial reports that some heavy users suffered liver damage. This has complicated the kava story as producer efforts shifted from protecting rights to the plant to reopening blocked export markets. The difficulty is to both push kava into global markets while protecting local rights to the plant. A promising strategy may be developing consumer awareness of geographic indicators and “noble” kava varieties that Vanuatu's local producers may control yet globally market as “the best in the world.”

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 16 , Special Issue 3: Pacific Discourses About Cultural Heritage and Its Protection , August 2009 , pp. 291 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Belluck, Joseph W., and Fox, L.L.C. Jordan. “All about Kava's Dangers,” n.d. Available at http://www.kavalegalhelp.com (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Bengwayan, Michael A.Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Asia: Minority Rights Group International Report, 2003. Available at http://www.minorityrights.org/1026/reports/intellectual.and-cultural-property-rightsof-indigenous-and-tribal-peoples-in-asia.html (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Binihi, Ricky. “Ambae Man Claims Bali Hai.” Vanuatu Daily Post, November 5, 2005.Google Scholar
Blakeney, Michael. “The International Framework of Access to Plant Genetic Resources.” In Intellectual Property Aspects of Ethnobiology, edited by Blakeney, Michael, 1–22. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1999.Google Scholar
Brosses, C.Histoire des navigations aux mers australes. Paris: Chez Durand, 1756.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F.Who Owns Native Culture? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Chennells, Roger. “Ethics and Practice in Ethnobiology, and Prior Informed Consent with Indigenous Peoples, Regarding Genetic Resources.” Paper presented to Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and the Protection of Traditional Knowledge Conference, St. Louis, MO, April 4–6, 2003.Google Scholar
Chernela, Janet M. “The UN and Indigenous Peoples.” Anthropology News 46, no. 6 (2005): 13–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coombe, Rosemary J. “Protecting Traditional Environmental Knowledge and New Social Movements in the Americas: Intellectual Property, Human Right, or Claims to an Alternative Form of Sustainable Development?” Florida Journal of International Law 17 (2005): 115–36.Google Scholar
Dear, Brian L. “The Taste of Money: The Kava Market Takes Off.” 1996. Available at http://www.coconut.com/features/kava.html (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Dutfield, Graham. “Protecting and Revitalising Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Intellectual Property Rights and Community Knowledge Databases in India.” In Intellectual Property Aspects of Ethnobiology, edited by Blakeney, Michael, 101–22. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1999.Google Scholar
Forsyth, Miranda. “Cargo Cults and Intellectual Property in the South Pacific.” Australian Intellectual Property Journal 14 (2003): 189–207.Google Scholar
Geismar, Haidy. “Copyright in Context: Carvings, Carvers, and Commodities in Vanuatu.” American Ethnologist 32 (2005): 437–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geismar, Haidy. “Reproduction, Creativity, Restriction: Material Culture and Copyright in Vanuatu.” Journal of Social Archaeology 5 (2005): 25–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Shane. “Indigenous People Incorporated? Culture as Politics, Culture as Property in Pharmaceutical Bioprospecting.” Current Anthropology 45 (2004): 211–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruenwald, Joerg, Mueller, Cordula, and Skrabal, Juergen. Kava Report 2003: In-depth Investigation into EU Member States' Market Restrictions on Kava Products. Brussels: Centre for the Development of Enterprise, 2003.Google Scholar
Hayden, Cori. When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Indigenous Peoples' Caucus. Indigenous Peoples' Seattle Declaration. 1999. Available at http://csdngo.igc.org/Indigenous/Indig_Seattle.htm (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
International Indian Treaty Council. Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2003. Available at http://www.treatycouncil.org/section_21141711213.htm (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
International Kava Executive Council (IKEC). Resolutions of IKEC 2004. Suva, Fiji: IKEC, 2004.Google Scholar
KavaLand Kava Products. Available at http://www.kavaland.com (accessed 10 June 2007, site later taken down).Google Scholar
Kirsch, Stuart. “Property Limits: Debates on the Body, Nature and Culture.” In Transactions and Creations: Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia, edited by Hirsch, Eric and Strathern, Marilyn, 21–39. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebot, Vincent. Personal communication, November 2006.Google Scholar
Lebot, Vincent, Merlin, Mark, and Lindstrom, Lamont. Kava: The Pacific Drug. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindstrom, Lamont. Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Makin, Bob. “Keep Vanuatu Commodities Marketing Board Away from Kava.” Vanuatu Independent, February 28, 2006.Google Scholar
Marshall, Mac. “Market Highs: Alcohol, Drugs, and the Global Economy in Oceania.” In Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands, edited by Lockwood, Victoria S., 200–21. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.Google Scholar
Mead, Aroha Te Pareake. “The Polynesian ‘Excellence’ Gene and Life Patent Bottom Trawling.” In Pacific Genes and Life Patents: Pacific Indigenous Experiences and Analysis of the Commodification and Ownership of Life, edited by Mead, A. and Ratuva, S., 34–59. Wellington: Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra and United Nations Institute of Advanced Studies, 2007.Google Scholar
Mead, Aroha Te Pareake, and Ratuva, Steven. Pacific Genes and Life Patents: Pacific Indigenous Experiences and Analysis of the Commodification and Ownership of Life. Wellington: Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra and the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, 2007.Google Scholar
Pacific Magazine. “Vanuatu: Kava Price Rises.” Pacific Magazine, May 26, 2006.Google Scholar
Palmer, Laura. “The Highs and Lows of Pacific Kava.” Tok blong Pasifik 56, no. 1 (2002): 10–11.Google Scholar
Radio New Zealand. “Vanuatu Centre Seeks Bio-diversity Protection.” 2006. Available at http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=25078 (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Regenvanu, Ralph. Personal communication, November 2006.Google Scholar
Sanders, Robert. Landmark Agreement between Samoa and UC Berkeley Could Help Search for AIDS Cure. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley Media Relations, 2004.Google Scholar
Seneviratne, Kalinga. “South Pacific: All Worked Up over Anti-stress Crop.” 1998. Available at http://www.sunsonline.org/trade/process/followup/1998/11250598.htm (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. “Introduction: Rationales of Ownership.” In Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, edited by Kalinoe, Lawrence and Leach, James, 1–12. Wantage, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2004.Google Scholar
Sumbe, Tensly. “Dried kava, cultural product owned by ni-Vanuatu: Chief.” Vanuatu Daily Post, February 24, 2008. Available at http://www.dailypost.vu/ArticleArchives/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1942/Dried-kava-cultural-product-owned-by-niVanuatu-Chief.aspx (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Vanuatu Statistics Office. External Trade Statistics. n.d. Available at http://www.spc.int/PRISM/country/vu/stats/Economic/Int-TRADE/exports-mcom.htm (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Waiwo, Eleanor. “Chinese Shop Found Selling Kava Juice without License.” Vanuatu Daily Post, September 1, 2007. Available at http://www.dailypost.vu/ArticleArchives/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/32/Chinese-shop-found-selling-kava-juice-without-license.aspx (accessed 20 October 2009).Google Scholar
Wynberg, Rachel. “Rhetoric, Realism and Benefit Sharing: Use of Traditional Knowledge of Hoodia Species in the Development of an Appetite Suppressant.” Journal of World Intellectual Property 7 (2004): 851–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar