Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: What is the Role of Intellectual Property and Traditional Knowledge?

Abstract

Climate change has been described as the leading human and environmental threat of the 21 st century. Premised on the traditional role of intellectual property law, namely to encourage human inventiveness through the grant of (limited) proprietary rights in the form of patents, trademarks, trade secrets and plant breeders' rights, among others, this paper focuses on the role of intellectual property law and policy, particularly patents and protection of traditional knowledge (TK), in climate change mitigation and adaptation.Essentially, three main questions are addressed: 1. What is climate change? 2. What are the relevant technologies for mitigating, and adapting to climate change? 3. What role can intellectual property law and protection of traditional knowledge play in dealing with climate change? The authors opine that intellectual property right instruments can play an important role both locally and internationally in the on-going attempts to both cope with and grapple with climate change.This would happen through the grant of intellectual property rights over traditional knowledge (TK). This is important because TK constitutes im-