Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Factotum @ Work

5 March 2008

The Parks and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) invited the Office for a workshop on Philippine Policy Conference Initiative on Biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Intellectual Property Rights. It was an inter-agency workshop to outline the country's position on the international regime on access and benefit sharing. Beats me! I didn't even understand the discussion half of the time. I even got lost in their jargon of TKs, IPs, GRs, CBD, BP and all those hullabaloo. All I know is that our Office was instrumental in ratifying the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and International Treaty on Plant and Genetic Resources. Despite that, I chose to focus and observe the proceedings 'coz I've come to realize that there is a lesson behind every experience.

True enough, after much concentration I was amazed with the passion of these government representatives in defending their position and it seemed to me that they really know their stuff. I was inspired by this passion and it made me think that with the recent political uprisings, most Filipinos may have a negative perception of the government but what they don't know is that there are still people in the government who remain true to their mandate of delivering public service. These meetings should be the ones publicized to project an image that the government is still working to promote and uphold the rights of Filipino people.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that humans have a way of complicating things. They have a knack of instituting mechanisms to complicate things which are originally created to be shared by all. But since natural resources are limited, it is imperative for each country to protect its resources because the reality is - other societies are out to exploit for their own benefit.

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