The Honey Bee Network - India

The Network consists of scientists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and teachers who seek to build connections with each other through feedback and communication in local languages. Network members are committed to the notion that writing in English alienates - even impoverishes - the very people who share their specialised, often income-generating, knowledge. To this end, a central goal is the "cross-cultural fertilization" of ideas and initiatives. Some solutions generated on other continents may suggest resolutions toward problems that plague Indian farmers, for instance.

Network members are encouraged to volunteer their time in service of grassroots innovators by contributing toward a skill and resource bank. The database consists of 10,000 innovations that reflect traditional technological and institutional knowledge. Examples include herbal, artisanal, and other innovations for non-chemical pest control; verterinary medicine and animal health and productivity; social and water conservation, growth promotion, and farm implements. This bank is accessible to knowledge-rich but economically poor or disadvantaged farmers, artisans, pastoralists, or urban slum dwellers who have ideas about, or a prototype for, a new product or service.

Research reports and newsletters are available (the latter only through a subscription) for download on the Honeybee site. An electronic discussion board, divided into specialised areas of interest, like agro-biodiversity and health/green technologies, is also open to members. Scientists respond to queries submitted by farmers who are facing various kinds of problems and to comments on solutions published in the newsletter.

Envirnoment, Agriculture, Economic Development, Intellectual Property Rights, Technology.

The ethics of knowledge extraction (its documentation, dissemination, and abstraction into theories, institutions, or technologies) is the Network's central concern. People's knowledge has, according to organisers, been utilised to develop valuable products, as in the herbal or plant-derived drug industry, or for improving crop productivity through local land races; the benefits are rarely shared with the knowledge and/or resource providers, organisers claim.

The Network has faced problems and limitations including: reliace on textual communication in different languages (which impedes access by illiterate farmers); long turnaround time for response to farmers' queries; low incentives for sharing information; limited reach of the website; and lack of incentive for innovators to disclose their innovations. A Wide Area Network (WAN), easier access to the database, reduction in language barriers, and capacity-building workshops have been proposed to strengthen the Network.

Established in 1993, SRISTI is an that works to strengthen the capacity of grassroots inventors, innovators, and ecopreneurs engaged in conserving biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solutions to local problems.