If we have never been modern, they have never been traditional

Traditional knowledge (TK) and customary practices relate to all three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity: conservation, sustainable use and benefit-sharing arising from access. Where tradition ends and modern formal systems of knowledge start is far less clear-cut a matter than many suppose. Both have and continue to borrow from each other often in beneficial ways. If a global access and benefit-sharing regime and/or a treaty on traditional knowledge protection can assist such healthy cross-fertilization in fair and equitable ways all well and good. This chapter identifies four basic conceptual problems that currently make such a noble goal hard to achieve. They are: the hybrid nature of knowledge systems; the problem of origin and attribution; the overregulation and corporatization tendency; and the exchange value 'distraction'. The political appeal of traditional knowledge and biopiracy discourses and rhetorics is manifold. National governments' regarding indigenous peoples as defenders of the national patrimony is one aspect of this.