THE VISION STATEMENT

Note on the vision statement
Global competitiveness of any society hinges basically on its ability to incorporate the spirit of excellence at all levels of society. A chain is as strong as its
weakest link. To widen the decision making options of knowledge rich economically disadvantaged communities and individuals; one needs to build upon their experimental and innovative spirit. Only then the whole chain can be strong.
AMRUPS Enterprises Network of grassroots innovators has proved that technological and institutional innovations developed by individuals and communities can
provide a new way of thinking about conservation of diversity, generation of sustainable alternatives for natural resource management through self supporting viable economic and non-economic options, and augmenting self reliant livelihood strategies..

It is a model of poverty alleviation and conservation of natural resources which builds upon particular resources in which poor people are often rich i.e. their knowledge. In many cases, the insights learnt from local innovations can even extend the frontiers of modern science. In the case of herbal medicine, the studies have shown that as many as seventy four percent of the human plant derived drugs are used for the same purpose for which local communities and tribal people
use these plants (Farnsworth, 1981). What modern science did was only to make the method of extraction, formulation, storage or delivery more efficient, or in some cases generate a synthetic analogue of the active compounds. It is a different matter that in almost no case, modern private or other public sector organizations have ever shared any gain from this knowledge with the local communities or individual innovators. The experience of TBGRI is an exception.

AMRUPS Enterprises Network was started ten years ago to correct asymmetry in power relationships between formal and informal sectors of science, technology and economic enterprises. AMRUPS Enterprises Network believes in protection of intellectual property rights of local communities as well as individuals and has been pleading for that much before the issue of patenting was being discussed widely in the country.AMRUPS Enterprises does what we intellectuals and other public professionals often fail to do. It connects flower to flower and takes away their nectar and pollen without making them to complain. The cross pollination
of ideas among local communities is possible only if we share our research findings in local language that communities can understand. Similarly, when we collect knowledge from people, we should not make it anonymous knowledge. The providers should be acknowledged and their IPRs should be protected. Further, if we get any material rewards, gains or any other form of income from commercialization, diffusion or publication of this knowledge, we must share part of the gains with knowledge providers and their communities.

It is this spirit which guides the activities of the voluntary organization, AMRUPS Enterprises (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) set up in 1993 to support and strengthen the AMRUPS Enterprises Network - a voluntary informal network of creative people, policy makers, scientists, NGOs and other professionals interested in augmenting grassroots innovations. The AMRUPS Enterprises Network tries to:

1. Provide a peer groups of farmers, artisans, scientists, academics across language, culture and regional boundaries to nurture, critique and encourage     innovative experimentation.
2. Break the nexus between the regions of high biodiversity and high poverty endowed with poor public as well as private infrastructure.
3. Provide access to information that can help improve productivity without increasing cost using other farmers' innovations. Most of the grassroots innovators      do not have access to relevant information, which cripples their ability to raise resources and explore opportunities in different markets. Thus poor demand     of ecological and technological skill as well as their eco- friendly products forces them to become "unskilled labourers" in the urban houses and market     galvanize existing institutions and community structures to inspire and sustain the curiosity and spirit of younger generation to pursue the path of     experimentation and excellence in local eco-enterprises and natural resource management.
4. Resolve an ethical dilemma about sharing and protecting traditional as well as contemporary knowledge of individuals and communities evolved through     conscious efforts but guided by different value systems without keeping people poor. The fact that we have not found many young healers indicates that     younger generation does not find the career of healer or herbalist worth pursuing when it entails a life of penury though with a lot of goodwill in the     community.
5. Generate a system for rewarding and providing incentives to the innovative individuals as well communities under the provision of several international and     national agreements like Convention on Biological Diversity (Art 8(J)), International Convention to Combat Desertification (Art 16) etc.

Response to these challenges has been organised through an iterative and interactive process for nurturing and encouraging creativity and innovations of people
at grassroots. AMRUPS Enterprises has achieved some success on various fronts in addressing various challenges described above. We greatly acknowledge the support provided by various agencies like Swiss Development Cooperation (1981- 1990) , International Development Research Center (IDRC) Canada, PEW Conservation Scholar Programme (award to Professor Gupta), Swedish Society for Nature and Conservation, MacArthur Foundation, University of Gothenburg, FAO /FTPP Programme and Global Environment Facility ( GEF) and UNDP supported project on Dryland Biodiversity in North Gujarat being implemented on behalf of Ministry of Environment and Forestry and most importantly the grassroots innovators themselves. However, we strongly feel that the real indicator of success will be when these activities can be sustained on their own through collective efforts of local innovators, investors and entrepreneurs in the near future.
We are very conscious of the need to transform these activities from the "project mode" to a "self sustained polycentric movement". We hope that NISSAT will
help steer this proposal for support from various public agencies to make transition towards the "local self governing sustainable institutional network" possible.

1. To expand space in society for building upon sustainable technological, institutional and educational initiatives and innovations at the grassroots with special     focus on women's knowledge
2. To document, analyse and disseminate innovations developed by people themselves.
3. To validate and add value to local innovations through experiments (on farm and on-station) and laboratory research for generating nature-friendly      sustainable technologies.
4. To conserve local biodiversity through in-situ and ex-situ gene banks managed by local people.
5. To protect the intellectual property rights of grassroots innovators and to generate incentive models for recognising, respecting and rewarding grassroots     creativity and associated ethical values and norms.
6. To provide venture support to grassroots innovators to scale up products and services based on grassroots innovations through commercial or non-commercial     channels.
7. To embed the insights learnt from grassroots innovations in the formal educational system in order to expand the conceptual and cognitive space available to     these innovations