WHO’s Two-Track Play for Pathogens and Traditional Knowledge
The pattern you're not supposed to see.
I almost missed it.
Last week I was deep in negotiations on human rights and transnational corporations, and my focus was locked there.
The thing I missed is that the World Health Organization (WHO) held its third World Congress on Traditional Medicine. At the exact same time, behind the scenes, States were locked in the high-stakes negotiations for the PABS Annex.
This is the critical detail.
As you know, the main “Pandemic Agreement” was already adopted in principle (May 2025). But it cannot enter into force until the PABS (Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing) Annex is finalized.
The PABS negotiation is the entire bottleneck. The fate of the treaty hinges on it.
And while all eyes are on that single fight, the Traditional Medicine track is quietly advancing a parallel system. It’s a classic divide and conquer strategy, designed to split the resources of Indigenous Peoples.
The Big Idea
I’m not a scientist, so please hang in there with me as I go through it. I’ve learned that when a virus is sequenced, it becomes data.
That data powers the most valuable industries in the world: Vaccines, biotech, pharma, and synthetic biology. A single sequence can be downloaded, patented, programmed into new life forms, and sold globally.
And where do these resources come from?
Forests. Mountains. Wetlands. Lands and territories where Indigenous Peoples live and govern. These ecosystems don’t just contain pathogens, nope, they contain the medicinal plants and knowledge (traditional and Indigenous) that have co-existed for millennia.
The new global architecture is designed to split them.
The PABS Annex will govern the pathogens.
The Traditional Medicine Strategy will govern the knowledge and plants.
We are not in the room for either negotiation as rights holders. This is not just about outbreaks. It is about ownership.
Here is the 4-part breakdown.
1. The Old Wealth vs. The New Wealth
To understand what’s on deck, you have to understand the shift in power.
The Wealth of the Past: Minerals.
This is oil, gold, and lithium. It has a clear price and requires big infrastructure. You extract it once and sell it. But it eventually runs out. Minerals built the 19th and 20th century.
The Wealth of the Future: Genetic Resources.
This is a virus sample, a plant gene, or the knowledge of how to use it. It isn’t a product. It’s a code. It’s a blueprint.
You can copy it.
You can sequence it.
You can program it.
You can license it.
A mine runs out. A genetic library can be used forever.
One genetic sample can fuel entire industries. And the richest genetic libraries are not in labs. They are in biodiverse ecosystems. On….you guessed it…Indigenous lands.
2. The “PABS” Battleground (Track 1: Pathogens)
The PABS Annex is the “big thing” being negotiated right now. It’s how virus samples will be shared during pandemics and how benefits, like vaccines and money, will be distributed.
Here’s the (likely) proposed playbook:
A virus is discovered on Indigenous land.
A sample is taken and sequenced.
The sequence (the data) is uploaded to global databases.
Companies use the code to create and patent treatments.
They sell the product. The profit moves up.
The people are left out.
No consent.
No recognition.
No rights.
This is the model being fought over, and the entire Pandemic Agreement is waiting for it.
3. The “Traditional Medicine” Flank (Track 2: Knowledge)
While the world’s attention is laser-focused on the make-or-break PABS negotiations, the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy (2025-2034) is advancing on a parallel track.
This track targets the other half of the resource: The medicinal plants and the traditional knowledge about them.
It uses the exact same “access and benefit-sharing” language. This sounds like it respects Indigenous knowledge, but it seems like a trap. It severs the knowledge from the people and the land, turning it into another asset for a global fund, governed by States.
This is the pattern. The same legal logic, copy-pasted across the UN:
PABS (Pandemic Deal): Governs the pathogens.
WHO TM Strategy: Governs the traditional knowledge.
CBD and DSI: Governs genetic data from plants and animals.
UNFCCC Article 6: Governs carbon.
WIPO: Governs the patents that make it all profitable.
Each arena repeats the same design: Take the resource, extract the value, send benefits to a global fund, and treat Indigenous Peoples as “stakeholders” while States make the decisions.
