Read the following passage and answer within its context.

TRIPs agreement provides a comprehensive set of global trade rules for the protection of copyright patents, trademarks, industrial designs, trade secrets, semiconductor lay out designs, and geographical indications, that apply to all the number-countries irrespective of their levels of development, natural and human endowments and history. Every member-country has been asked by the WTO to amend its national patent law to confirm to that universal globalized format for legislation relating to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, food, alloys, etc. Under Article 65, the developed countries have been asked to change their laws within another five years, and the less developed countries within an additional five years. The least developed countries have been asked to make those changes by 2005 AD. This attempt at global standardisation and uniformity by way of TRIP’s agreement is in conflict with the main thrust of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 that set out the conditions for sustainable development. These two reveal two contrasting types of international approaches and norms. While the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1993 convention on biodiversity (CBD) focused on ‘diversity’ as being fundamental to sustain life and development, TRIPs and WTO are pushing for ‘conformity’ to international standardized norms on patents, services, labour, investment and what not irrespective of their history, ecology, level of economic development, etc. But despite their diametrically opposed viewpoints, 170 countries signed CBD upholding the need for diversity, and 50 countries signed the TRIPs agreement in 1994 claiming the urgency of uniformity, with a very large element of common names (130) in both. The convention on bio-diversity (CBD) in its Article 16.5 specifically asserts that intellectual property right must not be in conflict with conservation and sustainable use of bio-diversity, a provision that has been totally ignored by those who composed the TRIPs agreement. While in case of agriculture the higher yield of patented products induces the farmers to switch form a more varied production pattern, the resulting narrowing of genetic base makes the economy and society more vulnerable to plant disease and epidemics. It is true that the move towards cultivation of a smaller number of higher yielding varieties and the uniform spread of the same variety over a large space predates the present debate on patent, particularly since the introduction of the green revolution technology in the mid-sixties, but there can be no doubt that the latter has brought about a qualitative change in the scenario and has created possibility of a vast quantitative change too in that direction. So far no attempt has been made to reconcile the two conflicting approaches of CBD and TRIPs. If diversity is so important for sustaining life, how can WTO demand conformity to standardised global formats?