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May 14, 2008
Biopirates
Hijack Traditional Knowledge
about Nature
By Simone Humml
Hamburg
Business concerns in the West often make money by patenting their
own medicines and agricultural products based on the traditional
knowledge of indigenous peoples.
A US company has patented a yellow bean grown for thousands of years
in South America, while pesticides using substances from the Indian
neem tree have been sold by trans-national corporations in Europe
and elsewhere.
A company in Germany is marketing a cure for respiratory ailments
based on extracts from the African Pelargonium plant genus.
Some of these patents have been returned after years of litigation,
but that is not enough for some participants at the UN conference on
biodiversity, which takes place in Bonn from May 19-30.
The UN gathering wants to make traditional knowledge less vulnerable
to unauthorized use and ensure that adequate financial compensation
is made to the communities that possess such knowledge.
"The foundation stone has to be laid so that we can come to a
concrete agreement by 2010," says Konrad Uebelhoer, biodiversity
director at the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
One of the main demands, he said, is that business and researchers
be required to seek permission in the individual countries before
they start searching for medicinal plants or genes.
The local communities should also be consulted in the application of
traditional knowledge, which is based on practice and has often been
passed on through many generations.
"It is necessary to have a clear formula for profit-sharing,"
according to Uebelhoer. This could also include transferring the
technology used to identify the active ingredients to the countries
of origin, he says.
Some 190 nations have signed up to the UN Convention on biological
diversity. The only industrialized nation that has not joined is the
US, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical producers.
Washington, Uebelhoer says, does not object to the first two goals
of the convention, the protection of biodiversity and its
sustainable development.
It is the third aim of justly distributing the profits from the use
of biological agents that has run into opposition from the powerful
US pharmaceutical industry.
Andreas Drews, who also works for the GTZ, says those applying for
patents are not required to state where the biological ingredients
come from, leading to an undetermined amount of bio-piracy.
The scientist wants changes made to the way patents are granted in
order to stop this practice.
"We demand a formal disclosure of where the resources come from
before biological ingredients, novel food and cosmetics can be
registered," he says.
"Novel food" is the term used for new foodstuffs, in particular
genetically modified foods.
This is already the case in Norway, says Drews, whose organization
is responsible for carrying out projects authorized by the German
ministry for economic cooperation and development.
There has already been some success in ensuring that some of the
wealth gained from derivatives of traditional knowledge is returned
to the holders of that knowledge.
Among the beneficiaries are the San people in southern Africa,
according to Frank Barsch, an expert on the protection of species at
the environmental organization WWF.
These hunter-gatherers chew the cactus-like hoodia plant to still
hunger and thirst pangs on their long journeys through the
inhospitable Kalahari desert.
The South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
isolated the appetite suppressant P57 contained in the plant and
patented it as a dietary supplement. Dutch-based Unilever is now
developing the product.
After much protest, CSIR signed a deal with the San in 2003 on
sharing the potential benefits of the product, which is being touted
as a potential cure for obesity.
Under the deal, to which Unilever is expected to contribute from
2009, San communities will be able to access royalties from a trust
fund to finance social projects.
"This does not happen enough because the peoples involved have to be
taught how to make an application for compensation," says Barsch,
who spent three years with the San, helping them replant the hoodia
because it was in danger of being eradicated.
The WWF wants the Bonn conference to agree to royalties from such
products being used for a social and ecological sustainable
development.
May 14, 2008
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