Bioprospecting/bioplunder
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Bio-prospecting or bio-plunder?
Date: 09-11-1996 :: Pg: 12 :: Col: c
By Suman Sahai
It is necessary to arm ourselves with strong national laws to protect our
bioreserve base and stop the loot and plunder of our biological material.
PROSPECTING for biological material like plants with medicinal or other
economically valuable properties like fibre or oil, is becoming a dynamic
activity. With growing environmental consciousness, benign biological
substitutes are being sought for certain categories of chemical products.
Following the German ban on chemical AZO dyes in the textile sector, the
search is on for suitable vegetable dyes for leather and textiles.
Plant-based colouring agents are also being sought for the food processing
industry due to the rising incidence of allergies to chemical colours and
additives.
Bio-prospecting is high on the agenda of the western and transnational
corporate biotechnology sector. The legendary success of vinblastine and
vincristine, two cancer treating agents derived from Madagascar from the
Rosy Periwinkle, called Sadabahar in India, shows the way to those engaged
in the frustrating search for cancer-curing drugs. The recent promise of
Taxol derived from the Yew tree as another cancer treating agent has
spurred the search for drugs from the plant world.
Reportedly, bio-prospecting is such a preferred activity in western
nations that not only is the corporate sector investing heavily in it, so
are universities and research institutions. Apparently, research proposals
for survey of indigenous flora, local healing traditions and study of
ancient medicinal texts like those dealing with Ayurveda and Chinese
medicine are almost certain to receive support from funding agencies.
Universities like the Banaras Hindu University which have a strong
tradition of the practice and study of Ayurveda have been overrun by
foreign scholars, mostly American and European scholars, in recent times.
In several areas of the Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas, as also in the
regions of the western ghats, groups of foreigners are silently collecting
samples of plants, insects, soil, etc., to take back to their countries
for study.
Teams of three to four people, mostly under contract to multinational
companies, camp in villages in the Himalayan regions and interact with the
local community to identify plants and their use by the local community.
Mostly this information is sought for healing properties of plants. These
groups have been collecting such samples as they can identify themselves.
For others, they have been paying local people to collect it for them from
the higher reaches.
Since these foreign prospectors are paying two and four times the pittance
that the impoverished hill people would otherwise get as daily wages,
there is never any dearth of people willing to go out and strip whole
hillsides for them. This precisely is what has happened in the Garhwal and
Kumaon areas, where allegedly Proctor and Gamble has been prominent among
many others who have collected samples in this way. This kind of activity
has led not just to the theft of genetic material worth millions, it has
been particularly destructive of the environment. Those collecting samples
were not harvesting their chosen plants carefully, they were stripping
tracts of flora so as not to miss out anything. This kind of illegal and
environmentally devastating bio- prospecting can be stopped only if local
communities are made aware that such collections are not only illegal but
also the theft of what is essentially their property and that this is also
very much against the national interest.
The Government must designate some local authority like the Block
Development Officer or the elected head of the Panchayat to receive
in that they can pass it on to
the district headquarters for appropriate action. In the absence of
permission or authorisation documents from an appropriate agency, the
district administration should be authorised to take penal action.
Villagers should be informed about who they should contact if they see
such activity in their areas. Apart from generating awareness about these
issues and creating a local system to deal with these situations, it is
also necessary to arm ourselves with strong national laws to protect our
bio-resource base and stop the loot and plunder.
The first step is to enact the laws that arise out of the Biodiversity
Convention signed in 1992. This has not been done even four years after
the signing of the Convention. The inefficiency of the Environment
Ministry which is responsible for drafting legislation relating to
biodiversity is costing the country dearly. Frequent changes in political
leadership and an obtuse, ill informed bureaucracy are the main reasons
for the systematic loot of India's genetic resources. Even when there is
an international treaty favourable to developing countries being able to
protect their resources, the Environment Ministry is unable to get its act
together. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) rectifies a
historical wrong. It reverses the principle of Common Heritage of Mankind
according to which the genetic resources of the world belonged to everyone
and not particularly to the nations where they were found. Now CBD has
acknowledged the principle of ownership according to which genetic
resources are recognised to be the property of those nations in whose
sovereign territories they are located. In addition, CBD lays down two
other conditions of great importance to countries like India that are
owners of bio-resources where there is a strong base of indigenous
knowledge. These are Prior Informed Consent and Material and Information
Transfer Agreements with respect to the transfer of genetic resources from
owner countries to countries/companies/individuals that want to use these
resources.
The clause of Prior Informed Consent lays down that parties wanting to use
genetic resources must first take the permission of the local community or
the relevant authority in the owner country. Material and Information
Transfer Agreements are to govern the conditions under which these
resources will be transferred to the user party. These conditions could
for instance lay down the fee that will be levied for bio-prospecting
whether or not a product is developed. We must enact the CBD related laws
immediately so as to protect our biodiversity and indigenous knowledge
from marauding corporate giants who can take advantage of the current legal
limbo and transfer out genetic material without proper agreements. Today
even when foreign nationals are apprehended at airports carrying genetic
material like seeds, soil samples containing micro organisms or butterflies
and insects in their suitcases, it is difficult to proceed against them if
the samples are not on the endangered or prohibited list. Unless ownership
rights are established over genetic resources, they remain the Common
Heritage of Mankind and their transfer cannot be considered illegal.
Countries other than India have taken prompt action to protect their
bio-resources and have secured the rights of their indigenous communities
as custodians of the resources and repositories of the knowledge about
their uses. This they have done by enacting domestic legislation to ensure
that ownership rights are exercised over the country's bioresources and
that any prospecting for biological material can only take place after
Prior Informed Consent has been taken from local communities. The
commercial exploitation of bioresources is subject to the conditions that
have been laid down for Material and Information Transfer Agreements.
Australian States enacted legislation almost immediately after the
conclusion of the Biodiversity Convention that all genetic resources found
in their territories is their property. Apart from establishing ownership,
these Australian States passed a law that any one producing anything out of
Australian biological resources would automatically have to pay seven per
cent of the profits made to the concerned Australian State as royalty.
The Philippines which are closer and have conditions similar to ours have
unlike us, acted with promptness to regulate the use of their bioresources
and to earn revenue from it. On May 18, 1995, the Philippines adopted a
Presidential Executive Order which regulates bioprospecting. This order
lays down three essential conditions for those interested in prospecting
for bioresources in the Philippines. Prospectors have to negotiate a
research agreement with the Government, seek prior informed consent and
share benefits with local communities and indigenous peoples. It is worth
looking at the Philippine order in some detail since it could serve as a
model for us.
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