When Sharing Means Less for All

©1999 J. E. Armstrong, Illinois State University The first legally binding international agreement governing the shipment of genetically modified organisms across borders has reinvigorated critics of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The new agreement, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, requires that the governments of signatory nations be notified when living GMOs such as crop plants are to be brought into the country with the intention of introducing them into the environment.1 WORKING WITH NATIVE PLANTS, ORGANISMS…AND, OH YES, PEOPLE University of Georgia anthropology professor Brent Berlin did research for decades in the forests of Chiapas, Mexico, and expected to have little trouble running a new National Institutes of Health-funded project there. But his mission, searching for useful compounds in rare plants and other organisms and cataloging biodiversity, turned out to be impossible. Chiapas farmers and their advocates in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) accused scientists of stealing plants, from which companies could later profit. "All bioprospecting is biopiracy," declares Silvia Ribeiro, a program manager in Mexico City for the ETC group, a Winnipeg, Canada-based NGO. In the end, political unrest and a mistrust of outsiders trumped scientific curiosity, and the Chiapas program, which began in 1998, ceased research and training efforts within 18 months. The Chiapas stalemate, though not typical, is a cautionary tale for researchers in the Third World. Even well-intentioned researchers must tread carefully. Bioprospecting, and indeed biopiracy, have been controversial since at least 1876 when rubber tree seeds were smuggled from Brazil to London, and rubber trees ended up in Malaysia where they flourished. More recent cases of harvesting natural resources without compensation have mobilized groups like ETC. University of Mississippi researchers, for example, patented the use of turmeric as a healing agent, a traditional medicine used for many years in India. The patent was later withdrawn following a challenge by the Indian government. Such conflicts prompt NGOs to reject all patenting, according to Ribeiro. "It's piracy because you are privatizing resources that have always been in the public domain," she says. TAINTED SCIENCE Such scenarios have unfairly tainted all bioprospecting ventures, whether funded by companies or by government, says José Carlos Fernandez, head of environmental economics at Mexico's National Institute of Ecology and a participant in the Chiapas project. "They're all put in the same bag," he says. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity raised awareness of the pitfalls of such bioprospecting, yet its very creation gave some people in the developing world the idea that their countries might rake in millions from consent agreements, says Gordon Cragg, chief of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) natural products branch, which has long maintained agreements with foreign institutions. "Every country thought [it was] sitting on a gold mine," Cragg adds. Only one in 40,000 compounds may be a promising drug lead, says Cragg, and that one compound may not prove safe or effective in clinical trials. Approximately 40% of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration have a natural product origin, according to Josh Rosenthal of the NIH's Fogarty International Center, Bethesda, Md. He estimates that less than half of those drugs came from developing countries. Successes have included quinine, which originated in the Amazon and is the source of several antimalarial agents. NIH-funded projects similar to the aborted Chiapas work have thrived in other parts of the world; the NCI and Fogarty Center also aim to conserve and catalog taxonomic knowledge of rare species. The Fogarty Center will soon award a round of grants to developing countries that collaborate with US scientists, companies, and researchers. CUSTOM CONVENTION Fernandez emphasizes the need for tailor-made bioprospecting guidelines. In Chiapas, the multitude of complex, often conflicting segments of a population with a violent political history (including a 1990s Zapatista uprising) made it difficult for researchers to find a spokesperson. Ribeiro says that in many countries hundreds of communities may share natural resources, and it's impossible to know whom to compensate if something becomes commercially viable. Biodiscovery shouldn't be seen as scientists pitted against developing countries, says Rosenthal. "The important thing is to find ways for scientists from all countries to do research that is supportive of larger goals in health, conservation, and economic development." --Eugene Russo Opponents already express concern about possible trade consequences of these new rules, which are intended to protect native biodiversity. The treaty's new GMO tenets have reopened the document to review and intensified the notion, even among scientists who initially embraced it, that it makes biodiversity research more difficult for everyone. "The treaty is an absolute disaster for scientists," says a senior United Nations official on condition of anonymity. "It draws no distinction between scientists bioprospecting for drugs and pharmaceuticals, scientists conducting academic research, and those collecting samples for agricultural research and plant breeding. I feel sorry for the scientists. It's a nightmare." RATIFIED BUT REVILED The CBD was concluded at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Since then, 187 parties have signed the agreement, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and most European countries. The US Senate, however, has never ratified the treaty, and the Bush administration appears unlikely to push for passage. Nevertheless, for those countries that have ratified the treaty, it establishes a framework to allow access to indigenous plants, animals, and other organisms based on "prior informed consent" under "mutually agreed terms" and to ensure the "fair and equitable sharing of benefits" arising from commercialization and other uses. The treaty leaves it to each country to negotiate its own rules for access and benefit sharing. But some say the treaty will breed ill will towards foreign scientists among local people. Douglas Daly, curator of Amazonian botany at the New York Botanical Garden, says the problem stems from "bioparanoia." "In most diversity-rich countries, there is a lot of concern over biopiracy. Some of it is legitimate but a lot of it is exaggerated," Daly says. "The [concern] has led to the criminalization of the biological researcher. Everyone is suspect. As a result, people are not doing research or graduate work in these areas." The CBD also has negatively affected agricultural research for plant breeding and sample collection, says Cary Fowler, senior adviser to the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, one of 16 major agricultural research institutes around the world collectively known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Some member centers hold the world's largest collections of biodiversity for agriculture, crop-breeding materials, and gene banks. Collection samples have dropped from about 30,000 per year to fewer than 5,000 as a direct result of the treaty, Fowler says. "A lot of material in our gene bank would be extinct if it had not been collected in the past," he adds. "But we're finding it harder and harder to collect material." Pharmaceutical companies have sought access to plants and other organisms in Central and South America through benefit-sharing arrangements with governments and indigenous tribes, similar to those advocated by the treaty but with disappointing results. In 1991 Merck & Co. negotiated a landmark bioprospecting contract with Costa Rica's National Institute of Biodiversity. Merck gave $1 million (US) to the institute and guaranteed to share revenues from drugs derived from Costa Rican plants and insects. Merck ended the agreement in 1999, having failed to produce a single commercially viable drug. A year later, Novartis Pharma signed an agreement with Bioamazonia, a quasigovernmental organization created by Brazilian officials to commercialize resources from the Amazon. In exchange for giving the Brazilians $4 million and a 1% royalty on sales, Novartis would be permitted to remove samples of more than 10,000 rain forest fungi and bacteria. Although patents would have remained in Brazilian hands, local environmentalists criticized the agreement as being another case of biopiracy. The agreement was dissolved. In the 1990s, Shaman Pharmaceuticals, a biotech startup in South San Francisco, sought to develop and commercialize drugs derived from tropical rainforests. The company established a benefit-sharing protocol with local tribes and conducted exploration and drug development. By the late 1990s the company had drugs in clinical trials but ran short of funding. Today, the company has reorganized and sells over-the-counter nutritional supplements derived from its rainforest research. One company apparently on track is Diversa, a San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company that collects and screens novel molecules from the environment to develop therapies. Diversa has biodiversity access agreements in place with many countries, says Hillary Theakston, director of investor relations. These benefit-sharing agreements involve "a number of different compensation mechanisms," she says. "We do respect the CBD treaty, and all our biodiversity access agreements are in keeping with that benefit- sharing philosophy." Carlos M. Correa, a law professor at the University of Buenos Aires, has surveyed access agreements made under the CBD by Andean Group countries. The results are meager: Venezuela has signed 20 applications and five contracts, all from individual researchers; Bolivia has signed three applications and one contract; Colombia has yet to approve a single contract. "Most of the applications have been made by individual researchers from the Andean Group countries themselves, not from outside companies," Correa says. "The assumptions about how to exploit genetic resources were not correct." TREATY TRANSFORMATION In light of all these problems, the United Nations and the governments of some developing countries are starting to recognize the need to change the treaty's implementation. In April 2002, country representatives met in Bonn to discuss how to improve access and benefit sharing. "Further work is still needed to assist parties through complementary approaches ... such as model agreements and model legislation," says the UN's CBD secretariat in Montreal. Nonetheless, the Bonn Guidelines will attempt to help countries distinguish between access to genetic resources for taxonomy, collection, research, and commercialization. Member countries have been asked to submit "action plans" to increase access by February 2004. For Richardo Callejas, a biology professor at the University of Antioqua in Medellin, Columbia, progress on implementing the CBD must be made quickly. "There is no way that our societies in Latin America will emerge from centuries of poverty while holding a completely distorted view of nature," he says. "Once we start looking at organisms as bank accounts, then we are missing the entire view of what is in front of us. Curiosity of the living world ends and so does the meaning of being here." Ted Agres (tedagres@lycos.com) is a freelance writer in Washington, DC. 1. "Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity," available online at www.biodiv.org/doc/legal/cartagena-protocol-en.pdf function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

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