TITLE: CBD launches new negotiations AUTHOR: Kultida Samabuddhi PUBLICATION: Bangkok Post DATE: 15 February 2005 URL: http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/15Feb2005_news19.php Bangkok Post | 15 February 2005 CBD LAUNCHES NEW NEGOTIATIONS Kultida Samabuddhi The first global negotiations to develop a new international law on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources was launched in Bangkok yesterday. The trade-off between access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits from their use is a hot topic of discussion among the 188 member countries of the Conventional on Biological Diversity (CBD), including Thailand. Caretaker Environment and Natural Resources Minister Suvit Khunkitti, who presided over the meeting, said he hoped the new protocol on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources (ABS) would eliminate bio-piracy, an act in which industrialised nations seize biological resources from biodiversity-rich developing countries for commercial exploitation. "Thailand has had several such painful experiences in the past, when our herbal plants were smuggled to industrialised countries for development of expensive pharmaceutical and cosmetic products,' said Mr Suvit, referring to the native herbal plant species plao noi and kwao krua. Bio-piracy came to the forefront here after biodiversity advocates last year accused Japanese firms of patenting cosmetic applications of local Thai herbs without following appropriate requirements set by the government's Plant Varieties Protection Act. In 2001, the government also accused an American geneticist of committing a bio-piracy act by developing a new rice strain from the country's protected Khao Dok Mali 105 native rice variety. Mr Suvit said the international law on ABS must ensure that access to genetic resources was subject to the prior consent of the provider countries. The ABS negotiations, however, may take as long as 10 years to reach some sort of agreement because it is a complex issue that involves political and economics aspects, he said. "The major problem is that the developed countries are trying to hinder the process in fear that the introduction of rules to protect the resources would only hurt their businesses,' Mr Suvit said. Under the convention's guidelines on ABS, the benefit sharing could be in the form of sample fee, research funding, joint ownership of intellectual property rights, sharing of research and development results, or transfer of biotechnology to the resources providers. Hamdallah Zedan, executive secretary of the convention, said a challenge to establishing the ABS regime was resolving contradictions between the CBD and the World Trade Organisation's Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreements (Trips). In its present form, Trips would certainly undermine the implementation of the access and benefit-sharing provision of the CBD, he said, because Trips allocates full control of genetic resources to the patent holders. Governments and communities will have no means of regulating access or demanding a share of benefits because they will be subject to private ownership, said Mr Zedan. Small companies may also find the access fee to genetic materials too expensive. Industries would also have trouble with the countries of origin because of bureaucratic red-tape, said Anke Van Den Hurk, of the International Seed Federation. A delegate from The Netherlands said on behalf of the European Union that the regime's access to genetic resources for environmentally-friendly purposes should not be restricted because without access to resources, there cannot be any benefit-sharing, he said. The meeting, to continue until Friday, is being attended by 600 senior government officials, scientists, environmentalists, and agricultural and pharmaceutical industry representatives from 180 countries. GOING FURTHER (compiled by GRAIN) The International Institute for Sustainable Development is providing daily web coverage of the Bangkok meeting from 14-18 February 2005. http://www.iisd.ca/biodiv/abs-wg3/ News-Medical.Net, "Patent-based regulation of genetic resources could undermine health in developing countries", 14 February 2005. http://www.news-medical.net/?id=7758