Bioprospecting has failed - what next?

Bioprospecting has failed – what next?

Sylvia Rodriguez

In the run up to the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development, Biowatch South Africa, hosted the second South-South Biopiracy Summit on “Biopiracy – Ten Years Post-Rio”. The meeting offered an opportunity for people to revisit the world of bioprospecting that had been one of the bright young hopes of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil. At that time, bioprospecting was being heralded as a powerful new conservation and sustainable development tool. In 1991, the now infamous INBio-Merck contract became the first modern model for bioprospecting, in which a tropical country (Costa Rica) teamed up with a large pharmaceutical company to systematically screen the country's native species in search of compounds potentially useful in the development of medicines. This and the copy-cat models that followed were acclaimed as win-win models.

Biodiverse countries would win in a number of ways. First, the up-front money could be used immediately for forest conservation and tide the country over while the product moved slowly from the first stages of bioprospecting to market. Eventually, the country could also receive royalties, the economic revenue from which could be used for in situ conservation. New medicines and products would be available and cheap for everybody. Second, tropical forests would not be disturbed through the use of non-invasive methods of extraction. Third, in exchange for biodiversity, the country would benefit from technology transfer, which would create professional jobs, and add value to raw materials and the country's gross revenues. This in turn would fuel social development. The industrialised country would also win through expedited access to resources, less bureaucratic red tape, cheap labour and help in ‘greening' their image. The world would win because people would have new and cheaper medicines and agricultural produce.

At the Biopiracy Summit, different speakers confronted these hyped up ‘promises' with their own experiences, and their conclusions comprised a litany of disasters. Bioprospecting has failed as a conservation tool and sustainable development mechanism. Advance payments have failed to prevent deforestation. Ten years on in the Merck-InBio agreement, there have been no pharmaceutical ‘hits' and therefore no royalties. Appropriate and affordable medicines continue to be out of reach of those who need it. Bioprospecting techniques are not always non-invasive. There has been only limited and second rate technology transfer. The INBio-Merck contract and similar models have failed to accomplish their own objectives and those of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). ‘National sovereignty' has largely become meaningless. Nation states abdicate to third parties the real control of resources and knowledge through intellectual property rights transferred to companies. Pharmaceutical TNCs are pursuing other alternatives (such as combinatorial chemistry and gene therapy) and some are shifting to phytomedicines and nutraceuticals which are not regulated by the CBD or the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Last but not least, amongst some communities that have received small amounts of money (mainly for samples and labour), the income has been divisive.

An interesting suggestion was made with respect to benefit sharing. The best answer for local communities and indigenous peoples might be a complete ban on intellectual property rights on the material taken from their lands. This ban would relate not only to the material, but also its components or derivatives, and the knowledge associated with it.

But despite its apparent failures, bioprospecting is not dead. Instead it is changing its targets: more towards genes than secondary metabolites (chemicals derived from the genes), and (as expected) more and more towards marine resources. Marine resources offer distinct advantages to bioprospectors in that they are abundant, there are fewer regulations to get in the way, and less resistance is put up by fisherfolk than by other groups that are the target of bioprospecting. The rules are changing (for example, up front money is not palatable to companies) and so are the players. Governments are fading out and corporations are fading in. This last shift reflects a wider shift that was observed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development As Vandana Shiva put it, “The substitution of multilateral legally binding agreements by … public-private partnerships are reflections of the privatisation of states and privatisation of the UN”.

Some of the more significant public-private partnerships described at the Summit included:

NGOs will have their work cut out to evaluate and follow up these new iniatives as they sprout and grow.