Prospecting for biodiversity is the exploration, extraction and selection of biological diversity and indigenous knowledge in search of commercial genetic and biochemical resources.
Although it is true that the prospection of biodiversity does not always imply the use of indigenous knowledge, it is a clear fact that the valuable chemical compounds derived from plants,
Animals and microorganisms are more easily identified, and are of greater commercial value when collected based on indigenous knowledge and / or found in territories traditionally inhabited by indigenous communities.
Bilateral bioprospecting agreements are approved by the Multilateral Convention on Biological Diversity.
However, in the vast majority of cases, commercial bioprospecting agreements cannot be effectively controlled or implemented by communities of origin, countries or the Convention.
RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) estimates that medicinal plants and microorganisms from the South contribute at least $ 30 trillion a year to the Northern pharmaceutical industry.
The market for natural research specimens (samples or extracts of biological materials) within the pharmaceutical industry in the United States of America alone is conservatively estimated to be $ 30 to $ 60 million per year.
So it is not surprising that the seekers of biological wealth are feverishly bent on obtaining the "green gold" of the South.
This situation affects above all developing or underdeveloped countries where biological wealth and traditional knowledge are more deeply rooted, which is why it is of great importance to know about biological prospecting or bioprospecting contracts.
Development
Biological prospecting or bioprospecting concept
The search and evaluation process that allows us to identify, select and isolate useful components of these resources is known as "bioprospecting".
This is the exploration of biological diversity and the indigenous knowledge associated with it, to facilitate the selection and extraction of genetic and biochemical resources that may result in commercial products.
In the current context in the world, all bioprospecting results in biopiracy.
ETC group defines Bioprospecting as "ongoing research where biologists, chemists, and other scientists compile a database of the potential of many species."
Bioprospecting contracts are based on the use of plant, animal and human genes, active principles and ethnobotanical knowledge, which can be economically exploited by transnational pharmaceutical, agriculture and food companies.
They are also interested in identifying the precise regions of the world with mega-diversity, What the World Bank today calls the "hotspots" (the areas of greatest concentration) of biodiversity in the world, but mainly these areas of biological and cultural mega-diversity are all located in the South of the planet.
Examples of bioprospecting contracts
Currently there is a great and renewed interest in the evaluation of natural products, especially, from the emergence of new biotechnologies and other related technologies, these resources constitute the raw material through which industries achieve permanent innovation that provide them extraordinary earnings through:
- The registration of patents that privatize living beings or their parts (of microorganisms, plants, animals, human genome), which until very recently had always been community, public or world heritage assets. Control of the markets. Protection in the absence of international norms and national laws.
(Absence that may respond to the existence of deep community standards that for centuries or millennia have guaranteed the free circulation of medicinal, agricultural, forestry, etc. knowledge)
In 1980, none of the research budget of the United States pharmaceutical industry was earmarked for the evaluation of superior plants.
Currently it is estimated that more than 200 companies and research institutions around the world are evaluating animal and plant compounds for medicinal properties.
The revival of the search for natural products and the recognition of the value of indigenous knowledge are partly fueled by the awareness that species, their genetic material, and the ecosystems of which they are part are rapidly disappearing from the face of the Earth.
In the mid-1980s, pharmaceutical industry analysts warned that every extinct rainforest medicinal plant could represent sales losses of more than $ 200 million to the pharmaceutical industry.
Given the advances in molecular biology and the availability of more sophisticated research tools, research on natural products is increasingly profitable for pharmaceutical corporations and other institutions.
In high-tech laboratories, extracts of biological specimens are subjected to rapid and precise analysis procedures that allow the isolation of substances that demonstrate a specifically determined activity.
As a result, the market for buying and selling exotic biological specimens is expanding rapidly.
According to conservative estimates, the market for natural research specimens within the pharmaceutical industry alone is $ 30 to $ 60 million a year.
Of course, prospecting for biodiversity is not a new thing.
For decades, plant collectors from industrialized countries have ventured south in search of valuable genetic material for the betterment of agricultural species. However, no money has changed hands in this process, nor has any recognition been given to indigenous farming communities that selected, maintained and improved traditional crop varieties.
In 1991, Monsanto Inc. (a US-based agrochemical company was recruiting employees of its own "who were traveling to some exotic location and who did not mind extracting a few samples from the soil for the love of science" to collecting specimens for Monsanto's agricultural prospecting programs. "You never know what you are going to find, or where you are going to find it… Everything is within your means," according to Margann Miller-Wideman, a Monsanto spokesperson.
The first major bioprospecting bilateral agreement was made public in September 1991 (before the Convention on Biological Diversity), when Merck & Co. (a US-based pharmaceutical corporation announced the signing of a two-year, $ 1.135 billion agreement). Dollars with the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) of Costa Rica, a private, non-governmental research institute, INBio agreed to supply Merck's drug evaluation programs with chemical extracts from wild plants, insects and microorganisms.
In exchange for this, Merck agreed to provide INBio with a two-year research budget corresponding to the sum of $ 1,135 million, an undisclosed percentage of royalties on any commercial products resulting from said research, as well as technical assistance. and training aimed at developing research capacity within the country.
INBio also committed to allocate 10% of Merck's monetary allocation and 50% of any royalties it may eventually receive to the Costa Rican National Park Fund.
Despite the fact that the Merck / INBio agreement was hailed by some as a "model" of bioprospecting contract, it ignores the rights and role of indigenous communities.
According to Alejandro Argumedo, from the Chain of Indigenous Communities for Biodiversity, there is at least one indigenous reserve within the INBio collection area. Among the para-taxonomists who have been hired by INBio to collect biological specimens are members of indigenous communities.
Costa Rica's rain forests are estimated to contain 5 to 7 percent of the world's remaining biodiversity. If the Merck / INBio deal were widely imitated, all of the southern biodiversity could be auctioned off for the paltry sum of around $ 10 million a year.
Merck's sales for the year 1991 amounted to 8.6 trillion dollars, while the GNP (Gross National Product) of Costa Rica that year was 5.2 trillion dollars.
Merck's research budget for 1991 was approximately $ 1 trillion.
In fact, Merck owns three drugs whose sales exceed one trillion dollars each.
Given that pharmaceutical companies invest an average of $ 231 million in research to develop each new drug, the cost assigned to discovering a single substance that results from the agreement is hardly equivalent to a trifle.
For Merck, the Costa Rica deal represented extremely cheap labor, as well as access to unidentified biological treasures (and excellent public relations).
The pharmaceutical company Pfizer, using the Merck / INBio contract as a basis, paid nearly double the amount of this agreement to the New York Botanical Garden for collecting within the USA samples of plants with potential for drug development.
While it is true that the United States eclipses Costa Rica in geographic size, it is also known that they are characterized by their relatively few biodiversity reserves.
Since the announcement of the Merck / INBio agreement, other contracts between institutions / corporations based in the North and research institutes / government agencies in the South have been signed.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to monitor the number of contractual agreements that currently exist, nor the countries / corporations / institutions that are involved.
While it is possible to obtain some information about the most publicized bioprospecting agreements, such as the aforementioned Merck / INBio agreement, there could be hundreds of bilateral agreements that are hidden by relative secrecy and are not subject to public attention.
It is often difficult for indigenous community organizations to know for sure who they are negotiating with, or who are actually providing genetic information and materials.
It is becoming increasingly clear that most Northern-based corporations do not directly negotiate access to biodiversity, but rather operate through intermediaries.
These intermediaries may be private companies that are in the business of collecting and selling biological specimens, public sector institutions, non-governmental organizations, and non-profit entities such as research institutes, botanical gardens, conservation / environmental groups, or ethnobotanical employees. by corporations under contract.
The United States government is involved in numerous bioprospecting agreements around the world. In 1993 the US National Institutes of Health allocated $ 60 million for biodiversity research in search of drugs and medicinal products from the natural world.
In its search for natural products to treat cancer and AIDS, the National Cancer Institute has so far collected 50,000 samples derived from plants, microorganisms and marine genetic diversity from 30 tropical countries.
These samples are currently in the NCI Natural Products Repository, and are available to "qualified researchers" under material transfer agreements. Those who receive the samples "are required to follow NCI policies regarding fair compensation to countries of origin."
Plant collection for the NCI is carried out by three contractors:
The University of Chicago (in Southeast Asia); the Missouri Botanical Garden (in Africa); and the New York Botanical Garden (in Central and South America). NCI has signed bioprospecting agreements with Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, India, the Philippines, Russia, Sarawak, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are still in negotiations for agreements with other countries.
In December 1993, three US government agencies (the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the International Development Agency), who collaborate under the name of the International Cooperative Group on Biodiversity (ICBG), announced monetary incentive allocations for the largest public-private biodiversity prospecting agreements in history.
The five ICBG allocations for bioprospecting deals funded by the US government total $ 12.5 million over five years.
ICBG assignments include public-private cooperation between various organizations, including pharmaceutical corporations, academic researchers, government representatives, and non-governmental environmental organizations in seven countries.
All the countries affected by the ICBG agreements, except one, are Latin American: Suriname, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Cameroon. (Initially, the ICBG received letters of interest from 63 proponents, and chose its five beneficiaries from 34 applicants.)
The ICGB-Maya project (named for its acronym in English), presented in Spanish as «Research, pharmaceuticals and sustainable use of ethnobotanical knowledge and biodiversity in the Maya region of the Altos de Chiapas», will receive a total donation of 2.5 million dollars from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG), funded by the United States government.
The ICGB is a consortium of federal agencies that includes the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
It grants donations to public and commercial research institutions that carry out bioprospecting / biopiracy programs in countries of the South.
According to the ICGB itself, its goals are to promote the discovery of pharmaceuticals derived from natural resources, the conservation of biodiversity and the sustained economic growth of developing countries.
Using indigenous knowledge as a guide for their research, the ICGB project in Chiapas aims to discover, isolate, and pharmacologically evaluate important components of plant species and microorganisms used in traditional Mayan medicine.
Los Altos de Chiapas are depositories of one of the richest areas of animal and plant biodiversity on the planet.
Through the centuries, the Maya have developed a wide and complex medical knowledge. It is estimated that there are more than 6,000 plant species in the area and thousands of them are traditionally used by the Mayas to treat diseases.
All the promising samples will be analyzed to see if they can be effective in diseases such as cancer, ailments associated with HIV / AIDS, disorders of the central nervous system, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory / lung, skin diseases and as contraceptives.
The project also intends to carry out an extensive botanical survey of the Altos de Chiapas and - according to its own declarations - promote the sustainable production and harvest of selected species that show considerable potential for economic development.
The project estimates that it could identify some 2,000 unique components that will be chemically outlined by the UK-based project partner Molecular Nature Limited.
A duplicate of all samples collected would be deposited in the herbarium of the University of Georgia-Athens.
Economic edge of bioprospecting
1. Pharmaceutical use
Samples of dry, unprocessed plants: US $ 50-200 per kilo.
Microbial cultures, for each sample of living organism: $ 50- $ 140 per sample.
Mushroom samples: $ 60 to $ 100 per sample.
Average royalty payment
Raw material (plants) or extracts that are the basis of a product: from 3% to 5%.
If the marketed product is based on a derivative: from 2% to 3%.
If the product is fully synthetically manufactured: 0.5% to 1%.
2. Agrochemical use
Payment of samples: very variable depending on the use that each product is supposed to have: it ranges from US $ 30 to $ 350, depending on the previous information on the sample. The average royalty payment is 2-3%.
3. Spectrum of royalties percentage for other biotechnological uses
The average price for a few milligrams of a strain culture is $ 80 to $ 350 per sample. However, in the case of unusual organisms, the sample fee can reach several thousand dollars.
Institutions that store and sell samples of microorganisms (cultures, isolates), such as the American Type Culture Collection, the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, etc., sell each sample at prices ranging from $ 100 to $ 275..
In the case of single samples, the unit costs increase significantly.
The most common royalties on product sales are 3% to 5%, but can in some cases be between 8% and 10%, depending on the final product.
Social and environmental consequences of bioprospecting contracts
- For communities: the destruction of ties of community identity by the way that the commercialization and privatization of traditional knowledge and collective environmental goods undermine the principles of these cultures.
Also the loss of resources from their territories.
- For the nation: loss of control of one of its main strategic resources. For humanity: the discretionary use for profit that transnational companies can make of this knowledge and the genetic code; the increased risk of new weapons and biological wars, for example new genetically engineered wars of extermination or the induction and creation of new diseases in plants and humans; and genetic manipulation and body control of workers and consumers.
Does bioprospecting only involve negative events?
In the current context, yes. However, in the absence of the privatization of living beings and their commercial exploitation, bioprospecting could contribute to:
Take indigenous knowledge out of isolation and oblivion, placing it on a universal plane for the use of all (today it happens by way of looting, privatization and decontextualizing this holistic knowledge).
Developing scientific research (today it only happens following manipulative interests in the production of transnational companies)
Take geography to the confines of a molecular biogeography of the planet (although now this is only being carried out by transnational companies with a view to obtaining greater “profits derived from higher income from the land”.)
Biological Diversity Agreement
At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992) the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was proposed and to which 157 countries subscribed during the Conference, entering into effective December 1993.
This agreement in its preamble lays the foundations for what it represents: Aware of the intrinsic value of biological diversity and of the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components, also aware of the importance of biological diversity for evolution and for the maintenance of the systems necessary for the life of the biosphere, Affirming that the conservation of biological diversity is the common interest of all humanity, Reaffirming that States have sovereign rights on their own biological resources, also reaffirming that States are responsible for the conservation of their biological diversity and the sustainable use of their biological resources,determined to conserve and sustainably use biological diversity for the benefit of current and future generations.
The CBD in its Article 8, subsection c, d, e, f, g, i and j establishes that each Contracting Party, as far as possible and as appropriate:
c) Regulate or manage biological resources important for the conservation of biological diversity, whether inside or outside protected areas, to guarantee their conservation and sustainable use;
d) Promote the protection of ecosystems and natural habitats and the maintenance of viable populations of species in natural environments;
e) Promote environmentally appropriate and sustainable development in areas adjacent to protected areas, with a view to increasing the protection of those areas;
f) Rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species, inter alia through the development and implementation of plans or other management strategies;
g) Establish or maintain means to regulate, manage or control the risks derived from the use and release of living modified organisms as a result of biotechnology that are likely to have adverse environmental repercussions that may affect the conservation and sustainable use of diversity. biological, also taking into account the risks to human health;
i) It will seek to establish the necessary conditions to harmonize the current uses with the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components;
j) In accordance with its national legislation, it will respect, preserve and maintain the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities that embody traditional lifestyles relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their application. broader, with the approval and participation of those who possess such knowledge, innovations and practices, and will encourage equitable sharing of benefits derived from the use of such knowledge, innovations and practices;
Article 15 defines access to genetic resources, recognizing that the power to regulate access to genetic resources rests with national governments and is subject to national legislation.
The Convention also approves bilateral agreements by making repeated references to "terms of mutual agreement" regarding access to genetic materials (Article 15.5).3).
The language of the Convention on Intellectual Property Rights (Articles 16.2 and 16.5) is confusing, and is subject to different interpretations.
A representative of the pharmaceutical / agrochemical industry stated that the Convention does not challenge intellectual property systems, and that it could go even further than GATT in legitimizing intellectual property systems.
As it seems, the Biodiversity Convention grants passive approval to bilateral contractual agreements that will pit indigenous communities and countries against each other.
While multinational corporations are free to patent bio-materials, there are no effective norms or defined conditions to recognize and compensate for the contributions of indigenous communities and other informal innovators, who are responsible for the maintenance, use and development of the biodiversity around the world.
Conclusions
Existing bioprospecting contracts further favor contracting parties with more financial resources, even though a percentage of the contract goes to the communities with which it is signed.
At the global level, transnational companies show greater interest in this type of contract, seeking to obtain greater benefits through the patent rights they obtain from these biological resources.
The Convention on Biological Diversity expresses the feelings of the countries to protect their biological wealth and that they contain a benefit for all of humanity, however, not all countries are subscribed or fully apply all of its articles.
However, bioprospecting contracts could contribute to the dissemination of knowledge for the proper and fair use of all countries, solving various current problems; It could even solve or contribute to reducing the effects of epidemics that are plaguing several countries.
