Posted on 4-10-2002
Scramble
for Green Gold Kills Asian Biodiversity
By Kalyani
NEW DELHI, India, October 2, 2002 (ENS) - The quest to commercialize
plant
genes by transnational companies and national governments is
destroying a
wealth of genetic resources and livelihoods across the Asia-Pacific
region,
says a report released Tuesday.
"Plants are vanishing so quickly that...one major drug [becomes]
extinct
every two years," said the coauthors of the report, Genetic
Resources
Action International (GRAIN), a Barcelona based campaigns group,
and
Kalpvriksha, an Indian environmental organization. "Overall,
communities
are increasingly losing control over their own plants and are
being
increasingly exploited for their knowledge," the authors claim.
The report, called "Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity in
Asia-Pacific:
Problems of Piracy and Protection," examines the plight of people
in the
region who rely on plants - such as turmeric and basmati rice,
and trees,
such as the neem of India and the mamala of Samoa - for food
and medicine.
A global push for the green gold - the commercial use of genetic
resources
- by companies with foreign as well as national bases, is leading
to the
loss of precious plant life in the region that stretches from
India and
Malaysia to China, the Philippines and Pacific islands such
as Fiji and
Papua New Guinea, the report says.
Applications by several U.S. companies for patents over products
from the
neem tree, used as a source of fungicide in India for over 2,000
years,
have been opposed by farmers and by local and international
nongovernmental
organizations.
Some NGOs, notably the British group ActionAid, have responded
to such
patent applications by themselves seeking official permission
for ownership
over, for example, conkers, the fruit of the horse chestnut
tree that is
the focus of a game popular during fall among British schoolchildren.
These
groups argue that traditional knowledge, especially that of
indigenous
people, has been brought under the control of legislation on
Intellectual
Property Rights (IPRs), internationally recognized rules covering
"owners
of ideas, inventions and creative expression."
As with laws governing the possession of physical property,
IPRs allow
owners "to exclude others from access to or use of their property."
But the report explains that the patent system does not work
for
traditional knowledge holders because the collective nature
of traditional
knowledge makes it impossible to identify an individual inventor
or even a
geographic location.
The required patenting criteria of novelty may not be possible
if the plant
remedy has been in use for generations. And, the cost of applying
for a
patent and protecting it against infringement may be prohibitive,
the
report points out.
With annual global sales of products derived from plant genes
estimated at
between US$500 billion and US$800 billion, according to the
GRAIN report,
"many countries, and the large businesses they support, increasingly
want
to control these resources and the knowledge associated with
them for
commercial purposes."
Many Asia-Pacific governments are under intense pressure from
industrialized countries to adopt bilateral IPR agreements on
traditional
knowledge, GRAIN reports. The United States, for example, signed
an
agreement with China in January 1992, requiring it to amend
Chinese
national IPR laws. In 2000, Vietnam signed a similar agreement
with the
United States.
Pharmaceutical companies have recently turned their attention
to kava
(Piper mythesticum), a report by the American Association for
the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) confirms. Kava is a cash crop
in the Pacific,
where it is valued for a ceremonial beverage. The GRAIN report
mentions
kava as an example of bioprospecting that operates to the detriment
of
indigenous peoples. Over 100 varieties of kava are grown in
the Pacific,
says the AAAS, especially in Fiji and Vanuatu, where it was
first
domesticated thousands of years ago. In North America and Europe,
kava is
now promoted for a variety of uses. French company L'Oreal,
a global giant
with US$10 billion a year in sales, has patented kava to reduce
hair loss
and stimulate hair growth. "Traditional knowledge provides useful
leads for
scientific research, being the key to identifying those elements
in a plant
with a pharmacological value that is ultimately destined for
the
international markets," the GRAIN briefing says.
It concludes that "industry is making deeper and deeper inroads,
with
increasingly active support from governments, while the mechanisms
to
protect and strengthen the rights of communities are still experimental
and
weak. "While there are a lot of developments [aimed at protecting
communities] on paper," said Shalini Bhutani, GRAIN's regional
program
officer for Asia, "we find that the people's concerns are not
being
adequately reflected in national or international fora."
The report recommends that governments consider alternatives
to
Intellectual Property Rights contracts which would enable greater
protection of traditional knowledge. The authors call for stronger
network
building among NGOs and for the documentation of traditional
knowledge.
GRAIN and Kalpavriksh urge governments to bolster the rights
of indigenous
people to control the genetic resources that are the underpinnings
of their
livelihoods.
The full briefing report is online at:
www.grain.org/publications/tk-asia-2002-en.cfm
{Published in cooperation with the OneWorld Network.}
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