New global deal aims to prevent bio-piracy

mumbai: last week, the concerns of the developing world found place in a landmark set of guidelines passed at the un convention on biodiversity in the hague. in all, 166 countries, including india, adopted recommendations to prevent the plunder of plant resources in developing countries. the guidelines reflected the resource-rich south’s growing concern about so-called bio-piracy—foreign pharma and biotech companies raiding their medicinal plants, patenting them and making huge profits without compensating local people.even though close to half of the us patents related to medicinal plants were based on traditional knowledge from developing countries, benefits from the patents rarely filtered back to the country of origin, a recent study by an indian expert group said. a vivid example of how bio-pirates hit india: the patenting of turmeric’s wound-healing properties. haldi’s medicinal properties, which have been known to indians for centuries, were deemed to be the intellectual property of a us institution. foreign companies and individual also took out dozens of patents on neem and basmati. while these patents were contested amidst a global outcry and finally revoked, hundreds of other patents based on traditional knowledge have been unquestioningly granted. the new biodiversity guidelines attempt to prevent such plunder by demanding that companies and scientists seek prior informed consent from local communities and countries. in return for gaining access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge, the pharma companies are required to share their profits, scientific collaboration and training. according to hamdallah zedan, executive secretary of the convention, the new rules will provide fair compensation to local communities, in addition to giving biodiversity-rich countries “incentives to conserve and sustainably use their resources’’. the international agreement has met with mixed response.the us, which has signed but not ratified the convention, argues that it is up to individual companies, and not governments and international bodies, to negotiate over a foreign country’s genetic resources. on the other hand, many developing countries, home to most of the world’s biodiversity, welcome the convention as a step in the right direction. but several environmental groups think that the guidelines don’t go far enough. environmentalist vandana shiva, director-general of the council of scientific and industrial research r a mashelkar, and others have pointed out that medicinal plants often form the only affordable treatment available to poor families and millions of rural households. patenting these traditional medicines and plants could mean that rural communities would be forced to buy from outside the very plants that they have nurtured for centuries. others feel that rural people have received raw deal. “their rights and role in preserving the knowledge, passing it on and looking after the biodiversity which keeps the plant alive to be acknowledged and paid for, so it is wiped out,’’ jose nain, a representative of mapuche people in chile, told nature. yet others find the very basis of the biodiversity agreement—that a gene pool is commercially negotiable property of governments, companies or individuals—to be deeply flawed. all sides realise that like much of international law, the convention on biodiversity is toothless because it does not have the implementation machinery to bring to book companies or individuals that violate its guidelines. the voluntary guidelines can only advise governments and increase the moral pressure on companies, they domestic or foreign. environmentalist chandrika seshan says, “eventually, it will strong national laws, an effective monitoring infrastructure and heightened awareness of value of traditional knowledge that will protect a country’s biodiversity.’’