Biopiracy

Thomas Schweiger, Greenpeace European Unit - April 1999

"Genes are the currency of the future" (1): the most valuable treasuries today are not ships full of gold crossing the seas, but a wealth of genes hidden in innumerable micro-organisms, plant and animal species - the Earth's Biodiversity.

The greatest diversity of life-forms exists in the tropical belt of our planet, in the rainforests and coral reefs. Millions of species live in these areas that Western science have not even discovered yet, still less described. However, the peoples of these regions have lived with the plants and animals around them for centuries and have come to know their values - as medicinal herbs for instance.

These regions also happen to constitute the economically weaker and poorer part of our planet - a situation which stems not least from the colonial era. The people and countries which are richest in natural biodiversity are amongst the poorest in financial terms.

The Life Science Industries have recently come to realise the huge economic wealth that lies within these natural resources and in knowledge about the genetics of plants and animals. They have also realised that without the "lead" from local communities they would never be able to find what they are looking for in any sensible timescale. They use local traditional knowledge about the properties and location of the plants to find them, take them back to their laboratories, write the "genetic map" of these organisms, patent them, and become rich from the sale of the products. The local communities, of course, see nothing of the economic wealth which is being generated from their own knowledge and age-old preservation of plants.

A new era of colonialism has set in, with Northern companies and countries "stealing" the natural resources of countries in the South. Swarms of "gene hunters" have descended into the tropical forests to look for useful ingredients which they could use to create new commercial products. These are the modern day pirates - the "Bio-Pirates".

There have been widespread and vociferous objections in recent years when developing countries and their communities have suddenly found their plants - many of them sacred - being patented in the North.

Most infamous are the US patents on the Indian "Neem Tree" and on the Ayahuasca vine from the Amazon rainforest. Both plants have been used extensively by the local populations, who - over the centuries - have come to know exactly what the various parts and extracts of the plants can be used for.

The Neem Tree has been used in India for centuries for a variety of purposes and as a natural insecticide by grinding and scattering the seeds of a particular species of Neem on fields. However, two companies in the US (W.R.Grace and Agrodyne) have obtained a patent (…) for derivatives of Neem developed in their laboratories, even though the insecticidal, human non-toxic and biodegradable properties of Neem have long been known by Indians. Surely, it is the Indians who have far more rights to the intellectual property than these companies.

In the case of the Ayahuasca patent (US Plant Patent 5.751), the clash of cultures can be seen even more clearly as this vine is sacred to many indigenous people of the Amazon region, who reject the concept of "ownership" .

Various organisations representing the Amazonian people have taken up the battle against this patent and have recently filed a "Request for Re-examination" with the US Patent Office. In the accompanying letter, the three supporting organisations - the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Amazon Coalition - explain their concerns:

"The patent exemplifies the problems that can arise when the Western patent system encounters the radically different systems for developing, managing and sharing knowledge existing in many other cultures. […]

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition - reflected in international agreements such as the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity - that the genetic and chemical information found in biological diversity - the rich variety of living species and ecosystems on Earth - constitutes a valuable natural resource that is part of the heritage of the inhabitants of the region where it is found. Equally important, it is widely recognized that indigenous peoples have a special claim over this natural heritage as most biological diversity is found in their territories, where they have maintained and conserved it through their traditional systems of stewardship of land and natural resources. (2)"

So far, the patent system has only rewarded the Bio-Pirates of the Life Science Industries. This is why the international rules must be changed with the utmost urgency.

References

1. George Poste, research director of SmithKline Beecham, in an interview in Der Spiegel, 44/93.
2. Letter to US Patent and Trademark Office, 30 March 1999