Biodiversity - the grass wars

When countries see the flora and fauna in their territory as commodities passing to the merchant, science is harmed

by Linda Baker

For the past three years, botanist Vicki Funk of the Smithsonian Institution has been trying, without success, to transfer a selection of leaf samples from Brazil to the US National Collection of Dried Plants for identification. Comparing related plants "is the basis for systematic sorting," she explains. "We have to bring things from other places." But as biodiversity becomes a commercially valuable commodity, developing countries are making it difficult to collect and analyze biological samples. "It doesn't matter to them that you're an academic researcher and not a pharmaceutical company," says Funk. "You are treated similarly."

The UN Convention for the Conservation of Biological Diversity, signed by more than 150 countries in 1992, had two goals: to preserve biological diversity and to ensure that the tropical countries are compensated for the use of their "genetic resources" if they lead to the discovery of drugs in the developed countries. But although these goals were reaffirmed at a conference held in the spring of 2008 in Bonn, Germany, scientists continue to criticize the policies stemming from the treaty. The claim is that the international agreement, which gave the countries the ownership of the plants and animals within their domain, actually harms the study of the tropical regions and their conservation, and does not facilitate them.

"The Convention on Biological Diversity has made the argument that plants and other microscopic organisms are sovereign objects and therefore should be subject to trade laws," says Josh Rosenthal, deputy director of the US Institutes of Health's (NIH) Fogarty International Center. As a result, "the ethos of international scientific cooperation has changed," and the conditions for research have become more difficult.

Western scientists are not the only ones involved in analyzing this situation. In the January 2008 issue of "Current Science", a journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, an article was published condemning the limitations in which the Indian Biodiversity Act is bound by the local scientists, such as the prohibition to transfer samples to international collections. "We need to emphasize the importance of sharing biological resources between countries," says one of the paper's authors, K. Divacaran Prathappan, an entomologist at the University of Kerala. The title of the article was: "Death sentence on taxonomy" (theory of biological sorting).

There is no doubt that a history of abusing the poor countries is a good reason for them to be suspicious of the scientific work carried out on behalf of industrialized countries. In 1995, for example, the US authorized two doctors at the University of Mississippi to register a patent for the use of turmeric, even though the anti-inflammatory properties of the spice were already documented centuries ago in the Indian Ayurvedic medicine tradition. "It was the most ridiculous patent I've ever seen," said David Gang, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Arizona.

After a protest broke out in India, the patent was revoked. But as a result, the opportunities for research were lost, and the benefit to the public was also given. Gang says he would be happy if an international consortium was formed to sequence the turmeric genes, following the successful model of the international rice genome sequencing project, which was completed in 2004. "But there is no chance of cooperation with anyone in India," he complains.

Aimed at preventing abuse, botanical ownership laws stifle the opportunity for developing countries to develop an independent scientific infrastructure, argues Art Addison of the University of Florida, who is formulating a project to analyze soil activity in a nature reserve in Peru. "The problem is that people are so focused on the slim possibility that an important drug will be discovered, that they don't take advantage of the practical benefit of attracting American research funds, such as helping to train [local] students to set up laboratories," he says. Such jobs will help stop the cutting of trees and other destructive activities.

Peru and its neighbors have enacted some of the strictest laws in the world restricting the collection and transfer of biological material. "When I started the project, I concentrated on science," Edison recalled. "The great fear of 'biological robbery' was an eye-opening surprise for me."

But there are some positive developments. The Brazilian government, with the encouragement of local scientists, introduced a system in 2007 to speed up licensing for the collection of biological material for scientific research purposes, although the new laws do not apply to requests related to nature reserves or the export of biological samples. Some Western research institutes, such as the New York Botanical Gardens, have developed detailed regulations for sharing source countries when opportunities for profit arise, which have facilitated research and scientific exchanges.

But after countries reaffirmed their commitment to the Convention to Protect Biological Diversity, "many of them are tightening regulations," says Phyllis Cooley, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Utah. In Panama, for example, foreign scientists were treated very liberally, but now the country is drafting more restrictive laws, she says. Bringing biodiversity into a framework of political boundaries and intellectual sovereignty was supposed to encourage conservation, says Funk of the Smithsonian Institution. "But it works like a boomerang, we have to preserve life in its own right."

Linda Baker is a reporter from Portland, Oregon, USA