FWD: Impasse at world meet

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This article is from thestar.com.my

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2002/5/7/features/bio1 & sec=featu\

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Tuesday, May 7, 2002

Impasse at world meet

A recent meeting to finalise an international agreement to protect the world’s

diversity of flora and fauna has been labelled a failure, writes PAUL BROWN.

 

DIPLOMATS from 182 countries wrangled over details of a statement on the future

of the world’s forests as the two-week meeting on the Bio-diversity Convention

in The Hague, The Netherlands, ended on April 19 in what critics described as

abject failure.

 

This 10th anniversary gathering – the sixth time the convention has convened

since it was set up at the Earth Summit in 1992 – was supposed to show real

progress n the fight to prevent the continued mass extinction of plants and

animals as forests are destroyed and natural systems polluted and degraded.

 

A statement agreed by 120 ministers at the close of the conference acknowledged

that “biological diversity is being destroyed by human activities at

unprecedented rates,” but produced few concrete plans to prevent it happening.

 

The only aim agreed was to have “instruments in place to stop and reverse the

current alarming biodiversity loss at the global, regional, sub-regional and

national levels by the year 2010.” The statement is due to go to the Rio+10

summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August. The summit will review progress

on sustainable development in the past decade.

 

At the convention’s inception it was hoped that a forest agreement would soon be

reached. After years of effort, the whole issue was handed over to the

Biodiversity Convention to sort out, and it has still not been achieved.

 

Countries such as Brazil and Malaysia have refused to have controls placed on

their forestry activities by the international community.

 

The only bright spot for the convention was an agreement on access to genetic

resources so that medicinal plants can be exploited and compensation paid to

both the countries of origin and the drug companies that exploit them. A

worldwide plan to prevent drug and biotechnology companies plundering medicinal

plant resources from the developing world and then making huge profits by

patenting them was agreed after 10 years of negotiations.

 

Deep suspicion of drug company “bio-piracy” has led to a near-standstill in

research and the cataloguing of potentially useful plants in central America,

Brazil and the Philippines.

 

The guidelines advise governments on how to set fair and practical conditions

for companies, collectors and researchers seeking genetic resources from plants

for new drugs or fragrances. In return these users must offer benefits in

profits, royalties, scientific collaboration, or training. The deal provides for

a share of profits to go the country of origin, and to those who knew of a

plant’s medical properties.

 

The “equitable sharing of benefits”, which was agreed by the meeting, first

arose as an issue at the Earth Summit in 1992. Ever since, the developed world

and countries rich in biodiversity have been trying to agree on a format for

sharing both the knowledge and the benefits of genetic resources.

 

Claims of bio-piracy have been levelled mostly at American companies, which have

sometimes patented whole plants, though more often single genes or the medicines

derived from them. Because indigenous peoples who have known a plant’s medicinal

properties for generations feel cheated, the deal introduces “prior informed

consent” for companies seeking information from them.

 

The deal proposes that countries should pass the agreed guidelines into law.

 

The United States has signed the convention, but has not yet ratified it, and is

therefore only an observer at the meeting in The Hague. It argues that it is up

to companies to negotiate over a country’s genetic resources. If there were

accusations of bio-piracy the companies could be challenged in the US courts.

 

But Jose Nain, from Chile, a representative of the Mapuche people, said he was

not satisfied. “The rights and role of indigenous people in preserving the

knowledge, passing it on and looking after the biodiversity which keeps the

plant alive has to be acknowledged and paid for, so it can continue and not be

wiped out,” he said. – Guardian News Service

 

 

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