The Costs Of "Bio-Piracy" To The Third World

The value to the pharmaceutical industry of plants derived from Third World countries is over $30 billion a year, says a new study commissioned by the United Nations development Program. However, even though over 90% of the earth's remaining biological diversity is located in Africa, Asia and South America, the indigenous communities which have developed and nurtured this diversity are not acknowledged, far less compensated, for the material and local knowledge which is taken from them.

The study, compiled by the Rural Advancement Foundation International, notes that 80% of the world's people depend on traditional medicine and medicinal plants for their health, and that more than two-thirds of the world's plant species (at least 35,000 of which have medicinal value) come from developing countries. While the conservation of this indigenous pharmacopoeia is critical to the survival of developing countries in general and indigenous people in particular, it is important to developed countries as well. At least 7,000 medical compounds used in western medicine are derived from plants, and in the early 1980s, the value of developing-country germplasm to the pharmaceutical industry was conservatively put at at least $32 billion annually. Yet the developing countries were paid only a fraction of this amount for the raw materials and the knowledge they contribute.

Contribution To "Bio-Prospecting" New biotechnologies are increasing the value of traditional plants in a number of ways, says the study. Firstly, the division between foods and medicines is becoming increasingly blurred, as the nutraceutical sector develops and more and more foods are valued for their medicinal properties. Also, advances in microelectronics now mean companies can screen plants many times more rapidly. This has made "bio-prospecting" more profitable, as instead of taking months to identify a useful new substance, companies using new technology and deriving advice from indigenous healers can work much more quickly.