12:17 PM Oct 16, 1996

BOTANICAL GARDENS FOR LUCRATIVE SEED

The botanical gardens, located at Kew in London, already has a collection of 10,000 seeds representing 4,500 species from around the world . The new Millennium Seed Bank -- it is planned to be built by the year 2000 -- will be considerably larger: it aims to store specimens of all of Britain's plant life by the turn of the century and 10 percent of the world's arid and semi-arid land flora specimens by 2010.

But the 21.5 million pound-project, funded by Britain's national lottery, clearly needs to safeguard against pharmaceutical companies who have been targeting collections held in Northern botanical gardens to avoid compliance to an internationally-agreed United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The issue acquires added significance ahead of a Conference of Parties to the CBD in Buenos Aires this November.

Botanical gardens are mega-storehouses of plant biodiversity, holding samples of as much as half of all vascular plant species in the world. Almost three-quarters of all the world's botanical gardens are in the North, according to a recent study by the International Association of Botanical Gardens (IABG).

Seeds or genetic material are stored outside their locations of origin, they are known as ex-situ collections. Pharmaceutical corporations and biotechnology firms, in their quest to discover new sources of plant-derived drugs, are now approach ing botanical gardens for rights to chemically analyze their collections.

In doing so, they seek to take advantage of a loophole in the CBD.

The UN convention, agreed at Rio in 1992, states that companies should share commercial benefits from plants with the countries where they were found. But if companies obtain specimens collected by botanical gardens before 1992, they are under no such obligation.

"Commercial sale of tropical plant biodiversity held in Northern botanical gardens is a dangerous loophole that undermines the Biodiversity Convention and makes a mockery of the CBD's fundamental principles: provisions for national sovereignty over germplasm, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from utilisation of genetic resources," says the Canada-based NGO, Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI).

Roger Smith, head of seed conservation at Kew told Panos that pharmaceutical companies have asked Kew for permission to test seeds, but said the gardens carefully screened them and ensured any benefits also went to "our collaborators in the South."

"Yes pharmaceutical companies do make requests to us, but they have to come back to us if its for commercial use."' He said the Royal Botanic Gardens had specific agreements with their collaborators in the South to share commercial benefits from seeds held by the bank.

"We provide seeds for bona fide requests. This is based on trust and we believe that those who use this service are honourable. But Kew does not have the resources to police what they do with the seeds. To fully guard against biopiracy, biology has to move into the realms of law enforcement and politics."

"We are hoping to be an example where others can see how we do it and take the technology away to resource their own seed bank initiatives in their own countries," Smith added.

However, many NGOs say sharing benefits with Southern collaborators skirts the issue. "Kew Gardens wants to run it on an expert-to-expert basis, which doesn't necessarily imply justice," said Christine von Weizsacker of the Bonn-based NGO, ECOROPA.

News of the new biopiracy first broke in Europe -- home to 76 percent of the world's forest and medicinal plant collection -- when a contract proposed by the US-based Phytera Pharmaceuticals to Palm Garden in Frankfurt, Germany, was leaked to NGOs at a conference organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Leipzig in June.

Follow-up surveys conducted by RAFI and other NGOs have alarmed many experts -- for instance, every botanical garden replying to RAFI's request for information confirmed that pharmaceutical researchers or their intermediaries have recently expressed inter est in their collection.

Charles Lamoureax, Director of the University of Hawaii's Lyon Arboretum, said he has been approached recently by "three or four" pharmaceutical companies.

"I suspect there will be many more people knocking on our door in the near future....We may have things that it's going to be hard to get out of other countries in the world," he said.

Edward Hammond, a research officer with RAFI, said: "The CBD has recognised this loophole since 1993; but its continued inaction on ex-situ collections allows pharmaceutical companies and other researchers to profit from the South's biodiversity while conveniently ignoring issues of national sovereignty, benefit sharing, and access provisions of the CBD."

One reason why pharmaceutical companies have been able to make inroads into these collections is that Northern botanical gardens are increasingly threatened by cuts in funding, according to Hammond.

"Governments in the South and indigenous peoples, who are anxious to ensure an equitable sharing of benefits from the use of their biodiversity find their interests threatened by Northern botanical gardens needs to find funds for their own survival."

Smith acknowledged there is a major problem with international biopiracy -- the Royal Botanic Gardens is so concerned, it has now employed an environmental lawyer to sit at meetings of the CBD and look into the issue and "ensure we are working within the Convention."

He also stressed the need to "expose the cowboys in any country willing to flout their national laws, as also people who might want to avoid the spirit of the CBD." The commercial potential of "one or two" plant-derived chemicals, according to him, is "quite mind-boggling." RAFI's concern is echoed by British NGOs working in the food sector. Patrick Mulvaney of a coalition of NGOs called the UK Food Group said Northern botanical gardens "ought to be discussing these issues with national governments and local communities before entering into contracts with pharmaceutical companies."

Elsewhere in Europe, too, NGOs are similarly concerned. And there are signs that botanical gardens in both Europe and the US are having serious second thoughts about entering into deals that seek to bypass the CBD.

NGOs believe the issue concerning Northern botanical gardens must be addressed when the Third Conference of Parties to the CBD meets in Buenos Aires this November. "If the CBD does not follow through on its commitment to act, the Southern Parties to the Convention may lose half or more of the value of the biodiversity material that will be commercially useful in the next few decades," Hammond warned.