11:51 AM Feb 13, 1997
WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM BIOTRADE ?
by Kathy McAfee* Penang Feb (TWN) -- The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) launched a "Biotrade" initiative at the Third Meeting of the Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Buenos Aires in November. But will the initiative really benefit the South? Biotrade proposes to help the biodiversity-rich countries to "add more value" to their peoples' genetic resources and knowledge about nature, so that they can sell this 'green gold' to bioprospectors on more favourable terms. Using expertise from the USA, funds from Spain and the Netherlands, plus hoped-for corporate contributions to its new foundation, the Biotrade Initiative proposes to undertake market research, disseminate model contracts, and offer training in the technical and legal aspects of bioprospecting to developing countries. It will also help to broker deals between Southern country sellers and private sector buyers of biological samples and information. Can Biotrade's promise to help developing countries from the sale of their 'green gold' be fulfilled? Can proceeds from the international marketing of biodiversity indeed 'tip the balance towards conservation', as Biotrade's backers claim? Or does Biotrade offer false hopes that the majority of countries can earn substantial amounts from the sale of their biological and intellectual heritage? The claims being made about the potential market for 'green gold' sound ominously like the claims made in the past for other tropical 'miracle crops' promoted over the past 500 years as the economic salvation of colonised and post-colonial countries. These claims invite cash-poor but gene-rich countries to invest their own resources in infrastructure for facilitating even more extraction of resources by the North. But in reality there can be few, if any, winners in a race among developing countries to undersell each other in a competition among would-be exporters of bio-diversity; and so, such investments do not pay off as expected. The last thing the developing world needs now is a new bio-round of the debt crisis? Biotrade is likely to become a Trojan horse to smuggle a transnational-corporate version of intellectual property rights into countries that are working to define sui generis IPR systems and to defend their sovereign rights. If accepted, it will help force a model based on private, individualised, monopolised ownership of elements of nature and culture upon communities struggling to develop their own alternatives to IPR systems, alternatives that are urgently needed to protect the collect rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. There is nothing in the initiative to ensure that proceeds (if any) accruing to exporting countries or communities will actually provide a net gain in funds for conservation. And, earnings of the Biotrade agency itself are to be reinvested in more bioprospecting, not in conservation. The assumption behind Biotrade is that if Southern countries can learn more about which natural products Northern companies want and how to provide them, they can then sell 'improved' instead of 'raw' natural products, and thus will be able to retain a greater of the value of their own resources. A further premise of Biotrade is that if Southern countries take account of precisely what legal guarantees - patents etc - are required by the TNCs, then diversity-rich countries will be able to alter their IPR laws in ways that will attract foreign buyers. Otherwise, say Biotrade's backers, biotech and agrochemical firms will be discouraged from investing in costly and risky searches for new money-making products derived from nature by the lack of certainty about profits and about the protection of 'their' new bio-property, and the fear of being called 'biopirates'. For the same reason, the initiative warns developing countries not to ask 'too high' a price for their patrimony. Before jumping on the Biotrade bandwagon, countries may want to consider the following: * There is no solid evidence that a vast international market for 'green gold' exists now or will exist in the future. The biological resources of the earth - unless we allow them to be destroyed - may indeed be virtually infinite. But the opportunities for transnational bio-buyers to produce and market profitable products from natural materials are quite limited. In fact, there is less evidence in Biotrade's own proposal that the natural products market is actually growing than there is evidence that it may soon begin shrinking - such as the statement that several major pharmaceutical companies are cutting back their natural products research programmes. Although the Biotrade paper does not mention it, pharmaceutical giant firms say that bioprospecting will not provide the 20,000 chemical compounds per week that they need to keep their expensive screening machines profitably occupied. * In addition, the same or similar biological source materials are often found in more than one country. This makes it easier for bioprospectors to pit one source country against another in a beggar-thy-neighbour competition. New techniques for screening and then initiating or synthesising natural pharmaceuticals, or for establishing their own ex situ sources of living materials, are making it easier for companies to obtain what they want quickly and cheaply from source countries. * Increasingly, TNCs can 'mine' - or pay others to mine - ecosystems for items that interest them, and then move on, without making large investments or long-term commitments to the countries offering their biodiversity for sale. Thus, the argument that biodiversity can best be served by selling its components does not hold up. Why should we not expect 'green gold' to go through the same sort of cycle of boom, market saturation, and bust as did indigo, rubber, sugar, copper, and so many other exports, leaving the exporting countries poorer and their ecosystems degraded? The Biotrade Initiative contains a strong push in favour of the sort of uniform IPR regime favoured by OECD countries, biotech firms, and embodied in the WTO TRIPs agreement. UNCTAD's Juan de Castro told attendees at the Biotrade briefing at the Buenos Aires COP meeting that the initiative will help speed the transition away from the 'old system' of 'open access regimes' that, he maintained (mistakenly), formerly governed natural resources in Southern countries. The Biotrade proposal urges would-be genetic-resource exporters to adopt the kind of IPR protection laws that TNC big-buyers demand. As we know from experiences with agrochemical and seed TNCs, this enables private firms to monopolise, and deny access to 'improved' natural products unless those who need those products - including the very people who discovered or developed them and have used for centuries - are willing and able to pay the TNCs' price. The Biotrade Initiative states explicitly that it 'will not seek to define specific levels of compensation or attempt to impose specific contractual arrangements'. In other words, diversity-rich countries would have to continue to bargain separately for the best deals they can get. Given the existing tremendous advantages that TNCs already have in R & D and financing capacity and in international marketing systems, it is virtually certain that it is they who would continue to garner the lion's share of profits from international biotrade supported by the UNCTAD Biotrade Initiative. Biotrade holds out the promise that by using its services, diversity-rich countries will be able to develop more specialised (screened and/or refined) natural product samples and chemical extracts. But even if some countries can in this way 'add' a bit of 'value' to their living heritage, they will remain at a great competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis foreign bio-buyers. This is even more certain in light of the fact that Biotrade's market research results and 'capacity-building' training information are to be made available equally to developing countries and to transnational firms via the internet and a prospecting newsletter. All this is precisely the opposite of what is needed to ensure that developing countries can defend their material and cultural wealth, namely, (1) strong, enforceable international standards under the CBD for equitable benefit-sharing; (2) the right to develop a sui generis system and regional arrangements for the protection and sharing of their resources, when and how they so choose; and (3) the internationally recognised right to refuse to allow the patenting and private monopolisation of natural resources and knowledge. What Biotrade proposes is another form of the well-known, and failed, strategy of export-dependent development, in which priorities are determined by needs and desires of outsiders, and are tossed and turned in response to the vagaries of international markets. If subsidies -- which is in essence what Biotrade would offer to TNC and Southern participants alike -- are to be provided in the name of enhancing Southern country and community capacity to develop more useful products, why should these products be determined by what foreign companies are wiling to buy? If there is to be aid for the development of capacity in biotechnology, why should it not be aid to maintain and to develop local change in local, regional, and South-South markets? Whom does serve? What is needed from UNCTAD -- which has done much for the South in the past -- is a proposal that will help South-South solidarity and technical and agricultural self-sufficiency, and not a cleverly-packaged promise that will only increase dependency on Northern markets and Northern expertise. If the CBD Secretariat adds its support to the Biotrade Initiative before the proposal's full implications have been analyzed by its supposed beneficiaries, the Secretariat will exceed -- at the expense of the South and in favour of the Northern TNCs -- its mandate to promote Convention goals in the developing world. (Kathy McAfeee is with Grassroots International. The article was written for the Third World Resurgence)