Need Of Bio Prospecting Agreement Between The Developing And Developed Countries

-By Khem Raj Bhattarai, University of Bergen, Norway

Bio-diversity or biological diversity includes variety of life, in all forms, levels and combination of natural variation. It is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history. It provides enormous benefits for human society. We have been using these resources for foods, medicine, industrial materials, recreational purposes etc.

The biotechnology has opened the door to greater use of this biological diversity. Genetic diversity has always been key raw materiel in agricultural research. Roughly one half of the grains in US agriculture yields increased from 1963-1980 by using wild genes. Wild genes are being transformed through genetic engineering for commercial application. Thus plants animals, fungi and invertebrates are increasingly important sources of genes.

The future potential of these important biological resources is yet to be explored. The exploration of this biological diversity for commercial valuable genetic and biochemical resources is called bio prospecting. The success of the bio prospecting is realized with discovering novel products or genes. Each species may contain hundreds or thousands of different chemicals for pharmaceutical product. But probability of success depends upon the screening quality and which cost lot of money. The agreement made in September 1991, between Costa Ricaís National Bio-diversity Institute (INBIo) and US based pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Ltd. for exploration of chemical extracts from wild resources including insects, plants and micro-organism of Costa Rica is an example of bio prospecting.

In order to put action, a legal system is a preliminary step for bio prospecting. Without having legal procedure the full application of bio prospecting may not be possible. As we know that all biological resources are concentrated in the most of the developing countries like India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, Costa Rica etc., but most of these countries are poor and lack well developed biotechnology and money.

Now very vital issue comes which is a matter for legalizing the bio prospecting. Many developing countries are aware with increasing value of their wild genetic resources, so they are looking for national identity and desire for greater control over their destiny. For potential use of this biological resources property rights, international agreements and use of intermediary organization are three essential institutional arrangements to ensure sustainable and equitable use of bio-diversity. Thus each country who like to open the door for bio prospecting have to set-up these three institutes in their own country for harnessing their bio-diversity.

Intellectual property right or farmers' right are urgently needed systems to ensure the ownership of wild genetic resources of poor countries as well as discovery of novelty from developed countries. Thus comes a next issue, of ownership over genes, seeds and chemicals. Now there is growing debate between developing countries and developed countries for such vital issues. Still there is a trend that genes-poor developed countries are taking gene free-of-charge from the genes rich developing countries. The developed countries patent these genes and chemical and selling these patented products back to same developing countries with high price. For instance a case of Neem tree, which is a heritage of India from time immovable. Today others are trying to take benefit of this heritage under the guise of patent system.

Thus there should be drawn a broader line between the developed and developing countries over using this biological diversity. There should be agreement of bio prospecting between them., so both developing and developed countries can be benefit from such agreements. As we know that developed countries have money, technology and developing countries have only resources. Thus there must be a compromise for sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits over using the resources.

The bio-prospecting agreement is essential between developing and developed countries and following conditions should be meet, which will promote for sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits.

Indigenous people, indigenous knowledge, traditional healers and folklore should be respected in the agreements. The local community, indigenous people are very much close to resources. The conservation programme will not be success without their involvement for sharing the benefits. If they got benefits from the bio-diversity they will aware about the conservation otherwise they can play catalytic role for destruction for resources

Certain percentage benefit arise from using over resources should use for conservation. Of bio-diversity. Bio prospecting has attracted the interest of developing countries as well as local community because it can provide significant incentives and funds for conservation as well as economic development of the local community.

Local community should be trained as in Costa Rica, if they know the real importance of the resources then they will actively participate for conservation programme.

This should be equitable sharing of benefit overusing the resources between developed countries and developing countries.

Farmer's right should be respected, as they are keeping their valuable genes from centuries.

Bio-diversity prospecting on private lands should be subject to regulation and user fees, so that local lands owner may regulate access to the resources and charge collecting fees.

Legal guarantees should be justified in the agreements.

Role of government, non-governmental organization (i. e. intermediately like INBIo) should be clearly mentioned.

The lesson can be taken from the experience gained by INBIo and Merck in the field of bio prospecting. These sorts of agreements will really benefit for the conservation of bio-diversity of developing countries. Multilateral agreements like Convention of Biological Diversity of 1992 are another landmark treaty for conservation and there is mentioned about equitable sharing of benefits.