by Matt Falloon
Stabroek News

GUYANA - In the few pristine rainforests of the world lie what are estimated to be millions of undiscovered species of animal and plant life.

Kaieteur National Park is one such area, teeming with life of great natural, scientific, educational, aesthetic, ethical and potentially commercial value.

The non-commercial values of such biodiversity are clear. Without biodiversity, ecosystems would suffer and consequently human life would suffer. The effects of a living environment devoid of rich biodiversity on the human race [such as the large cities of the world] are just beginning to be analysed. We have all felt the mental release of escaping into the country.

However, the commercial value of the world's biodiversity has become an issue clouded in ambiguity and is now an international matter of debate and concern. What tangible modern potential is there in nature for commerce? Is biodiversity too costly to conserve? Who is able to develop the raw materials into marketable goods? Who should benefit from the commercial plunder of the rainforest?

Throughout time, humankind has utilised nature to improve standards of living. Wood was burnt, animals were hunted and illnesses were tackled with natural concoctions. Often by chance a remedy for an ailment was discovered, as was the case in 5 BC when Hippocrates began using a bitter powder derived from willow bark to treat pain. This powder was later refined into Aspirin and is now also used to treat heart disease.

This experimental urge of discovery has led to the creation of thousands of remedies for viral and bacterial infections and in the process has gifted riches to many of the discoverers. 

The awakening of the commercial potential in nature gave rise to an increase in the numbers of individuals 'prospecting' for this 'green gold'. The 'bioprospector' was born, searching out the world of nature for potential pharmaceutical, agricultural and other types of value.

Nowadays, bioprospectors take on all manner of disguises. They may be individuals or pharmaceutical companies looking for the next wonder drug, sneaking through immigration under the guise of a tourist, heading into the hinterland and innocently asking a few questions of a medicine man. They may be academics studying beetles and spiders, slipping samples into a bag unseen by their guide. Some would say it is even the travel writer or anthropologist making a career from information received whilst staying with Amerindians. Of course, there are those who prospect with legitimate, open aims under honoured agreements with the host government. As research science gets hotter and more competitive, however, these noble practitioners are becoming thin on the ground.

Countries like Guyana, with their rich biodiversity and potential for bioprospecting, have become increasingly aware of the value that lies in their forests. They have also become acutely aware of the profits made by international companies from the acquisition of indigenous medical knowledge and biodiversity.

The equation does not appear fair. The impression is that developing countries are plundered for their biodiversity while pharmaceutical company execs sit in highrise offices thumbing dollar bills and sucking on vitamin-enhanced cigars. This resentment is made worse by the awareness that these financially-poor but resource-rich countries do not have the facilities nor the financial backing to plunder their own resources, to play Midas with their own back yards.

The tale of quinine [powerful malaria treatment] is a fine example of somebody making money out of somebody else's 'territory', but it is a story that also implies a complicated global picture of division and non-cooperation including the very sources of biodiversity not just the classic rich exploiting poor scenarios.

According to most historical sources, the bark of the 'fever-bark' tree had been used by Indians in the northwest region of South America as a remedy for malaria for centuries.

Malaria was rampant in many other parts of the world through the seventeenth century, reportedly claiming such significant victims as Oliver Cromwell. As European explorers began to travel the globe en masse, the scene was set for some Elizabethan bioprospecting. In the mid-seventeenth century, a group of Spanish Jesuits got word of the 'miracle cure' for the disease and arranged for the Indians to harvest the bark.

The bark found its way to Europe and was eventually accepted as a cure for malaria. The bark, from the 'cinchona' tree species, contains the alkaloid, quinine, which has been used in the treatment of malaria ever since. For much of the period, South America remained the sole producer of cinchona.

Things started to get ethically murky when seeds of quinine plants were reportedly smuggled out of South America by Charles Ledger in the mid-nineteenth century. These 'contraband' seeds eventually helped to establish plantations in Java, which fast became the producer of 95% of the the world's commercial quinine and effectively ended South America's monopoly on the remedy.

Whether the reports of Ledger's activities are deadly accurate or not, the problem of removing biodiversity for development elsewhere is clear. Colonial interests on the Sub-continent were made all the more safer by a closer, cheaper source of quinine for treating the troublesome malaria.

According to some historical accounts, Ledger's South American servant who aided the smuggling was jailed, beaten and eventually starved to death. The past echoes a warning to those who sell out their countries resources...

As a result of the 'discovery' of quinine in cinchona bark, many foreign entrepreneurs grew wealthy, including the infamous travelling quacks of the early-modern USA, whilst the Indians of South America did not. The consequent development of synthetic quinine has reaped huge rewards, more so from alternative drugs derived from the substance. Furthermore, it was the discovery of quinine that indirectly led to the establishment of homeopathy - another multi-million dollar business primarily benefitting the developed world.

Natural quinine is still produced in Indonesia for a profit of which none returns to the origin. Surprisingly, Zaire has become the world's largest producer for the world market whilst relatively little is produced in the native environment of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. It is not only the developed world that exploits the developing world's resources.

This short history highlights the thrust of contention within the international bioprospecting war at present. A source being plundered from which a useful substance is developed and little or no benefits return to the origin.

Today, the same events are happening. On a minor scale, any researcher can walk through Guyana's airport or cross her borders posing as a tourist hiding more lucrative aims. The Caribbean faces a huge number of tourists every year, any number of these could be Charles Ledgers or Jesuits reincarnated looking to acquire traditional medical information from local communities without intending mutual benefit.

Recently, efforts have begun to redress the balance and to attempt to create an atmosphere of co-operation and benefit sharing between all stakeholders.

The 1992 International Convention on Biodiversity set out to redefine biodiversity from "the common heritage of mankind" to "national goods." Although the Convention has yet to be ratified by several countries [including the pharmaceutical world power - the USA], international governments and environmental pressure groups have begun a gradual swing towards a working definition of "natural goods."

Yet it remains clear that all the while large pharmaceutical and agricultural companies are making big bucks out of the status quo, their host countries will not favour the idea of sovereignty applied to biodiversity.

What is of the world is for the world, say the richer countries. The smaller countries might argue that they cannot drill for oil in Texas.

As a result of the Convention and in light of the dangers, some governments have formulated policies to protect their largely uncalculated biodiversity assets, others, like Guyana, have yet to properly do so.

Here in the Caribbean and in Latin America, it has been all too easy to remove valuable biodiversity with the potential for developing a money-spinning drug. The situation has been made worse by government hesitancy to accept and actually act upon the true value of nature. This has left many countries without effective measures to police the traffic and protect the ownership of their resource, leaving an open door to the curious.

Furthermore, so sophisticated are modern drug development techniques becoming that it won't be long before the origin of the next blockbuster cancer/HIV/malaria drug is completely untraceable.

The implications for this are enormous, even if countries can formulate regulations to police bioprospecting and safeguard their assets, the ability to cloak the source of your product eliminates the necessity to return benefits to the country of origin.

So the possibility of biodiversity financially benefitting the tropical nations looks pretty slim and with it the conservation ideal. But need the situation be so imbalanced?

To put medicinal bioprospecting in a financial context, the pharmaceutical industry is worth some US $500 billion every year. 25% of prescriptions drugs sold in the US are derived from a mere 40 plant species. It is estimated that just under 2% of the 300,000 known flowering plant species in the world have been screened for their pharmeceutical potential, imagine the potentially useful plants that await the curious in the mass of unknown nature.

For a country like Guyana, with its pristine forests and thousands of undiscovered species of all kinds of life, this potential for useful substances is immense. Surely Guyana could benefit from some of that pharmaceutical pie?

Unfortunately, without an adequate scientific or financial infrastructure to test and develop new products, directly benefitting from what is essentially an unpredictable raw material may be a long shot for many sole countries.

Indeed even pharmaceutical companies will complain that millions of US dollars can be spent on the development of a drug derived from a plant only to find the drug duplicated and pirated the moment it hits the market. In 1992, the pharmaceutical industry lost an estimated US $6 billion to piracy - a figure that has increased over the last decade.

Clearly Guyana could not afford to invest even a minor sum to find its investment rendered worthless by piracy.

So where do we start? If going solo is impractical, agreements with other biodiverse nations might be a possibility, or perhaps a deal with a pharmaceutical giant.

Many regard Costa Rica's arrangement with pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. with green eyes. Since it's conception in the early 90s, it has been hailed by most as a landmark agreement which allows benefits to flow back to the source of biodiversity and also removes the ethical obstacles of 'property' from Merck's conscience.

The deal between INBios [Costa Rica's privately owned Institute of Biodiversity] and Merck saw an initial sum of US $1.1 million granted to INBios in exchange for the exclusive rights to screen, develop and market species extracted from Costa Rica's biodiversity by INBios. An undisclosed royalty on marketable products was also arranged.

On the production of a marketable item, 50% of the royalty received would be pumped into the conservation of biodiversity, ensuring the government of Costa Rica receives a solid benefit from the resource.

There are several environmental groups that have questioned the true value of this arrangement for the actual people [i.e. non-government] of Costa Rica, but for most developing countries it's a daydream offer. The opportunity to preserve biodiversity whilst also having ownership respected and the international 'support' of a huge world business would have to be seen as a blessing.

Ramesh Lilwah agrees. Lilwah has been involved with Guyana's tussle with bioprospecting for the last five years as Biodiversity Development Specialist at the EPA and as a member of the National Biodiversity Advisory Committee [NBAC] which advises the EPA on bioprospecting policy.

"The bottom line is that in Guyana we have got to start benefitting from this resource," he said. "It's a gold mine, just as important as any other natural resource we have. We are hoping that a university, government or company can give us substantial sums of money for conservation purposes," Lilwah explained.

Such a deal would at least take the sting out of the widely accepted reality that any amount of indigenous knowledge and biological material is being removed from this country.

Try it yourself, acquire a foreign passport and fly into Timehri. At the passport check explain to the attendant that you are here on holiday. They will more than likely let you pass without too much problem. Take a room at a guest house for the night and prepare your route into the interior. One easy, untraceable way would be a minibus to xxxx followed by a trek to xxxx.

Once at xxxx you have free reign to roam and collect at will and even to 'persuade' local communities to divulge valuable medicinal secrets.

Several other trips of a similar nature will furnish you with the possibility of fame and fortune. Like Jesse James. And as you stroll through Timehri with only a minor bag check and a slick answer for the officer asking why you have stayed in the country 5 five months longer than you are 'allowed', you can almost smell the greenbacks growing in the jungle.

Far-fetched it may sound but there is little doubt in most people's minds that bioprospectors have been abusing the regulations currently in place to combat 'biopiracy'. Under these EPA regulations, anyone wishing to utilise/study Guyana's biodiversity must be approved by a thorough application procedure which requires complete co-operation and transparency.

At an EPA-organised celebration of International Biodiversity Day earlier this year, Chairman of the National Biodiversity Advisory Committee [NBAC], James Singh, underlined the problems surrounding bioprospecting.

"Guyana welcomes researchers," he said, "both local and foreign, but there is a process they are expected to follow. The NBAC expect guidelines to be complied with."

He remarked that there had been occasions when research applications had been approved only for the agreement to be abused.

"Researchers provide valuable data generation for us," Lilwah admitted. "So it is an opportunity for gathering data but it has not worked well."

For several years, regular prospectors/researchers from Europe, the prestigious Smithsonian Institute [US] and beyond have been able to enter Guyana and go about their business without much interference. The general feeling amongst the biodiversity faction of Guyana is that since the application and regulatory procedure has been introduced, a certain amount of bad feeling has arisen.

One innocuous requirement under our regulations is for foreign researchers to be accompanied by a Guyanese scientist. This is intended to create immediate benefit sharing of knowledge and technical expertise. There have been complaints that these local scientists are not always treated with respect and are viewed suspiciously as 'spies'.

"We need a mutual respect," Lilwah said, explaining that a lack of respect produces suspicions on both sides. "At least a respect on a professional level - we are all scientists. We receive complaints from parties now. It used to be a free-for-all, but now people have to honour the guidelines."

"In Guyana, we are still learning about our biodiversity and therefore will always welcome those who come in and share what they find," he said. "But a lot of researchers come under that pretence, saying I will do this taxonomy for you, on the side they maybe collecting other stuff."

So Guyana needs researchers to enrich the awareness of the hinterland's biodiversity. Lilwah denied that this puts Guyana in a vulnerable position.

"We recently had application for the study of eupatorium odoratum [medicinal plant]," he continued. "A researcher came in and claimed he wanted to study the origins of the plant, his application was approved and he made initial collections. He left after two days, because he realised it was not the species he had wanted," Lilwah remarked.

The Costa Ricans appear to be one step ahead in their monitoring policy. For although new, tougher bioprospecting regulations are waiting in the wings of government presently, regulations alone will never deter the cunning and the brave looking for a cheap lead.

"Costa Rica has a biodiversity squad at the airport which checks passengers," Lilwah explained. "They have caught people. It is going on here also and we need a strong, slick squad at the airport to look at these things," he continued.

However, for Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean there is an underlying pressure that makes monitoring the influx of visitors a sensitive business - The big 'T' of Tourism.

"Unfortunately, here we can't be too strict as we are trying to promote tourism," Lilwah remarked. "This is something the whole Caribbean is grappling with."

On the one hand, the Caribbean wants and needs tourists but making it easy to access a potentially valuable natural resource may cost the larger more biodiverse Caribbean states dear in the longterm.

"We must sensitize our people," Lilwah suggested. "But it should also be the responsibility of foreign governments to monitor the problem."

Historically, relying on 'good faith' from international companies and does not appear to have done much good for developing countries. So that leaves cooperation between the poorer, biodiverse countries to develop and protect their raw resource.

One advocate of this is world-renowned bioeconomist, Professor Calestous Juma. The Kenyan-born academic, now based at Harvard has written extensively on the relative values of biodiversity and firmly believes that the resource can only be made to work for poorer countries through co-operation.

"You need other partners. The less cooperation you have, the less impact you have. For example, a good bioprospecting projects needs a good inventory of plants and for that you need other partners," he remarked.

Dean of Natural Sciences at the University of Guyana and bioprospector, John Cartey Caesar, would like to see this kind of regional cooperation to initiate a mechanism to develop products from local biodiversity.

"We need to enhance our regional capacity," he explained, naming Guyana, Belize and Suriname as the countries in this region with the greatest potential for economic development of their rich biodiversity. "We need to set up in one country at least a complete 'through-put' system - doing all the tests."

"It is important that we start the commercialisation of our biodiversity in this small way."

Until such ambitions can be tabled, much hope for the conservation of biodiversity still rests in the dream of a star deal from a large drug company or university. Without a Costa Rican style deal, conserving biodiversity looks all the more economically challenging - why preserve a forest full of a thousand birds when you can chop the wood and feed a family?

Lurking behind any hope for a saving deal is the need for new bioprospecting regulations to be properly and actively implemented and then honoured by a band of increasingly voracious international researchers and increasingly more sophisticated multinational companies.

Of course, the question remains whether the new legislation will equal practical results or whether Guyana will continue to depend on international good faith in the cut-throat, cloak and dagger world of scientific discovery. Will bioprospecting continue to mean biopiracy?