Category: Intellectual property rights

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Namibia examines Access and Benefit Sharing

A meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, is bringing together private sector and government in an effort to develop legislation and practices governing biotrade and bioprospecting, according to an article in allAfrica.com. Namibia is currently drafting a bill on Access to Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge.

According to the report, the private sector is unwilling to stand up and announce a clear approach to ABS.

“They are averse to any negative publicity and believe that prior to any such event it is essential for them to have a clear position and approach to benefit sharing, and for many this is still work in progress,” said Jonathan Laundrey, New Business Manager of Phyto Trade Africa.

The focus on medicinal products, where “benefits” can indeed be very large, is not surprising as Namibia is the primary source of Devil’s Claw, Harpagophytum procumbens, a therapy for inflammation — notably arthritis — and other ailments. The value of exports is estimated at N$10 million a year. That’s “only” US $140,000, but in a country where more than a third of the people live on less than a dollar a day, a bigger share would probably help. An old press release from WHO suggests that organic, sustainable Devil’s Claw is the way forward, but enforcing that requires more than a bill on ABS.

Later … I’ve done a little more digging, and discovered a study published at the end of 2006 that has this to say on the value of Devil’s Claw:

In answer to the question of whether Devil’s Claw is fairly traded analysis of the value chain indicated that harvesters receive only 1.1% of the final consumer price of the active ingredient of Devil’s Claw. Of the final shelf­value, only 7% is retained within the range states, a disappointingly low figure.

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Do intellectual property rights threaten traditional knowledge and livelihoods?

One reason to blog this is that I am intrigued by the headline. The subject is an interim report published by IIED, the International Institute for Environment and Development, an organisation I have long admired. The report is called Protecting Community Rights over Traditional Knowledge: Implications of Customary Laws and Practices, and was issued last November in time for the WIPO meetings in December 2006. I’ve picked it up now because it popped up at Eldis, which, I think, added the title I’ve stolen for the headline above.

What I really want to know, of course, is the answer to that (perhaps rhetorical) question.

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More on gorilla medicine

It’s wonderful what happens when a real expert gets stuck into a question. Back in November, Luigi briefly blogged a story about pharmaceutical researchers who derived some inspiration from gorillas and their liking for a particular plant. In the comments, Kathryn Garforth Mitchell wondered about the access and benefit sharing aspects of the story. Luigi, characteristically, had no idea, feared for the worst, and hoped he was wrong. Well, maybe his hopes were not in vain, because Kathryn has spent the past four months ferreting out the details and piecing most of the story together. The result is an illuminating series of posts that shows just how complex arrangements can be. I’m not going to link to all four of them; you should start at number one — Gorilla medicine: a complex web — and work your way through them.

One interesting point of direct relevance. Scientists in the US say that they may source the active compounds from plants grown locally in Nigeria or Ghana. This is very atypical of pharmaceutical arrangements, which usually involve discovering the active ingredient in a plant and then synthesizing it chemically. It is also, perhaps, the biggest source of confusion for those interested in access and benefit sharing of specifically agricultural products. While genes may be discovered in farmer varieties and wild relatives, the value of those genes never derives from the manufacture of the gene’s products.

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Biodiversity still valuable for medicines

Nature is still supplying more than two-thirds of all “new chemical entities” that end up approved as drugs, according to the third in a long-term series of studies by David Newman and Gordon Cragg. Their scientific study of drugs introduced between 1981 and mid 2006 is online here. The study also reveals that 2004 saw the lowest number of new drugs introduced since 1981. According to New Scientist magazine, which reports on the study:

“The dip was due in part to the international Convention on Biodiversity rules covering exploitation of natural resources, says Danna Leaman of the World Conservation Union’s medicinal plant specialist group. She says that the Convention, signed in 1992, has increased the bureaucracy and cost of getting people into the field to collect plants for drug discovery.”

The scientists and reporters conclude that diversity is a vital and extremely valuable resource in the search for blockbuster drugs. And so it is.

My real problem with this whole approach is that it fails to disentangle agricultural biodiversity, and as a result countries think that their agricultural diversity is going to produce the same pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. But while drug companies may discover their billion-dollar blockbusters in plants (and occasionally animals) they don’t harvest them directly. They mimic and alter the drugs and find ways to make them under their control. Agriculture is not like that. Genetic resources find their way into new varieties and breeds, which are then commercialized. But the amounts involved are nothing like those in the pharmaceutical world, and yet that’s the backdrop against which people discuss agricultural bio-piracy. Here’s hoping that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture does indeed ease access and share benefits, as it is intended to do, and that the flow of genetic material starts up again in earnest.

While we’re on the subject of lumping all biodiversity together, another academic study has produced a biodiversity map of the world. While a press release and a report or two mention ecosystem services, they don’t tell us to what extent the scientists examined either agricultural species or the genetic diversity within those species. And I have not yet been able to get to the scientific study to find out.