DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: SOUTHERN STATE TAKES ON BIOPIRACY
COMTEX Newswire
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, (Nov. 14) IPS - One of the 18 biodiversity "hot
spots" of the world, the state of Kerala is developing strategies to shield its
rare plant and animal species from corporate exploitation.
Kerala's mountain forests are home to some 2,800 species of flowering plants, of
which 900 are used in India's centuries-old medicinal system known as Ayurveda.
The rich variety of plant species found on the state's farms and the coastal
mangroves also have commercial value.
State authorities have decided that the best way to prevent outsiders from
staking claim to this traditional knowledge is to assert the legal rights of the
people of Kerala over it first.
"This would enable us to declare our full ownership of the bio-resource. Nobody
can make a patent claim on these resources," say government officials in the
state capital Thiruvananthapuram.
Concern for biodiversity protection has grown dramatically in the state
following disclosures in the media of the export of medicinal plant materials to
a Glaxo-Wellcome laboratory in Singapore and to the Royal School of Pharmacy in
Denmark, three years ago.
A premier government plant research institute was accused of clearing the
exports after badly-negotiated agreements.
The government is keen to avoid making the anti-biopiracy plan an official
scheme and wants the people themselves to play the main role in policing their
flora and fauna. Elected village councils, known as "panchayats," will have the
main responsibility, say officials.
The way is being shown in Eranalukulam, where the panchayat has prepared a
register of the district's plant and animal species. Some 8,600 trained
volunteers had collected information on the various uses of the local fauna and
flora in 86 villages of the district.
Similar biodiversity inventories have been prepared in six other districts by
scientists of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Kerala Forest Research Institute
(KFRI).
The Kerala government is also planning to issue an order setting the ground
rules for biodiversity conservation and use. In the proposed order, local
administrative bodies are given a crucial role in biodiversity management.
"The draft order has been extensively discussed by different agencies and we are
just waiting for the enactment of the national biodiversity law," says Suresh
Babu, with the state's Department of Science, Technology and Environment.
The Indian Parliament is expected to take up the proposed national biodiversity
law during its forthcoming winter session. The bill has, however, come under
fire from environmentalists and those championing the rights of local
communities to traditional knowledge.
"The bill does not sufficiently assert the (country's) sovereignty over
biodiversity and it is insensitive to the concerns of the indigenous people,"
said a spokesman of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Center for Biodiversity
Studies.
Experts say that the state government will have to move beyond merely
documenting and staking claim to biodiversity to ensuring its conservation and
proper use.
"We need to move from preparing biodiversity registers to developing
biodiversity management plans," says M. Balakrishnan of Kerala University, who
has documented the biodiversity of a Kerala village.
The KFRI, with other agencies, is developing a biodiversity strategy and action
plan for the entire state. "We are hoping to develop a feasible strategy and
action plan for the management of the state's valuable biodiversity," says
senior KFRI scientist P.S. Easa.
"With the new protection measures, I believe the Western patenting spree will
come to an end," he adds.
The biodiversity register scheme is not the first attempt in the state to
protect traditional knowledge from commercial exploitation by outsiders.
In a widely hailed venture, another Kerala government-backed institution, the
Tropical Botanical Garden Research Institute (TBGRI), has helped the state's
indigenous Kani community to make commercial use of its traditional medicinal
knowledge.
For centuries, the tribal people had known of the invigorating properties of the
local trichopus shrub. The TBGRI helped develop this into a medical formula,
which was sold to a leading pharmaceutical company.
The revenue obtained from the sale of the patent right was shared equally with
the Kani community. The company that bought the patent right to the medicine
hired members of the community to collect the trichopus leaves.
"The Kani-TBGRI model should be replicated in other cases involving the
commercial use of traditional knowledge. This is what the (United Nations)
Convention on Biological Diversity advocates," says environmental expert V.R.
Prakasam, who has co-authored a study of the implications of the global treaty
for Kerala.
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