Biodiversity Erosion

Biodiversity refers to the variability within and among species of all living organisms and their habitats. Thus, we have biodiversity at the level of ecosystems (i.e., agriculture, forest, marine). species (i.e., rice: Oryza sativa, O. rufipogon), varieties (i.e., rice: indica, japonica), and genes (i.e., rice: sticky, brown, red, aromatic). This biodiversity is not just a gift of nature, but a product of thousands of years of innovations of and exchanges among women and men farmers and indigenous peoples in the areas where these resources originated. Many of these resources have multiple uses as food, medicine, in agriculture, environment and household, thus cannot be separated from the traditional knowledge that evolved with these.

More than 70 percent of world’s biodiversity are found in only seven percent of the earth’s surface, namely in key centers of mega-diversity spread across Asia, Latin America and Africa. Ironically, most of these centers of origin and diversity were former colonies of the now industrialized countries who are significantly poor in diversity, and are presently home to many of the worlds’ poor. It is these former colonial masters, who have enormous control over technology, who now greatly benefit from the utilization and commercialization of the rich biodiversity from the old colonies. The unregulated utilization of resources from the biodiversity-rich countries by the technology-rich countries was legitimized by the age-old principle of common heritage that governed the relations of humans over biological and genetic resources.

The importance of biodiversity and associated knowledge from the South to the economy and industry of the North is simply staggering, but often taken for granted. Estimates by the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC), formerly Rural Advancement Foundation International or RAFI) in the early 90s put the value of traditional knowledge in pharmaceuticals roughly at US$1 billion a year. Germplasm collected from the South, that are now under the control of the North and kept in gene banks, include 68 percent of crop seeds, 85 percent of livestock breeds and 86 percent of global microbial culture collection. The value of germplasm from the South kept in international genebanks under the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is placed at US$ 4 billion. This figure does not even include the value of the germplasm from the South kept in private genebanks, both in the North and the South, which are not monitored and not governed by rules prior to 1993 when the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) took effect. The CGIAR genebanks keep these germplasm, under the auspices of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for the benefit of human kind and make these accessible to everybody. Guided by this rhetoric, the CGIAR genebank collections were made accessible to seed and agro-chemical companies in the North which enabled them to reap billions of profit.

To assuage the South about the enormous ecological debt incurred by the North through the gene bank collection agreements, the CGIAR study unveiled recently told us that developing countries would be importing up to 9 percent more food if it were not the CGIAR crop improvement efforts, and there will be 2 percent more malnourished children. The study also pointed out that grain prices could be up to 41 percent higher if not for the development of improved varieties initiated by the CGIAR from 1970 to 1995.

And what did the South get in exchange for all these "blessings"? More than 100,000 varieties of rice were found in Asia early in the 20th century. Today, we have less than a dozen modern rice varieties being planted in 70 percent of land being cultivated for rice. More than 30,000 of these were found in India where only 10 varieties are grown in 75 percent of its land today. Sri Lanka’s more than 2,000 varieties of rice have been replaced by five modern varieties. In the Philippines, where around 3,500 varieties of rice were planted in the first half of the 20th century, only eight varieties are grown in more than 75 percent of ricelands today.

The crop uniformity fostered by the massive CGIAR promotion of Green Revolution package of technologies that include modern varieties, chemical pesticides and fertilizers have cause the en masse extermination of traditional and farmers’ varieties which were pictured as low-yielding and unproductive. Along these losses were the traditional knowledge and practices associated with the use of these resources in agriculture, as food and medicines. The obsession over yield as the single factor that drives agricultural research has led to the death of knowledge, traditions and cultural practices that come with the use of traditional crop varieties. The myopic focus on grain as the single most important crop that deserves the attention of international research has deprived women and children of nutrition sources, namely vegetables, fruits and other species that come with traditional rice culture.

Biopiracy, Genetic Engineering and IPR

The unjust relations between gene-rich South and technology-rich North are recognized and addressed in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which was adopted by more than 100 countries in 1992. The CBD provides for the conservation of biodiversity, its sustainable utilization, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of these resources. It also introduced the principle of national sovereignty over biological and genetic resources, while at the same time recognizes the role of traditional knowledge of local and indigenous communities in the conservation, development and utilization of biological and genetic resources. The treaty mandates states to determine the terms of access to these resources while recognizing the rights of traditional and local communities to protect their knowledge and practices. The provisions of the CBD on access and benefit-sharing, however, are interpreted by some as a way of institutionalizing biopiracy, again at the expense of the gene-rich South.

Biopiracy refers to the collection, study and commercialization of biological and genetic resources without the free and prior informed consent of source communities and countries, and the application of intellectual property rights (IPR) on these resources. While the CBD allows countries to adopt laws to regulate access to genetic resources, it has failed to stop the expropriation of traditional knowledge and resources by countries, companies and research institutions from the North. Ironically, the most notorious cases of biopiracy were documented after the CBD took effect in 1992. Despite this, many advocates still consider the CBD as a powerful international legal instrument to protect the rights or source countries and communities over their resources and knowledge.

The rapid advancement in modern biotechnology/genetic engineering in the industrialized North, particularly genetic engineering, has given rise to the increasing application of IPR on life forms and processes, and traditional knowledge. Patents, a type of IPR that applies to industrial innovations, have been granted in industrialized countries on human genetic materials; plant and animal forms and processes for pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial purposes; and indigenous/traditional knowledge. The US patents on the cell lines of a Guaymi woman in Panama and a Hagahai man from Papua New Guinea shocked the world in 1994, and so did the patents on the insecticidal trait of the neem tree which has been used by Indian and Southeast Asian farmers for thousands of years.

The history and evolution of IPR are closely associated with the industrial history of the North. It was intended to give exclusive monopoly rights to an inventor of an industrially useful innovation to exploit the commercial potentials of his/her invention. Patents are meant to protect the rights of innovators on machines and inanimate objects which are new/novel, non-obvious, with industrial utility and can be disclosed in public. With the giant leaps in modern biotechnology, the patent system is the same system used to protect innovations involving life forms and processes. In many cases, mere discoveries are passed up as innovation such as in the case of the human cell line patents, while traditional knowledge are claimed as novelty such as in the case of the neem patents. The main justification often used to defend these patents is the use of modern biotechnology that transform genetic materials into something "not found in nature." The US Supreme Court decision in 1980 on the Chakravarty case involving a genetically engineered bacterium set the world precedence in life patenting.

Patent is one legal system that assures companies of returns for their investments in research and product development. Through patents, companies can monopolize commercialization and exclude others from using a protected innovation. In many recent examples of the application of patents on life forms and processes, the raw materials and genetic resource on which a so-called innovation is based originate from the South. The case of need sold as a natural pesticide is a classic one. The case of erythromycin, coming from a bacterium in the Philippines and developed by a local doctor, is another one that has earned millions of profits for giant pharmaceutical companies.

These trends impinge on the rights of source countries and communities over their resources and traditional knowledge. The exclusive monopoly rights that come with the IPR system effectively limit the access of local and indigenous communities, and even developing countries, to the resources that they provide and knowledge that should have remained in the public domain for the benefit of the majority, in private hands that now control access to the resource. Moreover, it ignores the collective innovation and thousands of years of efforts of local and indigenous communities in the development and conservation of biological and genetic resources and knowledge systems. Such would have grave impact in sustaining the diversity of biological and genetic resources, in protecting the traditional practices and cultures of local and indigenous communities, and in ensuring food security of poor populations dependent on these resources and the very survival of many communities.