The new piracy: how West 'steals' Africa's plants

Swiss and British firms are accused of using the scientific properties of plants from the developing world to make huge profits while giving nothing to the people there. Antony Barnett reports

• Antony Barnett
• The Observer,
• Sunday August 27 2006
• Article history

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This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday August 27 2006 on p9 of the News section. It was last updated at 21:09 on August 26 2006.

The Busy Lizzie is one of the most popular plants among British gardeners, providing instant colour to even the most challenging flower beds. Yet this humble plant now finds itself caught up in an international row over patents, human rights and the exploitation of poor communities in the developing world.

The launch of a new strain of 'trailing' Busy Lizzie by the multinational biotech giant Syngenta is, say campaigners, a classic example of what they have dubbed 'biopiracy'. This term is being increasingly used by environmental groups to describe a new form of 'colonial pillaging' where Western corporations reap large profits by taking out patents on indigenous materials from developing countries and turning them into products such as medicines and cosmetics which can be extremely valuable in western markets. In very few cases are any of the financial benefits shared with the country of origin.

An analysis by The Observer of patents issued by the British authorities reveal they have granted several companies patents for at least seven products that orginated from naturally occurring African plants or organisms.

The dispute over the Busy Lizzie revolves around the drive to create the perfect hanging basket display, a demand which feeds a lucrative market for the horticultural industry. Despite its massive popularity the Busy Lizzie - or Impatiens walleriana - has always had one downside: it is too upright.

For years botanists had been hunting for a way to make Busy Lizzies trail downwards. Researchers believed that if they could find this magic extra, the plant would be ideal for hanging baskets and a botanical gold mine would be theirs for the taking.

With great fanfare in April last year Syngenta launched the Spellbound Busy Lizzie. The company claimed that 'after many years of research' it had produced a Busy Lizzie that 'can achieve, at maturity, trails of 70cm [about 28 ins with] masses of large flowers throughout the summer until the first frost'.

The Spellbound went on sale at garden centres across North America and Europe for £2 a plant and Syngenta promoted it through retailers such as B&Q and Wyevale Garden Centres with its own mascot: Lizzie the Spellbound Fairy. It was a great commercial success and more varieties have been launched.

But behind the marketing glitz and talk of magical creatures, an analysis of the British patent taken out by Syngenta for its new floral 'invention' reveals that Spellbound's magical secret comes from a rare African plant, the Impatiens usambarensis. This grows in the unique ecological habitat of the Usambara mountain range in Tanzania, just south of Mount Kilimanjaro. In its patent Syngenta describes this plant as having 'no commercial significance'.

Syngenta's botanists discovered that by crossing the two plants, the Busy Lizzie displayed the much sought after 'trailing growth habits'. Despite admitting that such hybrids happened naturally in Tanzania, Syngenta claimed the new plant was its 'invention' and the British authorities granted the company a patent on 6 February 2004.

The patent reveals that Syngenta obtained the seeds of the African plant from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh that had cultivated them 'from a wild collection from Tanzania'. A botanical gardens spokeswoman said it had received the seeds in 1982 from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. They had been deposited there in 1976 by Christopher Grey-Wilson, a former president of the Alpine Garden Society.

'This appears to be a classic case of biopiracy,'

says Alex Wijeratna, a campaigner from ActionAid.

'This is the silent plunder of natural resources from developing countries. Here we have a large multinational taking out a patent on a plant that grows naturally in a part of Africa and claiming it is their invention . Now the company is making a fortune selling it to the mass market, but the Tanzania communities that live in these regions will not receive one penny.'

In 1994 more than 100 countries, including Britain, signed the International Convention on Biological Diversity that promised to recognise the property rights of developing countries. It did not prohibit the collection of indigenous material but recommended that agreements should be reached to share any commercial benefit that later emerges.

A Syngenta spokesman admitted it had paid nothing for the seeds. He said: 'We got them in 1990 before the international convention came into force. In any case our paperwork shows that when we received the seeds nobody knew exactly which country they came from.'

He rejects the claim of biopiracy. 'Many plants that grow today in a British garden originate from another part of the world and I would not describe that as a type of piracy.'

The US-based Edmonds Institute recently published a report listing more than 30 example of western medical, horticultural and cosmetic products it alleged had been 'pirated' from Africa. An analysis of these patents by The Observer reveals that the Syngenta patent is one of seven granted by the UK authorities that now face accusations of biopiracy.

These include:

· A diabetes drug being developed by a British firm that comes from the Libyan plant Artemisia judaica

· An immuno-suppressant drug being developed by GlaxoSmithKline that comes from a compound found in a termite hill in Gambia.

· A treatment for HIV taken from mycobacteria discovered in mud samples from the Lango district of central Uganda.

· Infection-fighting drugs made from amoebas in Mauritius and Venezuela.

· An anti-diarrhoea vaccine developed from Egyptian microbes.

· A slug barrier made from a Somalian species of myrrh.

Although the development of such drugs is widely welcomed and the companies involved deny the accusations of biopiracy, there is a growing debate about whether profits should be shared between western companies and developing countries.

Beth Burrows, president of the Edmonds Institute, a non-profit body specialising in education about intellectual property rights, said:

'Times have changed. It is no longer acceptable for the great white explorer to trawl across Africa or South America taking what they want for their own commercial benefit. It is no more than a new form of colonial pillaging. As there are internationally recognised rights for oil, so there should be for indigenous plants and knowledge.'

The Brazilian ambassador in London, Jose Mauricio Bustani, described biopiracy as

'a silent disease'.

He said: 'It is hardly detectable, it frequently does not leave traces and is an elusive activity perpetrated and often abetted by many well-known multinational companies.

'Unfortunately, it does not attract the same media coverage or public outcry as other environmental problems, such as deforestation and pollutant emissions. But this silent pillage is robbing developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia of the means to finance important sustainable development projects, and is a powerful disincentive for their biodiversity conservation efforts.'

Five years ago The Observer became the first newspaper to reveal how the British drug firm Phytopharm had patented an active ingredient in a plant called hoodia. This is a cactus-like African plant that is used by the San bushmen in South Africa to ward off hunger before hunting trips. Phytopharm has linked with Unilever to market this product, now being developed, as a diet drug. Unilever has agreed to pay up to £21m to Phytopharm, which originally claimed the tribe was extinct.

The Observer article prompted an international outcry and lawyers representing the surviving African bushmen managed to forge a benefit-sharing agreement that will see the tribe collect a small share of any profits.

Yet Phytopharm's chief executive, Richard Dixey, strongly rejects the claims of biopiracy and accuses campaigners of scoring an own goal. He said: 'Biopiracy is such an emotive term for a highly complex issue. The fact is that many of these plants grow in more than one place and have been used by many people throughout history. It is almost impossible to discover who 'owns' them.

'In any case it takes a huge effort and a lot of money from recognising a particular property in a plant and developing it into a drug. It can cost between $200m and $500m [£100m-£250m]. If companies could not get the protection of a patent then they simply would not bother. Then what would happen is that the traditional knowledge of these communities would die out with the people or be lost as they become westernised.'

It is not just in the world of medicine and horticulture but also in fashion that the debate over biopiracy rages. In 2004, The Observer revealed how British scientists from Leicester University worked with US firm Genencor to patent a microbe that lives in the caustic lakes of Kenya's Rift Valley.

It was discovered that when jeans are washed with this, the microbe produces an enzyme that 'eats' the indigo dye, giving them a naturally faded look. The company, which denies any wrongdoing, has since made more than $1m in sales to detergent makers and textile firms.

Indigenous People Demand More Over Medicinal Plants

(an oldie but informative)

(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Indigenous peoples and peasant farmers who have helped develop the world's plant genetic resources through their traditional knowledge say negotiations aimed at the commercial exploitation of plants must involve them from the very start.

But their demands have turned into a long-running dispute over sovereignty, national boundaries and ownership of knowledge. As the Curitiba meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) drew to a close in Curitiba recently, the men and women who nurture the world's biodiversity struggled to make their voices heard.

Although the Convention itself was supportive of traditional knowledge and so-called benefit sharing, many government delegations did not include members of indigenous populations. And those indigenous peoples who were able to make it to Curitiba want to maintain an independent voice that recognises their special position.

"There is a proposal to include indigenous people as part of country delegations. But there is a problem: in the Philippines there are 110 indigenous peoples groups but the government would only allow one or two onto the delegation," said Victorino Saway, a representative of the Panagtagbo people who live on Mindanao Island.

He added: "When you are part of a delegation, you speak their language. You will be controlled - your language will be controlled."

At the CBD negotiations, the issue was termed Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), but the official title masked potentially difficult aspects relating to economics, politics and culture.

Indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers, through their traditional knowledge, innovation and practices have over centuries developed and nurtured plant species for agricultural and medicinal use, contributing not only to 'development' but also to cultural and biological diversity.

But now companies are developing medicines and crops that take advantage of these plant genetic resources.

Keen to protect their financial interests - and recoup the investment made into research and development - companies usually protect their products with patents. This means that from time to time, a new product comes on the market and reaps massive profits for the company.

Indigenous people and some developing countries with high levels of biodiversity are now demanding ownership over what they claim are their genetic resources. And they want to be part of negotiations about how these resources are used, by whom, and on what terms.

A central issue is the concept of Prior Informed Consent (PIC) - an approach supported by the CBD. "The prior informed consent of knowledge-holders must be attained before their knowledge can be used by others," the CBD says.

Saway agrees: "If prior informed consent is ignored, there will be no basis for negotiations. It provides a basis for saying yes or no to access."

Perhaps the most contentious issue surrounding ABS is that of national sovereignty. As with other international agreements signed by governments on behalf of their peoples, national sovereignty forms the very basis of the CBD.

So when an indigenous group claims knowledge of a plant, or demands to be involved in negotiations, their government can say that the knowledge belongs to the country as a whole, and will therefore be negotiated by the national government.

Sylvester Rogers from Senegal, who works for the Community Biodiversity Development Conservation Network, told the meeting: "We believe that recognition and protection of the rights of indigenous and local communities with regard to agro-biodiversity and their traditional knowledge is non-negotiable and integral to any strategies and efforts towards the sustainable management and use of biodiversity."

Without that recognition and protection, he said, the utilisation of biodiversity will be nothing more than economic and commercial transactions, reducing indigenous people and local communities to "mere vendors of biological resources without respect to deeply held spiritual, cultural and socio-economic connections to the earth and biodiversity."

Indigenous people have a powerful backer in Tewolde Egziabher, an Ethiopian environmentalist and scientist who heads the African Group at CBD negotiations. He supports an international regime which includes PIC and certificates of origin of knowledge.

Such a regime, some campaigners say, would not only lead to fair and equitable sharing of the world's biological wealth, but also result in fewer patent disputes, some of which have grabbed headlines in recent years.

One such case involved the Hoodia plant, which pitted the San population of southern Africa - supported by a coalition of NGOs - against western and other pharmaceutical firms.

The Hoodia is a succulent plant - found in the Kalahari Desert - that can suppress appetite, and could potentially be used as an anti-obesity drug.

The plant's active ingredient was patented by a South African research institute in the late 1990s. It gave a license to a British company, which in turn sold additional development and marketing licenses to Pfizer, the multinational drug company, and the food giant Unilever.

After a protracted dispute, a deal was struck with the South African research institute in 2003 whereby the San people of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Angola would receive a percentage of the royalties from the sales of any future drugs produced from their knowledge of the Hoodia plant.

The San based their claims on a CBD provision, which says should get a share of benefits resulting from the commercial use of local genetic resources and traditional knowledge. But there are countless examples where indigenous populations have lost out, as Ujalla Masdik, an Indian campaigner, reminded the conference.

She referred to a case involving an energy-giving plant used by Kani tribal people in the southern Indian state of Kerala. "Discovered" accidentally by members of an Indian scientific expedition in the early 1990s, the plant, known by the Kani as arogyapacha, was tested by a local research institute.

The institute then obtained a license from the Kerala Drug Control Department to produce and market a tonic based on the plant. It was named Jeevani (derived from the Sanskrit word meaning 'life').

The product was patented in 1996, following which the research institute transferred the production license to a local drug manufacturer. Although the Kani Trust received half the license fee and royalty, they were not involved in the negotiations.

"Some countries have made local or national laws about indigenous people, but others don't recognise them, or say 'we are all indigenous people'," said Saway of the Philippines.

Saway and his colleagues, working in the Mount Kitanglad region of the Philippines, have drawn up an inventory of plants based on their traditional knowledge, which the community "claims as our own".

As a precaution, the inventory has been written in the community's language and the plants' uses have not been explained. "We also have our cultural guards who will apprehend anyone taking our customary rights without our consent," he added.

The biotechnology industry, the usual target of attacks by NGOs and activists working on biodiversity issues, backs an access and benefit sharing system that is workable and provides value for use of genetic resources.

Alwin Kopse, a spokesman for the biotech corporation, Syngenta, said he supported national regimes that were "practical and transparent". Certificates of origin, he said, might be easier to obtain for products derived directly from plants, rather than those that were indirectly derived.

Another problem with issuing certificates of origin, Kopse said, was that certain genetic resources are shared across different countries or indigenous peoples. "What we want is a workable benefits access regime" - one that is not loaded with technocratic stamps, which, he argued "may turn out to be costly".

He accepted that the industry should now be prepared to pay for access to genetic resources but said Syngenta prefers to offer "other benefits" rather than hard cash.

If the CBD protocol on access and benefit sharing is to work, Kopse pointed out, it would be important to define the nature of benefits and who should receive them - a complex set of issues in his view.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Medicinal plants 'facing threat'

Magnolias are one of hundreds of plants under threat

Hundreds of medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, threatening the discovery of future cures for disease, according to experts.

Over 50% of prescription drugs are derived from chemicals first identified in plants.

But the Botanic Gardens Conservation International said many were at risk from over-collection and deforestation.

Researchers warned the cures for things such as cancer and HIV may become "extinct before they are ever found".

The group, which represents botanic gardens across 120 countries, surveyed over 600 of its members as well as leading university experts.

MIRACLE CURES MOST AT RISK Yew tree - Cancer drug paclitaxel is derived from the bark, but it takes six trees to create a single dose so growers are struggling to keep up Hoodia - Plant has sparked interest for its ability to suppress appetite, but vast quantities have already been "ripped from the wild" as the search for the miracle weight drug continues Magnolia - Has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for 5,000 years as it is believed to help fight cancer, dementia and heart disease. Half the world's species threatened, mostly due to deforestation Autumn crocus - Romans and Greeks used it as poison, but now one of the most effective treatments for gout. Under threat from horticulture trade

They identified 400 plants that were at risk of extinction.

These included yew trees, the bark of which forms the basis for one of the world's most widely used cancer drugs, paclitaxel.

Hoodia, which originally comes from Namibia and is attracting interest from drug firms looking into developing weight loss drugs, is on the verge of extinction, the report said.

And half of the world's species of magnolias are also under threat.

The plant contains the chemical honokiol, which has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat cancers and slow down the onset of heart disease.

The report also said autumn crocus, which is a natural treatment for gout and has been linked to helping fight leukaemia, is at risk of over-harvest as it is popular with the horticultural trade because of its stunning petals.

Many of the chemicals from the at-risk plants are now created in the lab.

But the report said as well as future breakthroughs being put at risk, the situation was likely to have a consequence in the developing world.

It said five billion people still rely on traditional plant-based medicine as their primary form of health care.

Report author Belinda Hawkins said:

"The loss of the world's medicinal plants may not always be at the forefront of the public consciousness.

"However, it is not an overstatement to say that if the precipitous decline of these species is not halted, it could destabilise the future of global healthcare."

And Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, added: "Nature has provided us with many of our medicines.

"Scientists are always interested in what they can provide and so it is a worry that such plants may be at risk."