Northern Pharmaceutical companies exploit Indigenous people

ISSUE: Biodiversity prospecting is the exploration, extraction and screening of biological diversity and indigenous knowledge for commercially valuable genetic and biochemical resources. Bilateral bioprospecting agreements are sanctioned by the multilateral Convention on Biological Diversity. In the vast majority of cases, however, commercial bioprospecting agreements cannot be effectively monitored or enforced by source communities, countries, or by the Convention, and amount to little more than "legalized" bio-piracy. IMPACT: A growing number of pharmaceutical corporations, biotechnology companies (and their intermediaries) are stalking the forests, fields and waters of the developing world in search of biological riches and indigenous knowledge. Northern-based institutions seek access to tropical biodiversity for the primary purpose of developing patented and profitable products. No matter how convincing the rhetoric, conservation and equity are secondary issues. Under the vast majority of current bioprospecting agreements, when indigenous peoples share information or genetic materials they effectively lose control over such resources, regardless of whether or not they are compensated. FINANCIAL STAKES: RAFI estimates that medicinal plants and microbials from the South contribute at least $30 billion a year to the North's pharmaceutical industry.(1) It is conservatively estimated that the market for natural product research specimens (samples or extracts of biological materials) within the U.S. pharmaceutical industry alone is (US) $30-60 million per annum. Not surprisingly, biological bounty hunters are in feverish pursuit of the South's "green gold."