Business concerns in the West often make money by patenting their own medicines and agricultural products based on the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples.
A US company has patented a yellow bean grown for thousands of years in South America, while pesticides using substances from the Indian neem tree have been sold by transnational corporations in Europe and elsewhere.
A firm in Germany is marketing a cure for respiratory ailments based on extracts from the African Pelargonium plant genus.
Some of these patents have been returned after years of litigation, but that is not enough for some participants at the UN conference on biodiversity, which takes place in Bonn, Germany, tomorrow through May 30.
The UN gathering wants to make traditional knowledge less vulnerable to unauthorized use and ensure that adequate financial compensation is made to the communities that possess such knowledge.
“The foundation stone has to be laid so that we can come to a concrete agreement by 2010,” said Konrad Uebelhoer, biodiversity director at the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
One of the main demands, he said, is that business and researchers be required to seek permission in the individual countries before they start searching for medicinal plants or genes.
The local communities should also be consulted in the application of traditional knowledge, which is based on practice and has often been passed on through many generations.
“It is necessary to have a clear formula for profit-sharing,” Uebelhoer said.
This could also include transferring the technology used to identify the active ingredients to the countries of origin, he said.
About 190 nations have signed up to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The only industrialized nation that has not joined is the US.
Washington does not object to the first two goals of the convention — the protection of biodiversity and its sustainable development, Uebelhoer said.
It is the third aim of justly distributing the profits from the use of biological agents that has run into opposition from the powerful US pharmaceutical industry, he said.
Andreas Drews, who also works for the GTZ, said those applying for patents were not required to state where the biological ingredients come from, leading to an undetermined amount of biopiracy.
He wants changes made to the way patents are granted in order to stop this practice.
“We demand a formal disclosure of where the resources come from before biological ingredients, novel food and cosmetics can be registered,” he said.
“Novel food” is the term used for new foodstuffs, in particular genetically modified foods.
This is already the case in Norway, said Drews, whose organization is responsible for carrying out projects authorized by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
There has already been some success in ensuring that some of the wealth gained from derivatives of traditional knowledge is returned to the holders of that knowledge.
Among the beneficiaries are the San people in southern Africa, said Frank Barsch, an expert on the protection of species at the environmental organization WWF.
These hunter-gatherers chew the cactus-like hoodia plant to still hunger and thirst pangs on their long journeys through the inhospitable Kalahari desert.
The South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) isolated the appetite suppressant P57 contained in the plant and patented it as a dietary supplement. Dutch-based Unilever is now developing the product.
After much protest, CSIR signed a deal with the San in 2003 on sharing the potential benefits of the product, which is being touted as a potential cure for obesity.
Under the deal, to which Unilever is expected to contribute from next year, San communities will be able to access royalties from a trust fund to finance social projects.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary