Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

DEVELOPMENT: An Unlikely Alliance to Pursue Biotrade

Mario Osava

SAO PAULO, Jun 16 2004 (IPS) - An apparently incongruous alliance between an oil company and a programme for sustainable use of biodiversity was announced at the eleventh sessions of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) taking place here this week.

The local subsidiary of the U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum will support CORPEI, an Ecuadorian export and investment organisation, in ”biotrade” projects in the area where the oil company operates – 200,000 hectares that are home to 28 indigenous communities.

It is encouraging that oil companies ”are gaining awareness that they should contribute something to community development, beyond exploiting the oil fields,” and at the same time convince the local people ”not to reject them” out of hand, Ricardo Estrada, CORPEI executive president, said in an IPS interview.

His agency, which has a strong private-sector component, for the past five years has been fomenting economic alternatives based on the sustainable use of Ecuador’s biodiversity, for things like ecotourism, production of ”natural” foods as well as inputs for the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

The programme operates as a sort of ”incubator” for projects that ”are still small, but which are the only means of producing value-added products in a country that has only oil and raw materials, without much industry or technology,” said Giovanni Ginatta, coordinator of the Sustainable Biotrade Initiative in Ecuador.

UNCTAD launched that initiative in 1996 to support trade and investment in sustainable development centred on biological resources, seeking innovative solutions.

For now, they are small businesses that make sustainable use of biodiversity, but their future is promising, according to the participants in a panel discussion that took place during Tuesday’s sessions of UNCTAD XI.

Indeed, there are other big companies already engaged in such projects, like Brazil’s Boticario and Natura, cosmetics and perfume transnationals that export millions of dollars in products in a market where natural ingredients – largely from the Amazon – and ecological protections play an important role.

The opportunities in this area are enormous. Medicinal plants, little known fruit species and seeds used in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and dietary products in 2000 had a global market worth 18.5 billion dollars, according to UNCTAD.

Most are not produced in a sustainable way – a requirement of the biotrade movement – but the demands are growing amongst consumers and industry for sustainability, quality and safety.

The Amazon and the Andes possess the greatest potential for developing biotrade because of their great biological diversity. A regional Andean programme is already being promoted by UNCTAD and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), which comprises Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

The Organisation of the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty has just signed on to a partnership with UNCTAD that, in addition to promoting biotrade, ”will be a catalyst for bilateral relations” amongst the eight countries of the Amazon region, said the group’s secretary-general Rosalia Arteaga.

In addition to inputs for pharmaceutical and cosmetics, the CORPEI programme includes organic food, ecotourism centred on bird watching, the use of bamboo, and sustainable wetlands use, said Ginatta.

The projects, supported by donations of money for equipment and services, have environmental, social, economic and legal requirements. The utilisation of an endangered species, for example, would be disqualified, but there would always be a component of education, not outright exclusion, he said.

Also presented during the UNCTAD panel discussion were projects from Madre Tierra (Mother Earth), for processing and selling Amazonian fruit in Bolivia, and the Association of Tanando Women, from western Colombia, whose 114 members produce cosmetics and dried medicinal plants.

Women’s leadership is important because it contributes to gender equity and because pilot projects show there is a higher success rate when women are heavily involved, said Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva, who presided over the panel.

Brazil is currently working to define a legal framework for the use and protection of genetic resources, to include recognition of the rights of indigenous and other groups with traditional knowledge of biodiversity, she said.

Biotrade faces challenges in developing its market as well as in competing with jungle-devastating activities like livestock ranching and the rapidly expanding soybean agribusiness.

The European market, where environmental awareness is high, consumers are increasingly demanding sustainably produced goods and services, as well as health protections and social responsibility, said Denis Belisle, head of the International Trade Centre.

Despite being a new and relatively limited activity, biotrade is dynamic, with growing production and demand, and is essential for the sustainable development and improved living conditions of many impoverished communities in biologically diverse regions, concluded the panellists.