ENVIRONMENT: More than 100 Nations Discuss Biodiversity

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 4 1996 (IPS) - Representatives of more than 100 nations began Monday to discuss the preservation and sustainable use of the biological resources concentrated in the developing South, and the equitable sharing of benefits derived from that use.

Madagascar delegate Lalo Rakotova told IPS that U.S, French and German laboratories make around 100 million dollars a year from drugs based on the Madagascar periwinkle which are used in treating children with leukemia. But her country is left out of the profit equation, she said.

It is calculated that medication based on wild plant species produces some four billion dollars a year in profits, and agriculture and the cosmetics industry also run up enormous earnings based on the use of biological diversity.

But the lion’s share of the profits remains in technologically advanced countries, in spite of the fact that more than 80 percent of the natural resources in question are found in the southern hemisphere, where the world’s poorer nations are concentrated.

That situation has given rise to the need to negotiate rules governing sustainable access to natural resources to help the species survive, and the transfer of technology from the industrial North to the South.

The Third Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity opened in the capital of Argentina on Monday with the participation of around 1,500 government delegates. The meeting will run to Nov. 15, with a ministerial segment to be held Nov. 13-14.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and indigenous forums will meet parallel to the conference to present their own vision of the problems and challenges surrounding biodiversity.

The Forum of Indigenous Peoples will demand that the signatories of the Convention on Biodiversity respect their traditional knowledge on medicinal plants, and that the advance of the industrialised world’s pharmaceutical industry into their territories be controlled.

In an interview with IPS, conference president Maria Julia Alsogaray said the 162 nations that have ratified the Convention “have a clear strategy, but not clear tactics” for achieving the objectives laid out.

Alsogaray, Argentina’s secretary of Natural Resources and Human Environment, called on the participants to act with “willingness to negotiate and cooperate.

“We have to think globally to act locally, think about the long-term in order to intervene in the present,” she stressed.

The Convention on Biological Diversity was born in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Its objectives are the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and access to the resources and the technology necessary to convert them into economic benefits.

It also takes into account the use of genetic materials, and recognises the knowledge of indigenous communities, their contribution to sustainable development and their right to share the profits reaped from the use of natural resources and their knowledge.

The delegates will study the draft of a protocol for biosecurity that proposes the need to control cross-border movement of genetically altered plant organisms, which the signatory countries fear could cause environmental damage.

The 16 points on the conference agenda will be discussed by regional groups. Latin America, Asia and Africa will meet in blocs, and then submit their resolutions to discussion by the Group of 77 (the nations of the developing South) plus China. The European Union forms its own bloc, and the United States, Canada and Japan will negotiate on an individual basis.

A group of Latin American nations will propose that the region concentrate on three questions: agriculture, access to genetic resources and financial mechanisms, Colombian delegate Adriana Soto told IPS.

Soto said Latin America has come to the conference with a unified position on financial mechanisms: “We coincide in backing the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) as an interim financial mechanism.”

GEF is made up of the World Bank, the U.N. Environment Programme and the U.N. Development Programme, and administers two billion dollars for projects.

A number of delegates criticise GEF, arguing that it funds projects in accordance with its own priorities rather than those of the countries requesting assistance.

Soto said the members of the Andean Community are at the forefront of regional efforts regarding genetic resources. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela now have legislation that regulates the sustainable exploitation of such resources, designating that the State is to sign contracts with those interested in access, under conditions of equitable profit- sharing.