Latin America: Biopirates threaten the Amazon

Lima, Jan 4 (IPS/Zoraida Portillo) -- The Amazon now faces what experts see as its biggest threat in the coming millennium: the plundering of its plant wealth, spread over 7,000,000 sq. kms shared by Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

Biopiracy - the theft of plants for commercial use - began some 15 years ago but increased after laboratories in industrialized countries discovered that the Amazon's plants could cure many diseases and sent their experts to identify useful species.

Specialists at the Federal University of Para, in northern Brazil, believe that laboratories throughout the world have sent scientists to various parts of the Amazon jungle to search for plants with curative, medicinal and aromatic properties.

Many laboratories "are convinced that if the medicine to cure AIDS is discovered someday, it would be probably be found in the Amazon," said Vicky Shreiber of Canada's International Center for Research and Development, which collaborates with the Federal University of Para.

Experts says the ethnobotanists who go to the Amazon to study plant species there should not be confused with those who go to steal them. They also say that monitoring biopiracy is becoming very difficult.

Studies by environmental organizations note that the traffic in indigenous knowledge and curative techniques by the international pharmaceutical industry is causing the Amazon countries to lose more than 10 billion dollars each year.

The increase in alternative or traditional medicine based on curing illness with herbs is also helping to worsen biopiracy.

An estimated 30 to 40 percent of the poor in Latin America use traditional or alternative medicine due to either cultural traditions, the minimal coverage offered by traditional health services, or scarce economic resources.

Those most harmed by the increase in biopiracy are the indigenous people, given that many of their natural resources could become extinct as a result.

The Ashaninka community of the Peruvian jungle are suffering from this very problem. Many of their forests of uncaria tomentosa and uncaria guianensis, popularly known as cat's claw, have been deforested by people eager to obtain money from the trade in these roots.

"Cat's claw has been used by our ancestors for centuries, and now the modern man has 'discovered' it and if we are not careful, they will destroy the cat's claw plant like they have so many others, or they will bring disaster to our lands, just like what happened with the rubber fever decades ago," said Zenon Antunez, an Ashaninka leader.

"As a result of the popularity of cat's claw throughout the world, we have detected a massive extraction of the plant, but the degree to which each reed is used to its maximum benefit is very low, which puts the future sustainability of the plant at risk," said pro-government Peruvian congress leader Luis Campos Baca.

Campos Baca is the author of a project to export cat's claw that involves some 5,000 families in four Amazonian departments in Peru.

Indigenous communities in Brazil are now taking precautions.  
Recently, traditional leaders linked to the Brazilian Indian National Foundation met in Rome with European parliamentarians and non-governmental organizations to analyze common measures they could adopt against biopiracy.

"The knowledge of the native inhabitants, when taken advantage of legally, can save time and resources in the production of medicines that otherwise could take up to 15 years," said Marcos Terena, leader of the Terena community in Brazil. "We are interested in sharing our knowledge to help humanity, but it is necessary to define limits to prevent this process from becoming piracy."

Italy tops the list of industrialized countries interested in natural medicine and research on the curative properties of Amazonian plants.
For example, the Italian Center for Educational Orientation edited, with financial support from the European Union, a book describing 450 plants of the Peruvian Amazon entitled "Medicinal Plants and their Benefits on the Health of the Shipibo-Conibo."

The book summarizes more than ten years of work of a famous healer in this community, Guillermo Arevalo, who maintains that the intellectual property of his ethnic group regarding many medicinal plants is "intangible," which does not mean it cannot be a source of information and wealth for science and humanity.

Most medicinal and aromatic plants sought out by the international market are collected by the Amazonian communities in an unorganized manner, and without previous classification, which undermines their value.

Nor are there adequate mechanisms to ensure that the people who produce these plants benefit from them.

"The interest in natural medicine is healthy and beneficial for humanity, but the negative part is that it is exploited at the expense of the native populations and for sheer profit," said Javier Lauro,
head of the Peruvian Institute of Scientific and Technological Research.