RI pushes for biosafety protocol completion

RI pushes for biosafety protocol completion

By Gedsiri Suhartono

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia, home to a large percentage of the
world's wealth of biodiversity, is pushing hard for the early
completion of a biosafety protocol, crucial for protecting rare
species from commercial over-exploitation.

Indonesia has taken a full and active part in the series of
international conferences aimed at completing the protocol.

After hosting the second one in Jakarta in December 1995,
State Minister of Environmental Affairs Sarwono Kusumaatmadja
traveled to Buenos Aires in November for the third conference.

The Biosafety Protocol is an offshoot of the Convention on
Biological Diversity, one of the landmark documents produced at
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. The idea for the
protocol came from the conference in Jakarta.

Signed by 161 of the 185 United Nations members, the
convention seeks to end researchers' free access to biological
resources by proposing agreements between researchers and the
governments where species are found, establish government control
and charge researchers hunting for new materials (or bio-
prospecting).

The convention has three goals: the conservation of
biodiversity, the sustainable use of resources, and the fair and
equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of
genetic resources.

In spite of the overwhelming international support for the
convention, translating commitment into action has proven arduous
and difficult, as shown by the slow progress drafting the
biosafety protocol.

Big businesses have launched a vigorous behind the scenes
campaign to ensure their interests -- unimpeded access to
biological species -- are protected.

Governments of developing countries, where the majority of
species are grown and found, want royalties for species used.

The debate is turning into a North versus South classic
between powerful multinational companies, which mostly come from
industrialized countries, and governments of developing
countries.

In his opening speech at the third session of the Conference
of Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biodiversity in the
Argentine capital, Sarwono urged delegates to consider the
convention in the broader context of international action.

Sarwono told Antara that participating countries agreed the
protocol needed to be completed soon, ready for discussion by the
next COP, scheduled for May 1998 in Bratislava. The task of
drafting the protocol is now in the hands of an ad hoc committee.

The urgency certainly exists.

Experts say the decline in biological species is fastest in
West Asia and North Africa which, beside being rich in
biodiversity, are where some of the world's highest population
growth rates are recorded.

"The current decline in biodiversity is largely the result of
human activity and represents a serious threat," says the Agenda
21, the plan of action hammered out at the 1992 Rio summit.

The UN General Assembly, which is to review the progress of
Agenda 21 in June, will no doubt want to know how far nations
have progressed in drawing up the biosafety protocol.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recorded that
since the beginning of the century, about 75 percent of the
world's crop plant varieties have become extinct, and around
500,000 varieties disappear every year.

Sarwono said intellectual property rights did not receive much
attention in Buenos Aires. Delegates instead spent much time and
energy discussing the biosafety protocol and funding.

Sarwono said the conference agreed the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) funding mechanism should be clearly established to
ensure even funding distribution between members.

Fund allocations are often seen as partial and only to some
countries, he said.

Except for Nordic countries, according to Sarwono, most
developed countries have not fully complied with the commitment
made at the 1992 Earth Summit, to allocate seven percent of their
respective annual GNP to fund GEF activities.

Originally created in 1991 as a World Bank organ, GEF was
restructured in 1996 to become a permanent financial mechanism
and characterized as an international organization.

Hira Jhamtani, executive director of the National Consortium
for Forest and Nature Conservation in Indonesia, said
intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge were
important matters that should have been discussed.

She said the complexity of the protocol and the short time
afforded for discussion had meant the two matters were barely
touched on.

Biological species form the key ingredients in medicines.

Experts estimate about 80 percent of the world's population
was at least partly dependent on traditional medicine and
medicinal plants to treat their ills.

The greatest botanical diversity is found primarily in the
developing countries of the South. It is estimated that over 90
percent of plant species are located in Africa, Asia and Latin
America.

Indonesia is home to an estimated 30,000 plant species with
potential medicinal properties.

Not all have been exploited for commerce, but herbal plant
exports reached $64 million in 1996, and are estimated to
increase by 20 percent in 1997.

"There is a great demand for herbal plants in other countries
where people have begun adopting a back-to-nature lifestyle,"
head of the Indonesian association of herbal plant exporters and
importers, Hartono Chandra, was quoted by Antara as saying.

Indonesia's herbs were mostly exported to Hong Kong,
Singapore, Germany, China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, he
said. The number of registered medicinal and herbal companies has
also increased from 185 in 1989 to 490, he added.

Muchsin Darise, a medical expert from Hasanuddin University in
South Sulawesi, told Antara recently 25 percent of the 30,000
plant species in Indonesia potentially possessed medicinal
properties.

Indonesia, like many other developing countries, has a stake
in securing a biosafety protocol because it will clearly define
species utilization and protect against piracy by industrialized
countries with the technology to exploit the species.

The Rural Advancement Foundation International report prepared
for the United Nations Development Program in 1994 estimated that
if developing countries were to receive royalties for the plant
varieties and indigenous knowledge that has exploited by
multinational companies, their total earnings would reach $5.4
billion a year.

Gurdial Singh Nijar of the Third World Network in Malaysia,
said the Buenos Aires conference failed to address biotechnology,
something which developing countries had asked be discussed at
last year's meeting in Jakarta.

Nijar told The Jakarta Post that several biotechnology
industries had acted in bad faith by expediting the release of
genetically modified food products while negotiations for the
protocol were proceeding.

"The Industry's attitude is hardly surprising as it had
mounted a massive campaign in Jakarta to dissuade the parties
from acknowledging the need for a biosafety protocol," Nijar
said.