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.