Brazil Begins to Capitalize on its Biodiversity
2/28/00
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Title: ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Capitalising on Biodiversity
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: February 28, 2000
Byline: Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 28 (IPS) - Recognition of the enormous economic
value of biodiversity is leading Brazil to give a new direction to
development of its Amazon jungle region, which up to now has been
based on activities that pillage the area's natural resources.
The Brazilian Programme of Molecular Ecology for Sustainable Use of
Biodiversity (Probem), designed in 1997, is aimed at making the
Amazon region a source of high value-added products and advanced
scientific know-how, especially through the use of biotechnology.
The need to conserve natural wealth and develop eco-tourism was late
in gaining recognition in Brazil, whose Amazon region is home to as
many as half of all the world's insect species and over one- fifth of
plant species.
The programme is aimed at changing the current model of economic
growth in the region, which is based on the extraction of wood and
minerals, ranching and one-crop farming - activities that destroy the
forests.
In addition, indigenous people and other long-time residents of the
region will also benefit through remuneration for their contributions
to the development of new products, such as their traditional
knowledge of the medicinal properties, food value and cosmetic and
aromatic uses of native plant or animal species.
That wealth of knowledge held by forest-dwellers represents ''a long
distance already covered'' in terms of the research process to be
undertaken by local or foreign investigators, said Mary Allegretti,
the Environment Ministry's secretary of coordination for the Amazon
region.
Last week Probem was endowed with a financial mechanism enabling its
implementation: a fund for financing biotechnology projects and for
paying royalties to local residents.
The mechanism was inspired in the Permanent Alaska Fund created by
the United States in 1977 for the payment of royalties from oil in
exchange for environmental conservation and the payment of
indemnification and dividends to Eskimos/Innuit. The successful
experiment had already accumulated 27 billion dollars by 1998.
Any companies or institutions interested in developing products based
on substances found in the Amazon will have to associate themselves
with Bioamazonia, a mixed organisation set up by the Brazilian
government in conjunction with the scientific community and
representatives of civil society to administer Probem.
Bioamazonia has been equipped with the Amazonian Biotechnology
Centre, as well as a financial instrument, the Permanent Fund for the
Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biodiversity in Amazonia
(FPBA).
The biotechnology centre is a complex of 26 laboratories and services
under construction in Manaos, the capital of the state of Amazonas,
which has established links with a countrywide network of
universities and independent institutes that has already begun
carrying out Probem projects.
To set up the FPBA fund, Bioamazonia turned to the Axial bank, a
unique financial institution specialising in investments in the
environment, especially biodiversity.
Founded three years ago in Sao Paulo by Swiss businessman Pierre
Landolt, Axial obtained one million dollars in aid from the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB) to get the FPBA off the ground.
The goal is to attract some 150 million dollars in private investment
over the next two years, while the government plans to contribute 48
million dollars to Probem by 2003.
Companies interested in biological material and data obtained by
Bioamazonia will pay a fee that will go into the fund, explained
Axial director John Forgach.
As in prospecting for oil, companies doing research on biological
substances found in the region will be subject to bidding and paying
for concessions and to paying royalties from the products developed
and marketed, he added.
Probem, however, still faces a legal hurdle: it depends on passage of
a law regulating access to Brazil's genetic resources.
Given that legal vacuum, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity,
which makes authorisation by the State in question necessary for the
removal of any genetic material, applies. Without government
authorisation, the removal of any biological substances by foreigners
is illegal, Environment Minister Jose Sarney Filho pointed out.
But ''not everything is bio-piracy,'' and rules are needed to allow
companies seriously interested in developing biotechnological
products to carry out their ''biological prospecting,'' said
Allegretti.
Biotechnology is a multi-billion dollar business. Global profits from
pharmaceutical products alone amounted to 300 billion dollars in
1998, and around 40 percent of the medicines were based on natural
substances, according to Bioamazonia. And to that must be added the
profits from perfumes, cosmetics, foodstuffs and industrial inputs.
Brazil boasts the world's greatest biodiversity. The Amazon region
alone is home to 10 to 15 million of the world's 30 million species
of insects, and 22 percent of all plant species - ''extraordinary
wealth,'' in Forgach's words.
But since the logic of the marketplace means a policy limited to
cracking down on activities damaging to the environment will not be
successful on its own, that natural wealth must be converted into
profits in a sustainable manner, in business endeavours in harmony
with the conservation of biological diversity, said Allegretti.