Benefit sharing is dead.

• Author: Sharma, Devinder
• Position: Thinking Economically

News report of the failure of the most written-about benefit sharing partnership from India--involving the Kani tribes in Kerala, the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) at Thiruvananthapuram and a pharmaceutical company--comes at a time when Hawai'ian lawmakers are under pressure to put a hold on research based on Hawai'i's endemic species until it is decided how to regulate such research and how to share any profit that discoveries might produce.

The Kani tribe story, which was more or less a public relations exercise for the policy makers, academics and some civil society groups who needed a justification for their own involvement in facilitating exploitation of biodiversity and the traditional knowledge that comes along with it, has now turned into a global showcase for biological theft. The TBGRI had initially encouraged 50 Kani families to undertake cultivation of arogyapacha plant species. The benefit every year was expected to be in the range of 20,000 rupees to Rs 30,000 per acre. [1] The income was expected to increase every year with the demand for leaves likely to go up. All that the Kani tribes have received so far is Rs 500,000 ($12,000) as one-time payment when the product was licensed and a royalty of Rs 2,000 ($5). [2]

The traditional knowledge that the Kani tribe provided led to the development of India's wonder drug Jeevani, which is known to enhance immunity levels and has anti-fatigue and anti-stress properties. On the other hand, it has a commercial value estimated to be in the range of $50 million to $1 billion. A US-based company, NutriScience Innovations, is already using internet channels to market the drug. The end result has been disempowerment and an undermining of local communities' capacity to maintain their own biodiversity-based livelihood strategies.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) describes benefit sharing as a fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, including by appropriate access to genetic resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies, taking into account all rights over those resources and to technologies, and by appropriate funding. Effective regulation of access to genetic resources and benefit sharing is currently one principal focus of international negotiations relating to the CBD and the Plan of Implementation arising from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002.

This definition has been used very cleverly by researchers and policy makers, including international agencies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World...