A Middle Ground: Compromises and Media Discourse

Shaman Pharmaceuticals in Tanzania

        There is a large gap between a bioprospecting agreement that is successful and beneficial and a biopiracy project that exploits indigenous rights and knowledge. The discourse surrounding these two models is also quite different. The following case study has both bioprospecting goals and intentions, and mixed reviews by its locally affected people. The discourse is exemplative of a middle ground example where goals are not followed through completely, but not with biopiracy as the result.

        In Tanzania, Shaman Pharmaceuticals arranged a bioprospecting project to collect samples that were used to treat a form of diabetes and hepatitis. One social scientist, Hanne Svarstad, followed shortly after Shaman had published their first set of findings. She conducted extensive field research and interviews with local healers, women, and average people. Her conclusions were very interesting: the successful bioprospecting discourse Shaman published was not accurate to the opinions in Tanzania. However, many local healers still wanted more bioprospecting, and were in no way framing their side of the story as one of biopiracy.

        Shaman provided both short-term and long-term economic benefits to the communities in Tanzania it had worked with. For the short-term, a proposed $6,500 US was given to help build new buildings and fund school and community projects. Long-term, they planned to allocate benefits from the income of the products. Their report championed their efforts of acquiring prior informed consent, in including women, and in providing knowledge protection for local healers.

        Unfortunately, the women involved in meetings were usually birth attendants who couldn't contibute much on the topic of medicinal plants. Also, Svarstad found that, "the company collectors had not involved these women in the meetings or even told them that the collection expedition had been followed by donations to the community" (Svarstad 249). Based on this example, some of the information Shaman provided was false, and embellished to heighten their positive image. Svarstad did not find it appropriate to rule this case as one of biopiracy, just because Shaman had embelllished their report a bit. Because, after interviewing the local healers, she realized that many of them supported bioprospecting and wanted more.

        Bioprospecting heightens the status of the local healers, provides with small economic benefits, provides additional scientific knowledge from the Western scientific community, and allow them to gain power within the bioprospecting association, as they control which samples the bioprospectors find and study. Probably the most beneficial of these is the heightened status of healers; all of a sudden, foreigners from big cities are comint to small villages specifically for the knowledge that healers have. As one ofher informants told her, "'The child who fails in other jobs is the one who is chosen by his father to become a traditional healer. Therefore, traditional healers are not among the smartest people'" (Svarstad 249).

        As is clearly shown in this example, while one party saw it as a successful bioprospecting agreement that was equitable and fair, the other agreed it was somewhat good, but not quite as good as Shaman. So, there is much overlap between where goals for success can lead and how they are perceived. This can be overcome through media, depending on where the discourse lies. Here, there was no outspoken anger or activism against the Shaman. So Shaman's positive discourse overwhelmed negative impressions. Had  there been more biopiracy discourse, then it would have been interpreted completely differently by outsiders.

         A political ecology framework can really help understand the differences in discourse between bioprospecting and biopiracy. Where the first tends to be found in academic journals and in large international organizations' websites, the latter is concentrated on the web, in newsletters and activist websites.