An Unfortunate Case of Biopiracy

         Unfortunately, not all cases can be carried out as respectfully and equitably as the Panama case. In fact, one of the most attacked cases of biopiracy was another project sponsored by the ICBG. This time in Chiapas, Mexico, the international activist community brought enormous criticism on the methods employed by the ICBG. Through differences in governance, individual scientists' lack of commitment to respecting indigenous knowledge, and empowered indigenous groups who protested the presence of the ICBG, bioprospecting in Chiapas was forced to end.

        The largest contributing factor to biopiracy discourse surrounding this case was the local opposition by indigenous Mayan organizations. The ICBG was sponsoring the University of Georgia, an adherent to the International Society of Ethnobiology. According to that organization's mission statement, there must be "prior informed consent" (Primalseeds). The local oppositional forces made this statement in reference to ICBG influence:

            We, as traditional indigenous healers have organized for the past 15                     years to assert and improve our customary medical practices... We                     have appealed to national and state authorities to suspend this                             project. Now we are appealing to all indigenous peoples to refuse to allow             the researchers of ECOSUR to remove plants and information from                         our communities (RAFI 1999).
 
            This was clearly described opposition to the project in Chiapas, which would seem to be grounds for prohibiting further investment and involvement by the ICBG and University of Georgia. In the end, because of the pressure from activist organizations, the project was cancelled.

            There were a number of complaints used by traditional groups to lobby against ICBG. Probably the most prominent one, and an issue that is almost invisible in the Panama case discourse, is the issue of intellectual property rights. As described in the biopiracy overview, patenting and marketing biological life samples is usually necessary for bioprospecting to be profitable. In other words, in order to use a chemical compound in a medical product, and to avoid having other industries "steal" that technology, companies patent the biological information or processes. This was particularly unsettling to indigenous communities in Chiapas because it threatened their sovereignty over knowledge that they had used for generations.

            As one spokesperson in Chiapas said, "the project is a robbery of traditional indigenous knowledge and resources, with the sole purpose of producing pharmaceuticals that will not benefit the communities that have managed and nurtured these resources for thousands of years." (RAFI 1999).  The resounding conflict is about appropriating a communal resource; biological diversity was managed by and for the common good, and local people were worried about losing their sovereignty. Unfortunately, even in the midst of staunch opposition from these people, ICBG felt it was more appropriate to try and  convince them of the benefits to the program. In this way, there was no middle ground between the resistance of the Chiapas people and the plans of the ICBG. If from the start the ICBG had been in more open contact with local people and more understanding to their concerns, there might have been a chance for success. Since the ICBG didn't negotiate with local people, though, the project ended up failing. Ideally, the organizers of the bioprospecting mission would have realized that by being more flexible, they could have created a compromise, but they ended up with nothing (ETC Group)

            The fights involved at Chiapas again are centered around community opposition. One of the reasons Panama was deemed such a success was because of the lack of community activism against it. The community groups, like Naso, that did speak up were accommodated. Based on these two examples, it seems that there could be lessons applied to future bioprospecting agreements. It doesn't work to assign people to choose appropriate courses of action, but there can be people appointed to help negotiate the needs and wants of indigenous communities (interactivist).
        
            Biopiracy thus transfers knowledge on two scales; it exploits knowledge of indigenous communities and places them on a privatized, global scale. Through its reliance on the internet and independent activist organizations, it also transfers the voices of indigenous people globally to concerned citizens.