Methods and Goals

   
        Bioprospecting, in its most commonly understood form,  occurs in this model: a pharmaceutical company based in the global North funds a research trip to a developing country that has rich biological diversity. The company sends a few prominent researchers who communicate with local indigenous people to establish basic knowledge of where to look and what to look for. Usually they will engage local healers who instruct them about the common healing plants located in their region, and what the best way to extract them is. Sometimes, bioprospectors negotiate deals with the local communities that guarantee them economic benefits during and after extraction. Processing and analysis of the plants is almost exclusively done at the host institutions' base centers, where there is the most developed infrastructure. If research is profitable, and extracts can be patented and marketed as pharmaceutical products, profits will hopefully be distributed equitably between the company, the researchers, and the communities from which the compounds originate. One of the main goals that bioprospectors hail is to promote conservation; the profits of research and marketing go back to encouraging the conservation of these lands. Many times, also, there is an incentive to conserve the land in order to protect the future of science. It would be irresponsible to lose the biological diversity that could one day promise scientific and medical cures.

            There are many other models of bioprospecting that can occur, where the dominant system isn't based on  a foreign organization managing the extraction of resources. Though it is less common, some developing countries manage their own bioprospecting, while other times knowledge is shared willingly in exchange for economic benefits. It is important to realize that the models explained in detail here are the most basic and common forms of bioprospecting.

            A few outcomes are possible from the primary kind of relationship first mentioned. In one example, the company Bristol-Meyers-Squibb developed the anti-cancer drug Taxol from a compound that had lay dormant in a clearinghouse at the National Cancer Institute for about twenty years. The company received license to experiment with the compound in the 1980's, and because of new biotechnology techniques, was able to find a new use for it, and began marketing it in the 1990's (Scholz 226). In this circumstance, the beneficiaries were the pharmaceutical organization, not the community that the compound originated in. There is little mention as to how profits were distributed. Since the compound wasn't experimented on directly after its extraction, there weren't guarantees to the local community. There might not have even been records as to where the compound was from. This is one way that bioprospecting can happen indirectly; the delayed application of compounds and extracts can threaten the returns that third world communities see after extracts have become profitable.

            In general, the benefits can go to any number of sources, such as the research institution, conservation funds, environmental education in the host country, development of the host country, trust funds supporting the research of the institution, and other small groups. Collections that happened prior to the development of international protocol like the Convention on Biological Diversity can thus have smaller regulations than bioprospecting agreements must undergo today.