Protecting Biodiversity Number Two on UN Bangkok Agenda

Jason F. Wright

I admit it; I like keeping my eye on the United Nations (UN). Maybe it's the corruption, nepotism, or that silly circus they just can't help but pack along to every world conflict. In any case, in their eternal effort to see every country holding hands and singing by the global campfire, they apparently believe there's no problem that a meeting won't solve.

To that end, every year the UN convenes countless conventions, conferences, and working groups with very important-sounding names. Most come and go without much fanfare, but occasionally one hits the calendar actually worth watching.

Such was the case last week in Bangkok, Thailand, at the "Convention on Biodiversity: Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing." Ad Hoc. See, now that sounds important.

In fact, this one so interested me that I traveled 24 hours in the air, ate airline food I probably shouldn't have, and parked myself smack in the middle of an historic week. Deep in the belly of the UN conference center, delegates debated an issue affecting anyone who ever picks up a prescription or buys over-the-counter medicines. Yet interestingly, the undercurrent wasn't about drugs or biodiversity at all. It was about property rights.

Under guidelines set forth in 1992 by the Convention on Bio Diversity (CBD), this UN working group is tasked with creating a new international regime for ensuring fair access to genetic resources and shared benefits between those that live on the land and possess valuable local knowledge, and those that invest millions to discover their genetic marvels.

I knew before touching down in Thailand that there would be two divergent paths for CBD delegates to choose from. The first is a rocky, if not impassable route that would push innovation to the edge of a frighteningly steep cliff. It is a sweeping, international big-brother system that will discourage bioprospecting by sticking a dagger in the heart of intellectual property rights (IPR). It could crush the right to pursue patents and turn the entire biotech industry into the kind of perverse, open-source, profits are bad, "why-can't-we-all-just-get-along" mentality that runs rampant in this and most other UN buildings.

The second is the antithesis of the first. It upholds the fundamental notion of property rights and strengthens the ability to negotiate legally binding contracts one-on-one with countries that willingly seek such profit-sharing relationships. It provides market-based incentives for bioprospecting, rewards indigenous peoples for entering into generous profit-sharing agreements, and keeps UN IPR troublemakers at arm's length.

Call it the ultimate no-brainer, but after just two days of briefings, I was already with the free market team.

While the bulk of the true wordsmith negotiating was done behind closed doors, "side-events" were held around the UN Conference Center, sponsored mostly by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Among the best-attended were those offered by the Third World Network (TWN). I was tipped off that their panel discussion would be entertaining and made it my first stop.

Before sneaking in for the free veggie lunch, I took a peak at their mission statement: "The Third World Network is an independent non-profit international network of organizations and individuals involved in issues relating to development, the Third World and North-South issues."

Well that sounded harmless enough. What could wrong?

I took my seat, emptied my brown paper bag on the table in front of me, and immediately began an internal debate as to whether their lunch was going to be more or less edible than what the airline served. It was less. Much less.

The speakers began, but before I could finish discretely sliding my unwanted goodies to the nice Vegan at my left, the anti-patent, anti-market rhetoric was already flying around the room. "We must return to good old days of free exchange," a man from Egypt pled.

A lovely and well-spoken woman from Hawaii said, "The patent system isn't working for anyone. There is a tremendous backlog in patent offices all over the world and there are only so many genes to go around." I would have choked on my olives if I hadn't already given them away.

Another invited panelist actually compared the process of undoing the patent system worldwide to Western colonialism. He proclaimed that killing patents would be miniscule compared to colonization. "We can do it!" Even the Vegan had to smile at that one.

What a four-day diet of international acronyms taught me is that protecting genetic resources of the developing world's indigenous peoples is at best second on the UN's issue wish list. But they are using this latest debate and the friendly confines of the UN as a forum to attack today's enemy du jour. They rarely use the phrase "pharmaceutical or biotech companies," but it's not the gang at Taco Bell out there prospecting for the latest cancer drug in Costa Rica.

The opponents of a case-by-case contract system for accessing genetic resources are not simply against free markets, they're against owning property. And the sooner my fellow delegates can spit out the Kool-Aid, the sooner we can get back to the business of negotiating a CBD system that respects markets, property rights, and the rights of resource holders to wheel and deal for themselves.

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Jason is the president of the Institute for Liberty, based in Washington, D.C.

jw@instituteforliberty.org