Kelowna

A Californian bioprospecting company that met resistance to its search for commercially valuable organisms in US national parks is now turning its attention to Canada.

Diversa of San Diego announced its latest plan at the World's Indigenous Peoples conference, held last week in Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada. The conference brought researchers, lawyers and tribal leaders together to discuss the status of intellectual property rights on traditional knowledge.

The company's proposal — believed to be the first of its type in Canada — is to study organisms at paper- or pulp-processing facilities on private land at an undisclosed location. But company officials say they would also like to search public land in Canada.

Government officials say they would welcome this as a starting point for wider exploration, which might lead to the commercial exploitation of either land or knowledge held by Canada's indigenous people.

In 1997, Diversa secured an agreement with the US National Park Service to start bioprospecting at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, triggering a still-unresolved dispute over this use of national parks. The Edmonds Institute, a small environmental group based in Washington state, sued the government, successfully calling for an environmental review of the deal, which is due to be completed next summer.

Diversa's plan to explore in Canada could set the stage for a similar conflict in a nation where suspicion of bioprospecting runs deep, especially among indigenous people. At the Kelowna conference, some speakers described the search for commercially useful natural organisms as “biocolonialism”.

Beth Burrows, director of the Edmonds Institute, says she assumes that the Canadian government and public-interest groups “will do all they can to make sure the public is made aware of every step taken, every deal proposed and every agreement made — all in sufficient time for all the public to comment on how their commons are used”.

Last month, Diversa officials wrote to the government agency Environment Canada seeking authority to begin bioprospecting.

Jock Langford, senior policy adviser at Environment Canada, says the agency is pleased that Diversa contacted the government before starting work on private land. Government officials are reviewing the matter to see which agency has jurisdiction over lands selected by Diversa, he adds. Indigenous groups might also become involved through their long-standing claims to disputed land, some of their representatives say.

Leif Christoffersen, Diversa's biodiversity coordinator, says that there seems to be no law governing bioprospecting on private land in Canada, but that the status for public land is unclear. “We are interested in exploring public lands, but not until we establish a link with the ministry,” says Christoffersen.

Diversa is seeking organisms that might form the basis of a viable biotechnology product. The Taq polymerase enzyme for the polymerase chain reaction, for instance, now used routinely by thousands of researchers, originated from heat-resistant bacteria found at a geyser in the Yellowstone Park.

Diversa has previously cast its net in developing countries, including Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kenya and South Africa. In Mexico, the company retreated after tribes objected to other bioprospectors. Diversa still holds samples from there in a freezer, but says that it is not using them for research.