Sir

Your News story “Bioprospectors hunt for fair share of profits” (Nature 427, 576; 2004) correctly draws attention to the bureaucratic impediments many countries have placed in the way of access to biodiversity in the wake of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992). It reveals that delays in developing benefit-sharing agreements are retarding the potential of biodiversity-rich countries to reap the full rewards of biotechnology. However, by overvaluing the commercial potential of biodiversity, CBD-based legislation in these countries is also impeding conservation science.

There was much hope after the CBD that developing countries would conserve biodiversity for its economic promise, specifically the potential pharmaceutical profits derived from biological resources. Such resources were called ‘green gold’, and these countries have been told, for example, that “people all over the world last year paid more than $400 billion for pharmaceuticals, nearly half of which were discovered in the wild” (D. Labrador Sci. Am. 289, 17–18; December 2003). The media continue to publicize the handful of glamorous examples of medicines obtained from tropical biodiversity — such as the appetite-suppressant properties of the Kalahari plant Hoodia gordonii.

Such hype has not been lost on the governments of developing countries, who have concluded that billions of ‘eco-dollars’ lie hidden in their forests. Understandably, they have responded by hastily framing laws to protect (rather than conserve) their biodiversity. Although they are mostly intended to facilitate access, many of these laws obstruct biodiversity-related research, rarely differentiating between commercial and conservation science. Meanwhile, commercial returns from benefit-sharing in these countries remain trivial compared with their national conservation budgets.

One of the first scientific victims of these restrictive regimes is taxonomy. Fewer than 10% of the species on Earth have been described, but access legislation in many developing countries alienates and criminalizes taxonomists, whose job it is to describe them. For example, regulations made under India's Biological Diversity Act, passed in 2002, require any person wishing to have “access to biological resources and associated knowledge for research” to seek government approval, paying an exorbitant US$200 application fee (India's annual gross national income per capita is $460, according to the World Bank).

The adverse impact of the CBD on research is finally being more widely recognized. The International Union of Biological Sciences, at its 28th general assembly in Cairo in January 2004, having debated these issues at a one-day workshop, resolved to promote “activities that enhance scientific input to the CBD process”. These include the results of biodiversity inventories and population studies based on field exploration, which require access to the species concerned.

For many biologists working in developing countries, however, the jury is still out on whether the unintended negative consequences of the CBD outweigh its benefits.