Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Biodiversity among the Maya of Mexico' had the bold purpose of excelling as a
model of plant bioprospecting in an indigenous territory in a difficult social and polit-
ical climate. It contained a benefit-sharing package, an 'elaborate informed-consent
protocol' (Rosenthal
2006
: 123), terms to share intellectual property rights over any
resulting patents, and provisions to safeguard Maya medicinal knowledge from pat-
enting by carefully classifying it as 'prior art'. Nevertheless the project foundered in a
mire of opposition and regulatory chaos, and was abandoned in 2001. Much has been
written about the failure of the Maya ICBG, as the project became known, but this
story still has lessons to teach about the impact of CBD provisions on researchers and
vulnerable communities, as well as what can happen during transitional periods. The
CBD was in force at the international level by 1998, when the project began, but rel-
evant domestic Mexican legislation was not yet in place. Meanwhile, NGOs and oth-
ers were referring to the new CBD safeguards while simultaneously trying to resist
the commodification of traditional knowledge, which should allegedly not be for sale.
The Maya ICBG aimed to identify and evaluate bioactive agents from plants
found in Chiapas to discover which of these were of immediate health significance
and potential economic value to the local population. The intention was to develop
local capacity for the sustainable management and production of plants for local
medicinal use and for global markets, and to enrich knowledge about the flora of the
highlands, including through innovative publications in local languages. The project
was led by a US-based professor of anthropology who had been conducting research
among the Maya for 40 years. Project partners were a Mexican research centre,
El
Colegio de la frontera Sur
(ECOSUR), and Molecular Nature Ltd, a small for-profit
natural products discovery company based in the UK. Capacity-building for the local
research institutions, as well as among Maya collaborators, was a core component of
the project, which viewed the indigenous highlanders as major stakeholders.
The Maya ICBG intended highland people across the entire region to have an
equal share of the benefits, whether communities actively took part or not. The pro-
ject secured this through the innovative establishment of PROMAYA (Promotion of
Intellectual Property Rights of the Highland Maya of Chiapas, Mexico), a non-profit
organization established to administer the indigenous community's share (25%)
of the 1% of any total pharmaceutical profits that the research consortium would
receive. However, despite proposed indigenous representation on PROMAYA,
it became a core focus of resistance to the project as it exemplified the top-down
approach of the research community towards the highland population. The initial
consortium did not include any Maya representation: for the Maya ICBG, bringing
the Maya people to the table as 'a full partner in our activities' (Berlin et al.
1999
:
143) was not a precondition but a
goal
of the project. In fact PROMAYA never actu-
ally met, as the project did not run long enough to generate funds for it to distribute.
To understand the representation issues at stake, it is important to be aware of
the history of the region. The Maya civilization in southern Mexico and Central
America was devastated by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s. Since constitutional
reform in 1917, however, the land rights of the original occupants have been
officially recognized. Today, in the wake of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, around
900,000 people speaking four Maya languages live in the highland Chiapas region
