Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
strategy (although there is no proof of a deliberate strategy) to persuade
local communities to accept the Hoodia benefi t-sharing agreement and
the new bioprospecting project.
As time went on, it seems increasingly unlikely that the high expecta-
tions that have been raised when signing the benefi t-sharing agreement
will ever be fulfi lled. As mentioned above, the fi rst major setback occurred
when Pfi zer announced in July 2003 that it was going to withdraw
from the P57 agreement and returned the licensing rights to Phytopharm.
However, in June 2004, Phytopharm announced that it had sublicensed
the P57 commercialization rights to Unilever, with the intention of devel-
oping and marketing an appetite-suppressing energy bar (Chennells
2007). Then, in December 2008 after spending
10 million on research,
Unilever decided to withdraw from the licensing agreement relating to
the development of products based on the CSIR patent. More than ten
years after the patent was registered by the CSIR and more than fi ve
years after the San have signed the benefi t-sharing agreement, there are
currently no signs that a Hoodia product will soon be on the market.
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Distributive Justice
Looking at distributed pattern of actual and potential outcomes from
the exploitation of Hoodia, a number of dimensions can be identifi ed
that complicate the realization of what might constitute distributive
justice. The benefi t sharing under the initial agreement was structured in
monetary terms. The share the San would receive from the milestone
payments and the royalties—8 and 6 percent of the payments made to
CSIR respectively—may sound reasonable, but their actual value is not
clear at this stage. The fact that the Hoodia was originally expected to
be commercialized as a drug, but then the focus shifted to a food supple-
ment, meant that its total market value and thus the absolute benefi t
share would be lower than the San had been expecting. Now that there
is no sublicense agreement with a company to commercialize Hoodia as
a slimming or dietary product, these expectations must be further
lowered. However, as a result of all the publicity for the Hoodia as an
appetite suppressant, the international demand for Hoodia as a natural
product exploded, with literally hundreds of Hoodia dietary products
being advertised on the Internet. Poaching and illegal harvesting of the
product became a problem to such an extent that in October 2004,
Hoodia was registered in Appendix II of CITES, but in many areas the
protection came too late and the Hoodia became extinct, cutting off the
San from their “life force.” On the back of this development, the San