Bio-piracy on the increase

Lazarus Sauti

Zimbabwe is endowed with a rich diversity of life form, and the biodiversity of the country provides ecosystem services such as food, medicine, energy sources, building and craft materials as well as spiritual, cultural and aesthetic services.

Further, the country’s biodiversity also regulates climate, soil fertility, outbreaks of pests as well as diseases and maintains functional ecosystems.

This country’s rich biodiversity, however, is attracting outside interest, a new kind of overseas visitors who are smuggling out local flora and fauna.

Foreigners, masquerading as tourists, are on the prowl along the country’s borders, particularly around major national parks, smuggling the country indigenous resources.

Recently, a group of men and women was accosted by officials from the Parks and Wildlife Authority just outside Gonarezhou National Park after a timely tip-off by villagers.

Neatly stashed away in their luggage were four live pangolins, toads, two dead pythons, five elephant tusks, three black rhino horns, reptiles, three small tortoises and some unidentified special plant species.

The loot from the group confirms a growing trend in bio-piracy, the illegal trade in wildlife species.

Sadly, foreigners are benefiting at the expense of locals who live in the country’s biodiversity hot spots.

In fact, ‘they are stealing the loaf and sharing the crumbs’, to borrow from Dr Tewolde Berhan Egziabher, an advocate and defender of community and environmental rights in Africa.

“Bio-piracy, the theft of biological matter like plants, seed and genes, and estimated to be the world’s third biggest criminal activity, after arms and drug smuggling, is fast becoming a cancer that is ravaging Zimbabwe and other southern African states,” said Peace Sibanda, an environmentalist.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international organisation working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, vindicated Sibanda’s statement.

“One species, the succulent hoodia cactus, found in the southern Africa region, a special root used for centuries by the Basarwa or Bushmen, to cure wounds and intestinal disorders is under threat from bio-piracy,” said the IUCN.

Lack of financial resources as well as effective laws regulating the usage of the country’s natural resources by the government, adds Sibanda, has contributed to this flourishing illegal trade in wild animals and plants.

“In the absence of laws, Zimbabwe stands to lose out on indigenous knowledge of native flora. The governments, therefore, needs to join hands with civic organisations and other generous partners to craft and adopt effective law and to increase resources for operations for national parks along the country’s borders to curb bio-piracy,” he said.

The government adds Cecil Machena, a biodiversity management specialist and consultant, should also empower local communities to manage natural resources in their communities.

“One effective way of ensuring protection of our flora and fauna from smugglers is to empower local communities. If villagers derive a benefit from their natural resources as well as indigenous knowledge, they would be keen to protect them,” he said.

Sharing the same sentiments, Collence Chisita, a researcher with a keen interest in indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), adds that to effectively empower locals, the government should fund research and actively remove stigmatisation attached, for instance, to local medicines.

He also said the government, together with relevant stakeholders, should promote traditional knowledge systems, especially in relation to protection of medicinal plants, as an avenue to halt bio-piracy, a serious form of ‘colonial pillaging’.

“Local communities should benefit from biodiversity – their richest asset, and for this to happen, the state should ensure that at least half of benefits derived from commercial use of biological resources are channeled back to the local community,” he said.

Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) director, Mutuso Dhliwayo, believes legislation will provide an acceptable form of access to genetic resources and associated knowledge by foreign companies and institutes.

“Legislation also paves the way for equitable sharing of benefits from these resources by local communities,” said Dhliwayo, adding that “there is need to consolidate agreements for knowledge-sharing by supplementing them at each stage with more specific accords and strategies that are adapted to specific cultural contexts so that local capacities are rewarded and the people involved receive fair recompense.”

Environmental Management Agency (EMA) spokesperson, Steady Kangata, also says legislation is a step in the right direction and as such, he applauded the Parliament of Zimbabwe for pushing for a Bill on Access to Benefit-Sharing.

“Efforts to push for a Bill on Access to Benefit-Sharing in Parliament are underway and will help curtail bio-piracy and unsustainable forest practices,” he said.

To strengthen its legal push, the government needs to respect the Nagoya Protocol if the country is to benefit from its flora and fauna. In October 2014, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) implemented the Nagoya Protocol, an agreement which seeks to ensure that developing nations are fairly compensated for the use of their flora, fauna and microbes by foreign scientists.