Biopiracy in Chiapas, Mexico: another face of the bioprospecting.

Agreement ICBG
Maya-ECOSUR-Georgias University-Molecular Nature Limited, and resistence.

Salas Rabaza Julio Alberto

Student of the Forest Restoration Engineering

One of the areas with the most biodiversity in Mexico is Los Altos de Chiapas located in
the southeast area in Mexico. Due to its traditional knowledge of towns and the constant
fight for the conservation of its natural resources this place is rich in biodiversity.
This study is focused on how the collective knowledge about the natural resources of the
indigenous communities are being threatened by the intervention of Not Governmental
Organizations and transnational organizations that look for the privatization of this
knowledge, under a scheme of bioprospecting.
In 1998, an example of biopiracy was taken and presented as Pharmaceutical Research and
Sustainable use of the ethnobotanical knowledge and biodiversity in Los Altos de Chiapas
Mayan region, which was at the expense of Georgias University in cooperation with
Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Mexico and with Molecular Nature Limited from
Wales , England.
This project was trying to discover, isolate and evaluate compounds of plants and animals
used in the traditional Mayan medicine with the intention to find assets that can be used for
diverse diseases.
This interest in the study and extraction of the biological resources with commercial
purposes turns the areas with great biological diversity and traditional knowledge about the
food and medicinal use (among others things) of its resources in zones inclined to the
biological prospecting.
The Project was approved as an International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) in
1998 and it was cancelled in 2001 because it had a lot of biopiracy reports and dissents of
organizations as the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), Comit de
Mdicos y Parteras Indgenas Tradicionales de Chiapas (COMPITCh) and Organizacin de
Mdicos Indgenas del Estado de Chiapas (OMIECh).

Key words: biopiracy, bioprospecting, biodiversity, Chiapas.