Alternatively, in developing countries whose economies are based on the exploitation of agricultural and livestock resources principally geared to the production of cash crops and immediate products, there is great pressure on their natural space. Consequently, there is also great pressure toward the potential elimination of their natural flora. Thus, the relationships between biodiversity, opportunity, and the structuring of various alliances become especially important relative to the immediate financial needs of a developing country. In this light, however, biodiversity and medicinal chemistry must find a way to collaborate and optimize opportunities based on new alliances and technology transfer that is not based upon pure economics. Enormous benefits can accrue in the fields of education, scientific research, and innovation when an approach other than immediate financial gain is taken.
Some examples can be illustrative.
However, the people from the countries where the plant grows became wary of exporting extracts for medicinal chemistry research because they thought they might not receive commensurate benefits. Ultimately, the plant became offered on the Internet in any quantity anywhere in the world by a few financially opportunistic companies. The result is that the opportunity for incorporating technology and technological development for the countries that originally possessed the plant has been lost. Alternatively, the domestication of plants, such as the Catharanthus roseus G. Don of great interest in the production of anticancer alkaloids like vincristine, represents a form of conserving biodiversity, of training in agricultural techniques of economic interest, and of creating a local chemical industry. Currently, when a native community produces a unique cloth, it can be copied by the whole world because it is not legally protected.