Diversity (CBD) to declarations and statements of demands from indigenous people’s organizations.

A number of agencies have done extensive work to devise ways to apply these principles. For example, extensive study at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has led to several concrete programs, such as one to set up an electronic database of clauses for contracts on use of genetic resources. Researchers have developed a number of codes of ethics and research guidelines through professional societies such as the International Society of Ethnobiology. A number of bioscience companies have developed corporate policies that set out their approach to dealing with traditional knowledge and particularly with how they will comply with the CBD.

The product “Jeevani,” which is based on the traditional knowledge of the Kani in India, illustrates the commercial as well as the scientific results that people involved in this work hope to achieve.

The Kani are an ethnic group of some 16,000 people who live in southwestern India. Working primarily with three Kani consultants, the Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) of India learned of the antifatigue properties of a wild plant. From this plant the TBGRI developed the drug “Jeevani.” When the TBGRI transferred manufacturing rights to Aryavaidya Pharmacy Coimbatore Ltd., TBGRI agreed to share 50-50 the license and royalty income with the Kani. It took a while for the various Kani clans to agree, but in time they established the Kerala Kani Samudaya Kshema Trust to manage this income.

Through 2001, the Trust Society—fully managed by Kani—has received 1,350,000 Indian rupees (IRs; about US$30,000) of royalties and fees. This income has been invested in an interest-bearing account, and only the interest from the account is expended.

The Trust Society has funded various self-employment schemes for unemployed Kani youth and has provided special financial assistance of IRs 25,000 for the welfare of two tribal children whose mother was killed by a wild elephant. It also paid IRs 50,000 to the three Kani consultants who provided the knowledge initially to TBGRI.

As sales of “Jeevani” have grown, so has demand for the raw material. The Forest Department has now agreed to permit the Kani to cultivate the plant and sell the raw drugs in semiprocessed form to the manufacturer. This cultivation project, coordinated by the Trust Society, will provide additional income to the Kani.

The traditional knowledge of the Kanis would not have been suitable for a patent. The TBGRI research team isolated the active ingredient in the plant, developed an herbal formulation suitable for medicinal application, and patented this discovery. As India did not have legislation that protected the tribe’s knowledge, the tribe would have had no legal means to claim a share in the revenues from the patent. TBGRI—established to support bioprospecting and to look out for the interests of indigenous communities— provides an alternative model to the strictly legal approach followed in the West.

There are few other examples of such commercial success. Through the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group’s (ICBG) first five-year cycle ending in 1997, the group had screened more than 7,000 natural samples and from these had identified about 35 priority leads. The ICBG also produced and circulated a number of scientific reports and created several new databases and software programs for accessing and utilizing these databases. The ICBG’s activities have provided extensive research experience and 16