Molewa issues seven bioprospecting licences
WATER and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa on Friday awarded seven bioprospecting permits to organisations, enabling them to legally search for novel pharmaceutical and other products from plants and micro-organisms.
Bioprospecting is lucrative. Revenue generated from sales of Pelargonium cultivars, derived from South African species and protected by plant breeders’ rights in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, is in the region of $6bn annually, with no associated revenue returns to SA.
However, new bioprospecting regulations came into effect in 2008 that seek to protect SA from this type of eventuality. Since then the Department of Environmental Affairs has issued 15 permits, the first of which was awarded to HGH Pharmaceuticals in 2010.
SA had a rich natural resource base and was ranked the world’s third most bio-diverse country, Ms Molewa said at the official handover of seven new permits in the Northern Cape.
One of the permits handed over on Friday went to Rapitrade 670, for the extraction and purification of chemical compounds from the shrub Galenia africana, commonly known as kraalbos.
Rapitrade would be researching kraalbos’s use in the produc- tion of soaps and herbicides, the department said in a statement. Part of any revenue would go to members of the Komaggas community, which is providing access to the plant. They would also receive “non-monetary benefits”.
Ms Molewa said SA was “home to approximately 42 000 plant species” and had an entire floral kingdom within its borders.
The Cape Floristic Region is the smallest of the six recognised floral kingdoms of the world. It is an area of extraordinarily high diversity and endemism, home to more than 9 000 plant species, of which 69% are endemic, according to Wikipedia.
The economic worth of this biodiversity, based on harvests of fynbos products such as wildflowers and eco-tourism, is estimated to be in the region of R77m a year. The use of indigenous plants and animals for bioprospecting could contribute to job creation, poverty eradication and technology trans- fer if it was “done in the public interest”, said Department of Environmental Affairs spokesman Albi Modise.
Other permits went to: a joint project by California’s Regents University and the University of the Free State; Dennis Noel de Villers; Essential Amathole; the Muthi Futhi Trust and, again jointly, to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Cragill RSA.