Maya ICBG bioprospecting controversy

The Maya ICBG bioprospecting controversy took place in 1999–2000, when the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group led by ethnobiologist Dr. Brent Berlin was accused of engaging in unethical forms of bioprospecting (biopiracy) by several NGOs and indigenous organizations. The ICBG had as its aim to document the biodiversity of Chiapas, Mexico and the ethnobotanical knowledge of the indigenous Maya people – to ascertain whether there were possibilities of developing medical products based on any of the plants used by the indigenous groups.

While the project had taken many precautions to act ethically in its dealings with the indigenous groups, the project became subject to severe criticisms of the methods used to attain prior informed consent. Among other things critics argued that the project had not devised a strategy for achieving informed consent from the entire community to which they argued the ethnobotanical knowledge belonged, and whom they argued would be affected by its commercialization. The project's directors argued that the knowledge was properly to be considered part of the public domain and therefore open to commercialization, and they argued that they had followed established best practice of ethical conduct in research to the letter. After a public discussion carried out in the media and on internet listervers the project's partners pulled out, and the ICBG was closed down in 2001, two years into its five years of allotted funding.

The Maya ICBG case was among the first to draw attention to the problems of distinguishing between benign forms of bioprospecting and unethical biopiracy, and to the difficulties of securing community participation and prior informed consent for would-be bioprospectors.

In 1993 National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation and USAID established the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program to promote collaborative research on biodiversity between American universities and research institutions in countries that harbor unique genetic resource in the form of biodiversity. The basic aim of the program was to benefit both the host community and the global scientific community by discovering and researching the possibilities for new solutions to human health problems based on previously unexplored genetic resources. It therefore seeks to conserve biodiversity, and to foment, encourage and support sustainable practices of usage of biological resources in the Global South. Projects would be initiated by principal investigators who would apply for a five-year period of funding, and who would establish the terms of the collaboration.

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