In the few pristine rainforests of the world lie what is estimated to be millions of undiscovered species of animal and plant life. Kaieteur National Park is one such area, teeming with life of great natural, scientific, educational, aesthetic, and potentially commercial value.

The non-commercial values of such biodiversity are clear. Without biodiversity, ecosystems would suffer and consequently human life would suffer. The effects of a living environment devoid of rich biodiversity on the human race are just beginning to be analysed. However, the commercial value of the world's biodiversity has become an issue clouded in ambiguity and is now an international matter of debate and concern. Throughout time, humankind has utilised nature to improve standards of living. Wood was burnt, animals were hunted and illnesses were tackled with natural concoctions. Often, by chance, a remedy for an ailment was discovered, as was the case in 5 BC when Hippocrates began using a bitter powder derived from willow bark to treat pain. This powder was later refined into Aspirin and is now also used to treat heart disease.

The Cinchona plant

The awakening of the commercial potential in nature gave rise to an increase in the numbers of individuals 'prospecting' for this 'green gold'. The 'bioprospector' was born.

Nowadays, bioprospectors take on all sorts of guises. They may be individuals or pharmaceutical companies looking for the next wonder drug, sneaking through immigration under the guise of a tourist, heading into the hinterland and innocently asking a few questions of a medicine man. They may be academics studying beetles and spiders, slipping samples into a bag unseen by their guide. They may even be the travel writer or anthropologist making a career from information received whilst staying with Amerindians. Of course, there are those who prospect with legitimate, open aims under honoured agreements with the host government. As research science gets hotter and more competitive, however, these noble practitioners are becoming thin on the ground.

Kaieteur Falls and its surrounding ecosystem is believed to hold many thousands of unclassified species of plant, insect and animal life. What commercial treasures lie within?

Quinine, the Jesuits and Charles Ledger

Countries like Guyana, with their rich biodiversity and potential for bioprospecting, have become increasingly aware of the value that lies in their forests. They have also become acutely aware of the profits made by international companies from the acquisition of indigenous medical knowledge and biodiversity. The equation does not appear fair. The impression is that developing countries are plundered for their biodiversity, while pharmaceutical company executives sit in high-rise offices thumbing dollar bills. This resentment is made worse by the awareness that these poor little resource-rich countries have neither the facilities nor the financial backing to plunder their own resources.

The tale of the quinine (the powerful malaria treatment) is such an example. It is also a story that implies a complicated global picture of division and non-cooperation including the very sources of biodiversity not just the classic rich exploiting poor scenarios.

According to most historical sources, Indians had used the 'fever-bark' tree in the northwest region of South America as a remedy for malaria for centuries.

Malaria was rampant in many other parts of the world through the seventeenth century, reportedly claiming such significant victims as Oliver Cromwell. In the mid-seventeenth century, a group of Spanish Jesuits got word of the 'miracle cure' for the disease and arranged for the Indians to harvest the bark.

The bark found its way to Europe and was eventually accepted as a cure for malaria. The bark, from the 'cinchona' tree species, contains the alkaloid, quinine, which has been used in the treatment of malaria ever since. For much of the period, South America remained the sole producer of cinchona.

Things started to get ethically murky when seeds of quinine plants were reportedly smuggled out of South America by Charles Ledger in the mid-nineteenth century. These contraband seeds eventually helped to establish plantations in Java, which fast became the producer of 95 per cent of the world's commercial quinine and effectively ended South America's monopoly on the remedy.

Whether the reports of Ledger's activities are deadly accurate or not, the problem of removing biodiversity for development elsewhere is clear. According to some historical accounts, Ledger's South American servant who aided the smuggling was jailed, beaten and eventually starved to death. The past echoes a warning to those who sell out their countries' resources.

The consequent development of synthetic quinine has reaped huge rewards, more so from alternative drugs derived from the substance. Furthermore, it was the discovery of quinine that indirectly led to the establishment of homeopathy - another multi-million dollar business primarily benefiting the developed world.

Natural quinine is still produced in Indonesia for a profit of which none returns to the origin. Surprisingly, Zaire has become the world's largest producer for the world market, whilst relatively little is produced in the native environment of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. It is not only the developed world that exploits the developing world's resources.

National goods

Recently, efforts have begun to redress the balance and to attempt to create an atmosphere of co-operation and benefit sharing between all stakeholders.

The 1992 International Convention on Biodiversity set out to redefine biodiversity from "the common heritage of mankind" to "national goods." Although the convention is yet to be ratified by several countries, including the pharmaceutical world power - the USA, international governments and environmental pressure groups have begun a gradual swing towards a working definition of "natural goods."

Yet it remains clear that all the while large pharmaceutical and agricultural companies are making big bucks out of the status quo, their host countries will not favour the idea of sovereignty applied to biodiversity. What is of the world is for the world, say the richer countries. The smaller countries might argue that they could not drill for oil in Texas.

As a result of the convention and in the light of the dangers, some governments have formulated policies to protect their largely uncalculated biodiversity assets, others, like Guyana, have yet to properly do so.

Here in the Caribbean and in Latin America, it has been all too easy to remove valuable biodiversity with the potential for developing a money-spinning drug. The situation has been made worse by governments' hesitancy to accept and actually act upon the true value of nature. This has left many countries without effective measures to police the traffic and protect the ownership of their resource, leaving an open door to the curious.

Furthermore, so sophisticated are modern drug development techniques becoming that it won't be long before the origin of the next blockbuster cancer/HIV/malaria drug is completely untraceable. The implications for this are enormous, even if countries can formulate regulations to police bioprospecting and safeguard their assets, the ability to cloak the source of your product eliminates the necessity to return benefits to the country of origin.

To put medicinal bioprospecting in a financial context, the pharmaceutical industry is worth some US$500 billion every year. Twenty-five per cent of prescription drugs sold in the US are derived from a mere 40 plant species. It is estimated that just under two per cent of the 300,000 known flowering plant species in the world have been screened for their pharmaceutical potential, imagine the potentially useful plants that await the curious in the mass of unknown nature.

For a country like Guyana, with its pristine forests and thousands of undiscovered species of all kinds of life, this potential for useful substances is immense. Surely Guyana could benefit from some of that pharmaceutical pie?

Unfortunately, without an adequate scientific or financial infrastructure to test and develop new products, directly benefiting from what is essentially an unpredictable raw material may be a long shot for many sole countries.

Indeed even pharmaceutical companies will complain that millions of US dollars can be spent on the development of a drug derived from a plant only to find the drug duplicated and pirated the moment it hits the market. In 1992, the pharmaceutical industry lost an estimated US$6 billion to piracy - a figure that has increased over the last decade.

Clearly Guyana could not afford to invest even a minor sum to find its investment rendered worthless by piracy.

Where to start? If going solo is impractical, agreements with other biodiverse nations might be a possibility, or perhaps a deal with a pharmaceutical giant.