'Clean up the ice from bio profits'

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Governments are being urged to take a financial cut from the proceeds of Antarctica's biological resources.

Former New Zealand environmentalist Alistair Graham, now with the Tasmanian Conservation Trust, told a conference on Antarctic "bioprospecting" in Christchurch yesterday that Governments should use the money to clean up the frozen continent.

The two-day conference has been organised by Canterbury University's Gateway Antarctica because of what some see as a mounting clash between the commercial interests of biotechnology and the Antarctic Treaty principle that the continent is part of the common heritage of humanity.

Waikato University biologist Professor Roberta Farrell told the forum that many patents had already been taken out for using Antarctic plants, animals and microbes.

Waikato scientists Roy Daniel and Hugh Morgan had patented the use of a microbe found in hot water at Mt Erebus to identify DNA taken from the skin or bones of crime victims.

A Spanish pharmaceutical company, Pharma Mar, had patented drugs derived from an Antarctic sponge found by Canterbury scientist Murray Munro.

Internationally, a natural "antifreeze" that allows fish to survive in freezing Antarctic waters without their veins turning into ice had now been "cloned" using large-scale fermentation techniques for use in medicines, food and even in cement mixing.

Professor Farrell said all these examples took useful resources from Antarctica - often just a "swab" of DNA - without causing any long-term damage.

Unlike minerals, which had to be mined in great quantities, biological resources could be extracted in tiny amounts and then reproduced in commercial laboratories outside Antarctica.

Mr Graham said this made it impossible to distinguish between "pure" academic research, which was allowed under the Antarctic Treaty, and discoveries which might be used for commercial purposes.

In those circumstances, he said, Governments should not try to ban bioprospecting - but should regulate it through licensing, taking a share of the proceeds to clean up abandoned research bases and other effects of human activities.

Sydney University law professor Don Rothwell said a new international agreement would be needed on Antarctic bioprospecting.

The issue will be debated at the next meeting of the Antarctic Treaty nations in Madrid in June.