China is well-known for its love of medicinal herbs and supplements.
And one of the more popular ones on the market is called a plant called maca.
Maca sellers claim that the root increases fertility, sexual stamina and cures cancer and other ailments.
Thanks to these alluring properties,
maca sales in China have surged in recent years,
jumping more than 1,000% from 2013 to 2014.
But maca isn’t from China,
it’s actually native exclusively to Peru,
and the people there aren’t exactly profiting from the increase in demand.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross travelled to Peru to find out why.
— This is Junín, a highland province in Peru, 13,000 feet above sea level.
This is where maca comes from.
— As one of the only plants that can survive at such high altitudes,
it’s a critical piece of the local culture and economy.
Dora is a fourth-generation maca farmer:
— A few years ago, Chinese merchants could be found in towns across the Junin region,
buying up fresh maca root and maca seeds.
— It became so prevalent,
that Peruvian news even resorted to recreations depicting Chinese biopirates purchasing Maca:
— But last year, that changed:
Chinese merchants disappeared from the region.
And for local farmers and sellers, it was clear why.
— The Chinese have started growing their own maca crop,
a practice that violates international protocol.
This is the man who's been charged with stopping them:
— So these are all the patents that Naturex has on maca?
— You’re even keeping the envelopes?
— Andrés Valladolid runs one of the only bio-piracy task forces in the world.
His job is to make sure Peruvians benefit whenever plants like maca are used abroad.
Most of his work involves sifting through patents filed around the world,
looking for anyone trying to illegally use maca.
— Every single day there was a new patent that was filed?
— An international agreement, called the Nagoya Protocol,
explicitly gives governments the right to challenge these patents.
It was signed by 92 countries in 2014,
and states that the genetic code of any plant or animal that’s unique to a country
is the intellectual property of the people of that country.
This means that when maca is used abroad,
Peruvians like Dora are entitled to some kind of royalties or benefit sharing.
This doesn’t just apply to maca though.
More than 70% of new drugs,
including large scale pharmaceuticals, like Sudafed or aspirin,
are based on components found in nature,
which makes the most biodiverse parts of the world extremely valuable,
and the people who live there, vulnerable.
When Andrés and his team find a patent that involves maca,
they try to shut it down or negotiate.
So far, however, it’s been an uphill battle:
some companies don’t even bother responding to their letters,
and attempts to dissolve patents can drag on.
In the last 13 years, the bio-piracy task force has only gone after 24 patents,
18 of which they’ve been able to have either dismissed or rejected.
— Has any of that happened?
Have indigenous communities in Peru gotten any benefits from this?