Can government actually do more harm than good in seeking to promote scientific and technological progress? I think this is quite likely the case, and the recent United Nations Conference on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, provides an example of how government intervention may actually work to discourage rather than to advance the work of science and technology.

How to discourage scientific innovation

It can be done, but it takes a highly specialized agency.

Government and science
From the beginning of the scientific enterprise, governments have played a role in encouraging research, development, and innovation. It is highly unlikely that the scientific and technological revolution which has been unfolding for nearly four centuries now would be anywhere near as far along as it is without the support and encouragement of civil governments.

This has been accomplished in various ways, from grants and endowments to government-sponsored labs, programs, and research and development projects, to government purchases of the fruit of scientific and technological innovation. Some government involvement in the work of science would seem to be indispensable to continuing progress.

But is there a point of diminishing returns? That is, can government actually do more harm than good in seeking to promote scientific and technological progress? I think this is quite likely the case, and the recent United Nations Conference on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, provides an example of how government intervention may actually work to discourage rather than to advance the work of science and technology.

Ambitious goals
The conferees in Nagoya labored diligently to achieve progress on a number of fronts. As reported by the Associated Press and The New York Times, they adopted, after a great deal of discussion and debate, a raft of goals and protocols intended to slow the rate of species extinction, increase the amount of land and sea set aside for conservation, and ensure a fairer distribution of the profits of scientific research.

The Aichi Targets focus on conservation. In order to reduce the rate of species extinction by 50% by 2020, conferees determined to increase the amount of protected land from 12.5% to 17%, and of protected seas from 1% to 10%. This, it was explained, is necessary in order to avert a “collapse” of the natural world order.

No official body was established to enforce these ambitious goals, and it is certain that undeveloped nations will not be able to manage the cost of protecting their share of the agreed-on set-asides. The Conference anticipated that money would have to come from developed nations, and it will look to the United Nations to ensure that this transfer is accomplished, perhaps by a combination of existing agreements and possible new regulations or sanctions.

Now the scent of money was in the air, and conferees made the most of it.

The Nagoya Protocol, also adopted, insists that nations “share access to the benefits of genetic resources such as plants, whose extracts have been developed into medicines.” More to the point, conferees determined that nations should “share profits from pharmaceutical or other products derived from genetic material.” As The Guardian put it (10/31/10), the Nagoya Protocol “will see governments considering ways to provide recompense for genetic material and traditional medical knowledge collected in the past that is now being used, patented, and sold.” Recompense? The paper explained that this would likely be accomplished “through a special fund for developing nations” to be overseen by the United Nations.

The Hindu (10/31/10) further explained that these new rules “mean that multinational companies will have to share their profits with local communities not only for using the original resource, but also any derivative products developed from it.”

As Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment program, summarized these accords, “It is an important time for the United Nations and the ability of countries to put aside the narrow differences that all too often divide in favour of the broader, shared issues that can unite peoples and nations.” Given the rich biodiversity reserves in many parts of the undeveloped world, Neil MacFarquhar concluded, “The accord is potentially worth billions of dollars to countries rich in biological diversity.”

And here is precisely where the putative good intentions of the United Nations can throttle the ongoing work of certain sectors of the scientific community.

Science as redistributionist tool
Conferees at the Nagoya Conference on Biodiversity felt no compunction about using the work of conservation and science as a way to redistribute wealth from developed to undeveloped countries. To some – more cynical, perhaps, than I – it might appear that what the Aichi Targets and the Nagoya Protocol are really all about has more to do with “social justice” than the progress of science.

What does this mean? Nations and the private corporations and institutions which make the investment of time and resources to develop new “pharmaceutical or other products derived from genetic material” will be required by the Nagoya accords to fork over a portion of their profits to undeveloped nations from whose cache of biodiversity resources those products were developed.

The question of who has a legitimate claim on those profits constitutes perhaps one of those “narrow differences” that divides nations and peoples.

It is not as if the scientists and technicians who work on the genetic material of plant or animal life, unique to certain undeveloped countries, have stolen that material or taken it into possession without the knowledge of the host countries. Scientists who harvest exotic plants or study animals for their possible medicinal benefits must have the permission of the countries in which they work, and must purchase the right to harvest or import species for study in labs or use in manufacturing back in their home countries.

All the work and investment that go into developing a new drug or producing new medicines or cosmetics is borne by the labs, corporations, institutions, and governments where those products are created, tested, and brought to market. There is no denying that drug companies reap considerable profits – and pay considerable corporate taxes – with each new product that goes to market. But this is a function of the market. To subject this process to international regulation would be to jeopardize its continuance.

But the United Nations is determined to intrude at this point to compel governments to ensure a kind of royalty to the countries-of-origin of the biodiversity resources. 190 of the 193 nations in attendance at Nagoya signed off on this policy.

While scientists may be motivated in their labors chiefly by the thrill of discovery and development, drug and technology companies are not. They must make a profit to survive, and, like all good businesses, they will seek the most profitable way to invest the resources of their shareholders in order to generate the greatest return-on-investment, thus ensuring adequate resources for marketing new products and doing the research and development essential for ongoing innovation.

Inject into this process international regulations requiring the payment of royalties to the governments of undeveloped countries, and you are likely, it seems to me, to discourage the kind of research and innovation that have characterized the scientific community for hundreds of years.

In Biblical terms, the agreements reached at the UN’s Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya seem more a strategy for theft than a fair return on investment or a just reward for work well done. The United States has not ratified these agreements and, for the sake of ongoing pharmaceutical and other scientific innovation, let us hope it will not.

T. M. Moore is Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe (www.ailbe.org) and Dean of the BreakPoint Centurions (colsoncenter.org). Sign up to receive his daily devotionals, Crosfigell, at www.ailbe.org, ViewPoint at colsoncenter.org, and Pastor to Pastor, at worldviewchurch.org.