Proceedings of the 21 st International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators | València (Spain) | September 14-16, 2016 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/STI2016.2016.xxxx This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. València, 14 · 16 September 2016 Biodiversity Sustainability of Phytomedicine Research: a 3-dimensions analysis around the North-South divide. Philippe Gorry * * philippe.gorry@u-bordeaux.fr GREThA UMR CNRS 5113, University of Bordeaux, Avenue Duguit, Pessac, 330608 (France) INTRODUCTION The use of plants in medicine can be traced to the beginnings of civilization and natural products dominated therapeutics until the end of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution and the development of organic chemistry resulted in a preference for synthetic products for pharmacological treatments (Rates, 2001). However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2008), about 65–80% of the population in developing countries depend on plants for their primary health care. During the last decades, popularity of alternative medicines increased worldwide, especially phytomedicine. The global trade of medicinal plants was around $62 billion in 2000’s and expected to be $5 trillion by 2050 (Kumari et al., 2011). The rising demand of plant-based drugs is creating heavy pressure on some plant populations in the wild due to over-harvesting, raising conservation and equity issues in regard to biodiversity and traditional knowledge (TK)(Arihan et al., 2007). Reducing the pressure on medicinal plants is therefore a tough challenge both for policy makers and economists (Timmermans, 2003). The “Intellectual Property Rights” (IPR) linked to the use of plants have been debated worldwide and significant divergences exist as to whether IPR should be applied (IBC Working Group, 2010). To protect TK, there are two approaches: a positive protection route and a defensive approach route, with IP or non-IP related tools, legally binding or non- binding instruments. The debate on the right tools is not over (Van Overwalle, 2005). There are arguments for the benefit sharing under the IPR, considered as a new legal form of bio- piracy (Patil, 2012), whereas others argue that the IPR is a legal tool to protect the rights of knowledge holders and sustain innovation for the benefit of public health. Since the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), protection of the rights of local people and knowledge, as well as biological resources conservation are enforced (WIPO, 2015). Every member of the World Trade Organization has to comply with its agreement on the protection of IPR, and Trade-related aspects of IPR (TRIPS) agreement (Nair, 2011). Unfortunately, there is a wide gap between developed and developing nations on patenting natural products. This debate is reminiscent of the social dilemma pinpointed by Hardin (1968) in his “Tragedy of commons” in relation to environment sustainability and protection, and the mirror-image of the concept, "the tragedy of the anti-commons" developed later on by Heller and Eisenberg (1998) to underline coordination failure induced by patent thickets. The concept was revisited by the Nobel Prize-winning economist, E. Ostrom (1999), because it might not be as prevalent. It could be desirable for a country to have an equal emphasis on conservation and market appropriation of medicinal plants. This can be facilitated through public-private partnership involving indigenous communities (Suneetha & Chandrakanth,