Kew turns over a new leaf

David Dickson [*]

At the hub of the British Empire, Kew Gardens once scoured the world for plants. Now its Millennium Seed Bank puts it in the vanguard of international conservation efforts

For thousands of Londoners, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are best known as a favourite picnic spot on the edge of the city, famous for their picturesque Palm House and Chinese pagoda, their unrivalled collection of plants and their extensive, highly manicured lawns.

The novelty of the gardens, when they were established in the 18th century, was the way in which they combined the function of cultivating a wide variety of plants with an aesthetically pleasing landscape, a sharp contrast to the formality of the plant collections that preceded them.

This remains their charm today. Visitors can wander through a selection of carefully selected and individually labelled trees, and shrubs and flowering plants from all over the world. These range from massive rhododendendron bushes from China, tropical palms grown in a spectacular Victorian glasshouse, to the smallest alpine flowers in a specially-built rock garden.

Kew played an influential role at the heart of the British Empire in the 19th century, when it acted as a central clearing house for trees and other plants discovered in one part of the empire that could be productively, and often profitably, grown in another. By the end of the 19th century, Kew was receiving over 2,500 packets of seeds a year from around the world, and exporting more than 3,500. One curator wrote that as a result of Kew's 19th-century activities the world had been "pretty well ransacked."

Biopiracy in an imperial light

It was as a result of Kew's efforts, for example, that rubber plants from South America were transferred to highly productive environments in Southeast Asia. Less controversially, Kew officials also arranged for the transfer of cinchona, source of the anti-malarial drug quinine, from its native Andes to malaria-ridden areas of Asia. "In the mid-19th century such activities reflected the then global superpower encouraging the use of plant resources," says Kew's director, Peter Crane. "Today they would be seen as pure biopiracy."

Although Kew's imperial role ended with the collapse of the empire early in the 20th century, it continued to play a major role as a research institution, preserving and cataloguing plants from across the world.

But it was only in the final decades of the century that concern for the preservation of biodiversity placed Kew back at the centre of the political stage as one of the focal points of global ex situ efforts to preserve the planet's biodiversity.

In an ideal world, all living organisms would be preserved in their natural habitat--a strategy known as in situ conservation. But a variety of factors, from the needs of researchers for easy access to the fact that many plants and animals are threatened with extinction in the wild, have led to the growth of ex situ strategies.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of Kew's new role in supporting global conservation efforts is the Millennium Seed Bank currently under construction at its outstation at Wakehurst Place, a 200-hectare estate in West Sussex. When completed later this year, it will be the largest in the world dedicated to conserving the seeds of world plants. Its long-term aim is to collect and conserve 10 per cent of the world's seed-bearing flora (about 24,000 species) mainly from arid drylands by the year 2010.

The bank will make seeds available both for research purposes and for reintroduction into the wild. In Britain, seeds of the starfruit, a small white flower that has almost died out were collected and stored at Wakehurst and samples sent to Kew for DNA fingerprinting. Plants grown successfully from the seeds are now being reintroduced in their natural habitat.

Roger Smith, head of Kew's seed conservation department, says that one of the goals of the seed bank initiative is to achieve Britain's conservation obligations as signatories to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) "in a way that reduces countries' learning curve involved in setting up their own collections and allows them to have the insurance policy of seed collections under our control."

The CBD requires anyone taking plant samples out of a country to enter a formal agreement specifying the conditions under which this is being done, and in particular the compensation that a country can expect to receive if a commercial application is eventually developed from the plant.

Informed consent

This compensation could, for example, take the form of an agreed share of the royalties resulting from the licensing of a patent based on the plant's genetic properties. A hypothetical case might be that of a plant discovered in the Amazon shown to have powerful anti-cancer properties. Particularly in light of their previous reputation, Kew researchers are keen to be seen to meet CBD requirements.

Agreements are currently being negotiated with countries around the world on the conditions under which seed specimens can be collected and added to the bank. Nations that have already signed up include Mexico, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Venezuela, Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Often this means reaching agreement on creating two parallel collections. One is located in the country concerned. The second, "back-up" collection will be held at Wakehurst Park while remaining accessible on request to the depositing country.

Smith says that the need for a binding agreement on what Kew can do with the seeds that it stores can cause problems, for example when a country lacks any formal mechanism for providing the "prior informed consent" for obtaining data on its plants as required under the CBD.

The same desire to use Kew's knowledge and experience is reflected in a separate initiative to harmonize procedures for access to seed and germplasm collections around the world.

As a result of this initiative, representatives of 14 botanic gardens in 11 countries agreed at a meeting in Beijing last year to adopt a common set of policy guidelines setting out their commitments on acquiring and conserving genetic resources, on the use and supply of such resources, and on the sharing of benefits arising from their use, for example by commercial organizations.

The new priorities that make up Kew's current agenda are very different from those which determined its influence a hundred years ago. "The last thing we want is to be accused of being biopirates," says Smith. "We must not deny that we ever did it. But we must acknowledge that that world has gone."

(*.) British scientific journalist, news editor of Nature magazine

Conservation worldwide

For mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, the standard form of ex-situ conservation is in zoological parks. There are currently an estimated 500,000 living creatures in zoos worldwide. Some species such as the Californian condor now only exist in zoos. Others such as Przewalski's horse and the Pere David deer have only survived because they were protected in zoos. They are now being released back into the wild.

The main forms of ex situ plant conservation are botanic gardens (for whole specimens) and germplasm and seed banks. Botanical Gardens International, a non-governmental organization, estimates there are 1,500 botanic gardens worldwide, containing at least 35,000 species, over 15 per cent of the world's total. Some put the estimate as high as 70,000 to 8o,ooo species.

Most botanic gardens are in the industrialized nations (only 230 are in tropical countries, despite their greater plant diversity). Many seed and germplasm banks are linked directly to botanical collections. Others are owned by multinational corporations, which use them as source material for developing new plant varieties. One survey found that 88 per cent of plant-breeding companies keep their own store of genetic resources.

A third major source of seed and germplasm samples are university departments and the research institutes forming the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, funded through the World Bank.

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