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Article: In Australia, a look at "bioprospecting" and the knowledge of indigenous people: the search for new plant and animal substances with medicinal or other useful properties often deeply affects indigenous people.(Environment)
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- One Country
- Article date:
- April 1, 2004
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SYDNEY, Australia -- The D'harawal people, whose ancestral lands lie about a hour's drive south of this metropolitan hub, understood how to use 1,794 plants for medicinal purposes. So it seemed quite fitting that Sydney was the site of a major international conference on "bioprospecting" in April.
Bioprospecting is the search for new plant and animal substances with medicinal or other useful properties. By one estimate, more than 50 percent of the most used medicines were developed from natural sources.
But bioprospecting often deeply affects indigenous people, as a member of the D'harawal made clear in a speech here.
"To our people, the ...