Two decades after Kenya lost valuable enzymes from lakes in the Rift Valley to unscrupulous researchers, who sold the material to companies for manufacture of chemicals, the government has initiated a project that will ensure the proceeds of the sale of harvested enzymes benefit local communities.

Experts from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), local universities and German chemical company BASF will come up with a plan for isolating the enzymes.

Once the industrially beneficial micro-organisms have been isolated from the lakes, they will be cloned and used in the manufacture of bio-pesticides and chemicals used in the cotton industry and for other industrial purposes, said KWS corporate communication manager Paul Udoto.

The project comes ten years after The EastAfrican reported that the country had been robbed of its miniscule wildlife resources by researchers who later sold the material to multinationals, leading to the development of industrial products worth billions of dollars.

This had happened in the 1990s when local and foreign researchers took extremophiles (or minute enzymes capable of surviving in extreme conditions) from Lake Bogoria and other soda lakes found along the Rift Valley and later sold the material to Genencor BV Company and Protor & Gamble.

The two companies cloned the organisms for use in the manufacture of chemicals that were used globally as detergents and in “stone-washing” denimjeans to give them the faded look that was considered “chic” globally.

By the time The EastAfricanpublished the story, the material had been generating between $3 billion and $4 billion annually for the two companies.

Scheduled to take four years, the project will see Moi University, the University of Nairobi, JKUAT, Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (Kirdi) and the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) join hands with KWS and BASF in the research.

The institutions are expected to learn from BASF’s expertise in how to access, use and share genetic resources within the framework of the Nagoya Protocol, which provides a framework for how natural resources should be shared between users and providers.

The protocol, negotiated in Nagoya, Japan, came into force on October 12, this year with 54 parties, including Kenya, as signatories.

The project is also expected to come up with a law on how the revenue from the products will be shared between the partners and the local communities.

This could see provisions on benefit sharing and bioprospecting that are now part of the Environmental Management & Co-ordination Act of 1999 and the Wildlife (Conservation & Management) Act of 2013 brought under one statute.

A Natural Resources Benefit Sharing Bill that provides a mechanism of sharing benefits accruing from such resources is under discussion by the Senate.

The involvement of BASF as an industrial partner was one of the conditions placed on Kenya and nine other countries — Argentina, Bhutan, Cameroon, Cook Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Fiji, Gabon and Panama — that applied to pioneer the programme under the Nagoya Protocol.

“When we applied for the fund, we were expected to get an industrial partner as proof that the project will lead to the development and manufacture of a product that will get to the market” said Kavaka Mukonyi, a bioprospecting expert from KWS at a meeting held last week in Nakuru, to discuss modalities of establishing a microbial technology industry in the country.

The $2.7 million project is partly funded by the Global Environmental Facility, which has put $1 million into the first phase. The partners are required to raise the balance.

The Nakuru meeting was part of activities sponsored by GEF under the Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund (NPIF), which is supposed to drive equitable sharing of biogenetic resources.

The NPIF was proposed by Japan to promote the implementation of the Protocol. So far, the fund has received $16 million from Japan, France, Norway, Switzerland and United Kingdom. The money is being used to finance the 10 pioneering benefit-sharing projects in the ten countries.

Kenya ratified the Nagoya Protocol on May 1, which means that it is now part of Kenyan law as provided for in the country’s Constitution. But for Kenya to effectively police how benefits from its natural resources are shared, it is expected to urgently domesticate the Nagoya Protocol by formulating a substantive law and policy.

Since the biopiracy was first highlighted, Kenya has attempted to stop it through legislation, legal action and out of court settlements — with some measure success.

When KWS opted for legal action against a Danish company, Novozymes, for its involvement in the spiriting away of enzymes from Lake Bogoria and other lakes, the company, fearing reputation damages, sought an agreement.

Mr Mukonyi said the company voluntarily offered 0.6 per cent of the revenue it had been generating from the products made using the enzymes.

KWS received $26,000 which Mr Mukonyi said was used to pay school fees for 250 students from the community living around Lake Bogoria. In the absence of a discernible policy or law, questions linger whether this was a adequate compensation.

“We regret that this is happening after the resources had already been taken out of the country... what we are doing now will lead to benefit-sharing agreements taking place before any material is taken from Kenya’s protected and non-protected areas” Mr Mukonyi said.

KWS believes that the use of the microbes for the manufacture and commercialisation of industrial products will enhance the protection of the relevant areas and resident communities.

“A model agreement between provider and user will be formulated in compliance with the Nagoya Protocol” said Mr Udoto.