Nepal’s legal barriers hinder genetic research, forcing scientists to improvise

KATHMANDU — When researcher Kumar Paudel from the NGO Greenhood Nepal received permission to carry out a genetic study to determine the distribution of the two species of pangolins in Nepal, he submitted some samples sourced from the Chitwan-Parsa landscape to a lab in Nepal.

The permission’s condition was that the lab tests needed to be carried out in Nepal. The lab where he submitted the samples took around two years to come up with results. “The results we received were far from satisfactory,” Paudel said.

Researchers are not allowed to take biological samples abroad even for scientific study. While the official reason is a lack of legislation, researchers say they believe it is due to a fear of biopiracy. This is happening even as labs in the country aren’t well-equipped or have quality human resources to do the tests.

Another researcher working on big cats in Nepal also had a bad experience. The researcher submitted his samples to a lab in Nepal that identified the cat as belonging to some already extinct ancestor. “Although I couldn’t take the samples, I sent the data generated from it abroad and got more accurate results,” said the researcher, who didn’t want to be named for fear of retribution.

Any kind of wildlife-related research requires permits from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC), which lays down several terms and conditions for researchers, including that they use government-run or government-supported labs for genetic work. “However, most of the time the two labs that the officials suggest don’t have the required primers and reagents needed for the job,” Paudel said.

Several researchers have had to change their research design and plans in view of the restrictions in Nepal. Prashant Ghimire from Kent State University in the United States is another example. Ghimire, who studies woolly-necked storks (Ciconia episcopus), planned to collect samples from the bird in Nepal, Africa and Indonesia to assess if the birds found in these three locations constituted different species. “I had to change the approach as I couldn’t get permission to take the samples to my university lab,” he said.

Reviewers who commented on a study led by researcher Kamal Raj Gosai, who was studying mimicry among the greater necklaced laughingthrush (Pterorhinus pectoralis) and the lesser necklaced laughingthrush (Garrulax monileger) also asked him if genetic verification of his finding was possible. But knowing the restrictions in Nepal, he didn’t want to take that route. “Of course, doing genetic tests would have made my results stronger. But because doing so in Nepal was difficult, and my professor didn’t have expertise in the area, we dropped the idea,” he said.

The official government version is that samples can’t be legally allowed out of the country as Nepal is yet to prepare domestic legislation to implement the Nagoya Protocol Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing. “Although Nepal’s Parliament ratified the protocol and the country is a party to it, we don’t have the relevant laws and structures to start implementing it,” said Shyam Kumar Shah, DNPWC information officer.

The Nagoya Protocol is a global agreement that puts into action the access and benefit-sharing obligations of the Convention on Biological Diversity. As genetic resources from different flora and fauna play an increasingly valuable role in the development of enzymes, enhanced genes or small molecules that can be used in a host of areas such as crop protection, drug development and the production of specialized chemicals, the protocol calls for fair and equitable sharing of these benefits. The protocol was adopted by the CBD in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010.

The bill to implement the protocol has been in the works ever since Nepal’s Parliament ratified the protocol in 2019. However, the document is still doing rounds in the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Law and hasn’t been presented before Parliament. “Although the official reason is the legislation, the real reason is that the government wants to hide its incompetence,” a researcher working in the field for more than three decades said. “Regulating requires a lot of effort and commitment, placing a blanket ban is easy work,” the researcher added.

Following the impediment from the government, researchers are increasingly forced to look for alternatives to fulfill their research objectives. One such method is to use museum samples of flora and fauna taken abroad from the region.

Ghimire found samples of woolly-necked storks taken from the South Asia region at Harvard University. “Although the samples were pretty old, and their genetic data wasn’t of the quality we’d have wanted, we worked with the samples,” he said. Ghimire could easily get samples from live birds from other areas he was interested in. His research concluded that the South Asian and African woolly-necked storks were indeed members of two distinct species. Although they were considered to be of the same species until the last decade, they had been separated based on morphological features, with genetic data lacking. But the bird in Indonesia was a tricky case. It was neither found to be of a new species altogether, but it was different from both the Asian and African ones.

“We had to encounter a lot of limitations due to the quality of the museum samples. But the results were conclusive as there was a marked difference between the birds in South Asia and Africa,” he said. “There is no doubt that the results would have been far better if we could collect live samples from Nepal,” he said.

The approach of Gosai was a bit different. Gosai, whose objective was to compare mixed flocks with single flocks, observed and documented the birds he was studying in Nepal without disturbing them. He then observed and even measured different physical features of bird specimens from different museums from China. “We decided to adopt this approach as there are restrictions in Nepal. Also, we had to finish our Ph.D. thesis work in a short period of time,” he said.

Private labs are also doing genetic work in Nepal, despite the government pressing researchers to use government-run labs. They, however, experience high human resource turnover rates and face a lack of experienced and seasoned researchers, a researcher working for a private lab based in Kathmandu said. “It also doesn’t make business sense for the private sector to invest huge sums of money, as the volume of research that goes on in Nepal is relatively low,” said the researcher, who didn’t want to be named as he didn’t have permission to talk to the media. He said the government should invest in public labs to facilitate research, as it is its responsibility to safeguard the country’s genetic resources.

Paudel said that while it is necessary to safeguard the country’s genetic resources, Nepal is missing out on cutting-edge conservation science that could help the country protect its flora and fauna better. “When I got the report back for the pangolin test, all it said was that one of the samples belonged to a pangolin,” he said. “We had to spend around $1,000 to get the answer we already knew!”

Banner image: A greater necklaced laughingthrush (Pterorhinus pectoralis). Image by Mildeep via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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