More than 3.3 billion people live in the tropics, most in developing countries. Many lack the most basic of essential goods and services such as food, clean water, medicine and housing. Coupled with the requirement to meet basic human needs, the high economic growth forecast for India, China and South East Asia over the next 20 years will result in an unprecedented demand for products and services suited to tropical conditions.

Global tropical product, the sum of the tropical economies, is projected to reach $40 trillion by 2025.

Growth in wealth and population in the tropics is driving demand for solutions that are economical, environmentally sustainable and directly improve health and living conditions.

The vast majority of the world’s health budget is spent on the small proportion of citizens dwelling in the developed world, despite the fact that standard health indicators, such as infant mortality, are more than 20 times worse in some tropical countries than they are in the developed world.

Environmentally, tropical populations fare no better. More than 700 million people in the tropical world rely on forests or savannah for food, fuel and income, and 250 million more depend on coral reefs. Yet tropical forests continue to be cleared at unsustainable rates and the productivity of the world’s coral reefs have been predicted to decrease by 70 percent to 80 percent by 2050.

Food supply continues to be a challenge for people living in the tropics, with 15 percent of the population of Oceania and 30 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa undernourished.

Many of these problems can be addressed by technology being developed in tropical Australia. Australia has a reputation for producing world-class technology, goods and services related to tropical agriculture, health, the environment, living, and education.

The State of Queensland, strategically positioned in Australia’s tropical north, is one of the few first-world economies in the tropics. Its businesses and researchers are in a unique position to use their expertise in many of these areas to assist the tropical developing world and capitalise on the enormous investment opportunities.

The following are just a few examples of opportunities emerging from Queensland’s tropical expertise.

Dengue Infection
Globally, approximately 2.5 billion people are at risk of dengue infection, a life-threatening virus spread by mosquitoes. Professor Scott O’Neill from the University of Queensland is using a naturally-occurring bacteria, Wolbachia, to shorten the lives of mosquitoes so they live long enough to reproduce but not to transmit the virus. Professor O’Neill’s research has received support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The recent opening of the state-of-the-art Mosquito Research Facility in Cairns, North Queensland, should see the project make significant advances.

Anti-Malaria Drugs
Despite many years of effort, no effective vaccine for malaria yet exists and drug treatments are undermined by the parasite’s eventual resistance. By using the knowledge gained by the recently sequenced genomes of humans and the malaria parasite, scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research are developing more specific anti-malarial drugs that may overcome this resistance. They have also discovered that certain anti-retroviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV can kill malaria parasites and are now looking at developing a new group of anti-malarial drugs with implications for treating people for both HIV and malaria.

Agricultural Advances
Bananas are one of the staple foods of Ugandans, with each person eating on average a kilogram of bananas a day. However, the banana variety most commonly grown there is low in vital nutrients, leading to malnutrition. James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology has pioneered the use of 'biofortification' in bananas, a technique that uses the DNA structure of plant species to improve nutrient content. As well as helping Uganda, the project is being extended into Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.

By tapping into Queensland’s expertise in tropical technologies, investors can access the fastest growing and least contested markets in the world, and the tropical world can gain access to the fruits of first world research.

The key to achieving this goal lies in building stronger linkages between researchers and businesses, and between entrepreneurs and investors.

To build these vital linkages, Queensland will be hosting the Global Tropical Life Science Investment Forum in Cairns, Australia on the 23 August 2010 to showcase a range of exciting tropical investment opportunities from the Asia-Pacific region. More information about tropical opportunities will be available from the Queensland Clinical Trials Network booth at Bio 2010 in Chicago.

We welcome international partnerships in our tropical science mission and look forward to seeing you at BIO in Chicago.


Peter Beattie is the Queensland Commissioner for the Americas and former Premier of Queensland, Australia. For more information on biotechnology in Queensland, click here;


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