The search for economically valuable materials, compounds, or genes from organisms living in their natural state. Humans have sought novel foods, medicines, and fibres from nature since prehistory, and in the process have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about sources of beneficial products in their localities. This local knowledge has often been exploited by foreign bioprospectors with the intention of commercializing it. In the process benefits have frequently been denied to indigenous peoples, and natural resources plundered in an unsustainable manner amounting to biopiracy. The pharmaceutical industry in particular has undertaken systematic bioprospecting of biodiverse tropical regions to source many of its drugs from wild plants and animals. The Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in 1992, established the principles that states have sovereign rights over their biological resources, that access to those resources requires informed consent, and that benefits should be shared in a fair and equitable way with the country of origin.