The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 
in Latin America.

Ethno biological Prospecting and Industrial Property.
Notes taken from a legal and economic cosmos visison.

By Teodora Zamudio   

Upon a research for the Universidad de Buenos Aires (TD30) funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Técnica (resolución  D N° 1854/98. PIP 0160/98 ) and Pro-Diversitas a.c.  

This report had been read at the forum about "Liberalization of International Trade and the Protection of the Environment in the Context of Regional Economic Integration". Sienna, Italy April 11th & 12 th 2000

“...we can no longer walk by ourselves. We are seeking for a new alliance with the white man. An arrow has been shot towards the white man, an arrow made of love and solidarity, directed to reach every man’s heart, hoping for a new time to come. A time to destroy a discrimination wall that has separated us for centuries, thereby preventing us from talking and listening to one another. We wish to speak like Indians, with the voice of the Earth, the voice of the material and spiritual balance of Man, the voice of the true Americas.”

Marcos Terena  
Brazilian Yanomami Tribal Leader  
The Road to Dignity, Tierramérica, Year 2, Issue No.6.

The term biological diversity has already become part of common language spoken by politicians in many countries worldwide.  It appears in diplomatic speech, as well as in hundreds of theoretical and journalistic documents and writings. Likewise, it is increasingly being added to ordinary vocabulary, associated with the idea of trade wealth.

1.      Biodiversity: notion and significance

Not only does biological diversity, which is the basis for human life, imply to take ecosystems, species, and genes as a whole, but it also comprises and includes variability within species, between species and of ecosystems, and finally the ‘special knowledge’ that the human communities have got about it is part of its important significance.

As Nature can be understood as a network of systems or ‘all’ living systems intertwined into multiple hierarchical levels, extinction or loss of any of such systems means a partial variation in the hierarchy which they include in or form part of.  Each one of such levels is distinguished by having a structural, functional, and compositional diversity, which becomes manifest on a simultaneous basis when we see any individual.  It is all such levels contained in any individual which move through space and time giving rise to a deliberate, endless burst of ‘life’ and recreative extravagance, yet implying no loss of memory, i.e., however sophisticated or ‘crossbred’ the form may be, memory of previous stages is never missed or, in other words, no second of recreated time is lost, i.e., biodiversity may be viewed as a work of art which is being painted once and again till the end of time (Ordóñez, 1999).

Extinction and species generation are two supplementary natural processes which have been occurring contemporaneously since life appeared on earth. The outcome of the relationship between the species generation rate and the extinction rate is the evolution of species. Yet, even though extinction is a natural process, today it has become an essentially antropogenic process because of the dramatic changes that Man has imposed on Nature. It is Man who has made such changes, who has decided on them...

At the dawning of the 21^st century the scenario that is awaiting for us, if trends continue to favour transformation and degradation, shall be a vast territory modelled after the best uses of Man on Earth, with some interspersed natural expressions here and there. The only natural habitats that will survive for long will be those granted a ‘museum’ or  ‘sanctuary’ status (at present, pursuant to World Resource Institute 1989 figures, nearly a total 3% of all land is highly protected worldwide). It is considered that there may be an incidental loss of 66% of plant species in Latin America -out of this percentage 14% will relate to world plant families. In case of incidental extinction of Amazon birds, 26% will relate to world bird families.

Evolution leads to recreate living forms that are not pure or ‘autonomous’, but increasingly mixed and inclusive of other forms then being present. Nature is not static, nor do natural forms co-exist in isolation. It develops in an orderly fashion, in constant evolution into new forms, where the novelty precisely lies in a greater unity or a new combination of simple, formerly divided forms into mixed, integrated ones which will, in turn, incorporate other forms either creating (or becoming) new ones, or enhancing them with elements or features already existing in their own corporeality, which now combine into a new, ‘multiplied’ form under an individual, co-ordinated organism (Ordóñez, 1999). Life on Earth takes many faces. Differences within ecosystems, species, and genes took millions of years to develop. They were the outcome of countless mutations and dramatic episodes of natural selection.  Each micro-organism, animal, and plant contains between one and ten million bits of information in its genetic code... A diversity that is hard for us to figure out.

Biodiversity is the key to a safe environment for human beings in the long run.  It renders Man a great number of services, such as cleaning air, water, and earth, decomposing waste, balancing weather, providing food, resins, medicines, building materials, textile fibers, etc., i.e., countless raw material that provide us with food and shelter, keep us healthy and enable us to conduct our multiple activities on planet Earth.  A great number of species help sustain environmental conditions allowing us to live on Earth, and ensure our resistance to harmful changes in the environment.

In addition to this, today Man ‘aggregates’ an interesting phase of utilization: the use of active principles within the sophisticated world of century-end technologies. In order to attain this goal, Man has been forced to explore the steppe and the jungle, the forest and the tundra... guided by people who have been living together and using such biodiversity on a sustainable basis since the beginning of time, thereby showing the need to ensure maintenance and development of indigenous knowledge.

Some research made four years ago by the World Cancer Institute has shown the following results: in cases of random biological prospecting a promising sample was isolated (applicable to cancer drugs)from among 10,000; whereas the ratio was one to four in samples taken out of varieties known to local populations and used by them since age-old times. If we take into account that payment for each sample amounted to $35, we can understand the economic significance of ethno-biological prospecting.

Man has rediscovered that he himself is an integral part of that spectrum or musical score known as biodiversity. And, in such instance, protecting it implies to respect cultural diversity, including diverse cultures, languages, beliefs, and aesthetic expressions as a condition to maintain and protect indigenous knowledge; to recognize indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and natural resources as the basis for the new process of technological utilization.

Threats to biodiversity are as many as human destructive activities.  The human being, not only taken as a species in the animal kingdom, but as cyborg (i.e., an organism able to create and relate itself through instruments) –and, therefore, showing off his power as an orchestra conductor- is the key responsible person for biological diversity loss, not only from the plant, animal or microbiological side, but also from the human biodiversity standpoint.

Apart from productive processes such as labor-intensive agriculture and industrial afforestation, over-utilization of species and pollution of fresh water, oceans, soils and atmosphere are depleting our biological heritage. Man is annihilating Man himself, not only figuratively speaking or in the long term, but also with his present cleansing of ethnic and cultural groups, who are impoverished and murdered by his action. All this is the legacy of a model based upon over-consumption of natural resources and over-use of power exceeding the limits of sustainability in the future. The loss of countless living forms is the price that we pay for advancing and maintaining a material wealth paradigm which contains its own seeds of destruction.

The pace of human biodiversity impairment is alarming, even more in light of certain proposals asserting the need to limit growth in human population. Such reversion in the curve of demographic increase may lead to impoverished human biodiversity: many scholars (Cavalli Sforza, 1997), stressing the need for control over human reproduction, lay emphasis on poorer populations –a theory which, in case of being successful, would reduce a great number of aboriginal ethnic groups to extinction (in Latin America); all of which would mean the effacement of their culture, knowledge, and biological diversity.  The fact is that every attempt to control ‘cyborg’ dissemination may also result in ‘Man’ extermination.

2.      Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro, 1992)

For at least one decade, many sectors –governments, experts, non-governmental agencies- have worked to include biodiversity as a topic of discussion in world agendas. Their efforts were crowned with success at the Earth’s Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, in June 1992, where 157 countries of the world (excluding the U.S.A., for the time being) publicly vowed to defend biodiversity by signing the so-called Convention on Biological Diversity(CBD)                                                                                                                                                                           

The Convention rests on three main pillars: conservation of biological diversity, sustainable utilization of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from such utilization. Attention is drawn to conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use thereof, and focus is laid on issues such as the equitable sharing of benefits arising from its exploitation and the need for transfer of technology and financial resources from more developed countries and sectors to less developed ones.  This is a universal challenge.

The Convention on Biological Diversity is a reference agreement purporting to cast some light on definitions of terms such as genetic material (any material of plant, animal, microbial or other origin containing functional units of heredity), genetic resources (genetic material of actual or potential value), and biological resources (genetic resources, organisms or parts thereof, populations, or any other biotic component of ecosystems with actual or potential use or value for humanity).  It also includes ‘artificial ecosystems’ (native communities) –and their components and derivative products- as a source of biodiversity, thereby extending the legal scope of this Convention to agricultural genetic improvement activities –which are regulated by other international agreements and supplementary national laws- and age-old uses of natural active principles, known to and developed by native communities. Therefore, biodiversity is such dynamics which cyborg also takes part in, has an impact on, and provides enhancement to.

         The subject matter of the Convention demands that nations amend their laws, which should foster and promote a Copernican turn in legal and economic structures if one wishes that the CBD prevail. All over the process entailed by such change, education, governmental policies, new laws being passed to fit in with the rights of native communities and to regulate their personality and legal status, are other instruments the need for which cannot be denied.

         As regards appropriation or ‘access’, the Convention requires as follows: (1) an agreement (Article 15, paragraph 4) which shall only be executed on the genetic resources being provided by the Contracting Party that is ‘country of origin’ (Article 15, paragraph 3); (2) prior informed consent of the Contracting Party providing such resources (Article 15, paragraph 5); (3) exchange of technology, including technology protected by patents and other intellectual property rights (Article 15, paragraph 7, and Article 16, paragraph 3; and (4) it shall be encouraged that the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices be shared on an equitable basis (Article 8, paragraph j). All this may be subject to some initial comments, namely,

2.1.           “...an agreement may only be reached on the genetic resources being provided by the Contracting Party that is ‘country of origin’.” (Article 15, paragraph 3, CBD).

This raises two issues (Nirinberk de Chiessa, 1997). On the one hand, we know ecosystems recognize no political frontiers and that, except for endemic diseases, genetic resources have several countries of origin.

This principle is mainly important for Member Countries in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty and the Amazon Parliament, since they share the most extensive basin, having 50% of rain forests and the most remarkable biological diversity on Earth.

The agreement between InBio (from Costa Rica) and Merck Laboratories –regarded by many people as an adverse landmark document in this industry- gave the latter party access to a kind of biodiversity which is not endemic but shared among countries within a vast geographic area spanning from Chiapas (Mexico) up to Beni (at the north of Bolivia) that, according to Joseph H. Vogel, would violate the Convention under which said agreement was signed.

         Therefore, in this regard one may think that sovereignty of Governments should be negotiated via regional agreements if one wished to avoid unfair competition over the development of industries closely related to biotechnology and, as a result, one should implement joint scientific and technological alternatives for human, economic, social, and environmental development based on such resources.  On the other hand, on the domestic front, each country being organized on a federal or confederate basis shall have to resolve the legitimacy issue (national, or provincial, or state level) to procure any agreements on biological prospecting that may arise, and to determine the required legitimacy level for cases of ethno-biological prospecting that may involve native knowledge provided by local and indigenous populations.

In Argentina, which ratified the Convention by Act 24375 of 1994, the National Constitution laids down that provinces are the owners of natural resources. Nevertheless, the recently-executed biological prospecting agreement was signed –on the Argentine side- by the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) and the Universidad Nacional del Sur (both institutions reporting to the National Government), which may be regarded as an infringement on the jurisdiction of Provinces causing the subject agreement to become null and void.

Likewise, notwithstanding the newly-worded paragraph 17 of Article 75 of the Argentine Constitution, which is similar to other Latin-American constitutional provisions, the exercise of rights to domesticated biodiversity and/or knowledge of the properties of active principles of biological resources by indigenous peoples runs against two stumbling blocks: (a) that such legal standard calls for adequate regulation, and (b) that notions of ‘ownership’ are strikingly different in the two legal cultures.

The above-mentioned absence of legal regulation of the rights of indigenous peoples and their ensuing legitimacy to ‘act’ (already established in international legal documents such as the ILO 169 Convention) are sometimes contested as it happened at the Fourth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Bratislav, 1998), where delegates from indigenous communities were excluded due to compelling opposition by the Brazilian representative.  As a result, the former had to organize as a Task Force and meet under Working Groups between Conferences.

         Upon signing and ratifying the Convention on Biological Diversity, National Governments have reasserted and sanctioned their sovereignty over biological resources, but they have also established explicit responsibilities, especially as regards standards of access to genetic resources and transfer thereof, exchange of information, scientific and technical cooperation, biotechnology management and sharing of benefits, and matched them against national and international industrial property systems currently in force.

         This may give rise to disputes owing to teleological discrepancies between one system and the other, as well as other macro-economic dissimilarities and their ensuing differences of ‘weight’ in the negotiations upon which international treaties and their protocols are based at discussion and decision-making forums such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

         Here it should be noted that the greatest concentration of species and varieties occurs in tropical and subtropical regions, where many centuries ago an intelligent, ‘sustainable’ use of natural resources started for human life. It is in those regions that today there is an expedite loss of living resources, known as ‘genetic erosion’, and where poverty is enhanced in a vicious circle.  And it is also those regions that, despite their poverty, provide and will continue to provide the active principles of many other products and processes subject to appropriation by those who develop them industrially; without there being any clear position as to the legal system which will enable them to utilize the benefits arising from such genetic resources.

Along this line, in the U.S.A., letters patent has been granted to a new active principle called Epibatidine.  This Epibatidine is a chemical substance segregated by the skin of a poisonous neotropical frog called ‘Epipedobates tricolor’ living in the rain forests of the Andean region spanning from southwestern Ecuador to northern Peru.

This species has been used since age-old times by aborigines in Ecuador whenever they went hunting with blowguns. It was John Daly, a scientist from the U.S. National Health Institute, that identified the chemical structure of this substance excreted by frogs, thanks to information on the physiological effects of such excretions supplied by indigenous and local communities. In order to isolate the active principle, a sample was illegally taken from 750 frogs, since there is no evidence as to the INEFAN (Instituto Ecuatoriano Forestal y de Areas Naturales)[1][1] having granted any management licence so that this frog might be utilized for commercial purposes (Accion Ecologica, 1998). This is a basic requirement, since this species is included in the Appendixes to the CITES (Convencion sobre el Comercio Internacional de Especies Amenazadas de Fauna y Flora Silvestre)[2][2], which Ecuador has been a party to ever since 1975. It should also be noted that since 1996 the INEFAN has prohibited the use of this species as a source of genetic resources (which includes biological prospecting activities). U.S. Letters Patent # 5468956 –granted to the U.S.A., under the agency of the National Health Institute- is currently being utilized by Abbott Laboratories, which are marketing ABT-594 (a product derived from epibatidine), featured as a painkiller being 200 times more powerful than morphine.

Therefore, it is of capital importance to structure the legal framework through which National Governments and local communities may take part in and/or exert control over such access agreements –which shall not be executed between countries, but between public and/or private national institutions and large transnational corporations- on a fair basis, and ensuring utmost safe legal protection for every party thereto. For such purpose, one must promote standardized scientific testing to determine the class (phylum) within which the compound substance may be found, as well as a clearing house mechanism to determine the habitat range for such class (phylum) in order to identify the common owners of information (Vogel, 1996).

2.2.           “...prior informed consent of the Contracting Party providing such resources” (Article 15, paragraph 5, CBD)

As per the Convention, access to genetic resources is subject to prior informed consent of the Contracting Party providing such resources, unless otherwise determined by that Party. In order to apply knowledge, innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities one must procure the consent and participation of those who are in possession of such knowledge (Article 8, paragraph j). Therefore, prior informed consent is the origin of sharing of benefits.

The need to procure prior informed consent gives those who have to grant it a chance to reach ‘mutually agreed terms’. The expression ‘mutually agreed terms’ appears in Article 15, paragraph 4; Article 16, paragraph 3; and Article 19, paragraph 2 of the CBD.  The term ‘mutual agreement’ appears in Article 18, paragraph 5, and Article 15, paragraph 4, with reference to those who request access to and determine the accurate nature of the benefits to be shared.  Furthermore, consent must be granted on a prior, informed basis, only after having clearly understood all the implications and applications inherent to such transfer of knowledge.  Therefore, one must accept and overcome the gap between cultures, which entails an understanding of and respect for the values currently in force among the peoples who provide such knowledge.  Overcoming ignorance in this respect by the world scientific, commercial, and biotechnological market will demand efforts to reconcile –and not to efface- interests and priorities; to integrate –and not to despise- moral and legal institutions which, despite being older than Roman-German traditions, have been neglected for centuries.

The all-too economic vision of our law, which almost exclusively deals with equity rights, has been surpassed within the CBD scope which grants protection to material aspects that were ignored by many laws fashioned after 19^th century ideas, where Man was placed at the centre of the whole system. This movement towards a new position makes the right to information an essential must, because it allows to exercise multiple powers which are closely related to one another, to such a degree that it is impossible to imagine any of them may be effective if the right to information is not previously secured (Weingarten, 1996).

Let’s say that infringement of this right would imply to violate other ideals or values that are essential to Man, mainly in the field of freedom and dignity. The rationale is certainly the existence of a marked unbalance, with a sci-tech predominance of the market, which becomes manifest in the legal arena and makes information become a transcendental instrument in order to minimize such unbalance and inequality in contractual relationships, placing a control tool (Weingarten, 1996) in the hands of the Contracting Party providing the relevant resources to limit the unbalancing cultural differences.

Briefly, the CBD aims at setting codes of conduct which may eliminate old colonial practices of blackmailing certain individuals, who appear to be pseudo-representatives, for misappropriation of collective resources, and preclude the CBD from becoming dead letter. The rationale of this paragraph 5 is the basis for advocating that the obligation to share benefits shall not, in the name of the Convention, be translated into speculation agreements the royalties of which, if any, would largely benefit middlemen, as well as certain senior officers and local elites. This solution shall neither allow companies –through their intermediaries- to engage in biological prospecting based on wholly unbalanced relationships to local communities nor discriminate sovereign governments that shall be held liable for regulating such agreements pursuant to the subject provision, thereby precluding that valuable collective heritage be sold for a penny.

2.3.           “...benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices shall be shared on an equitable basis” (Article 8, paragraph j, CBD).

In many communications received by Conferences of the Parties (Fourth Meeting, Bratislav, 1998) from indigenous and local communities, even though support is expressly lent to the Convention on Biological Diversity as a whole, one may notice that, as Article 8 is subject to national laws, actual effectiveness of the Convention ultimately depends on said legislation. Therefore, such communities wish that a set of standards or guidelines be formulated on national laws regarding the application of Article 8.  Laws enabling indigenous and local communities to demand their own representation at law-making bodies will give more chances to such communities to voice their interests and concerns, as well as express their views on issues at stake.

Anyway, there is a clash with legal diversity as regards private ownership notions (arising from Roman-based law systems) and collective or community ownership (typical of aboriginal peoples), which forces us to respect a quality gap whenever we wish not to trespass or destroy local practices and usages.   Some indigenous leaders have urged the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to do more research in order to understand the complexity of legal notions within the cultures of indigenous peoples.  In words of Lars Baer, a member of the Scandinavian Saami Council, “the fact that indigenous concepts, especially the notion of collective rights, may be difficult for existing legal systems to understand does not warrant the fact that governments and inter-governmental organizations, such as the WIPO, may be entitled to bypass them.”  The WIPO has not gained much experience outside the field of western intellectual property rights, and it is uncertain that it may be either willing to undertake or able to execute such hard job.

To date, WIPO plans to hold consultative meetings with “new beneficiaries” have focused on seven research missions due to be completed before the end of 1999. The purpose of such missions was “to determine and explore intellectual property needs, rights, and expectations of owners of native knowledge and innovations, in order to promote a contribution of the intellectual property system to the social, cultural, and economic development of the former.”

The first difficulty with missions (and, in fact, with the entire WIPO initiative) lies in the very purpose thereof. It is taken for granted that providers of native knowledge do have intellectual property needs, and that industrial rights –whether adapted or not- have something to offer for the development of the former. There seems to be no open road to explore the whole spectrum of incentives that are necessary to promote and protect local innovations or to challenge the appropriateness of intellectual property rights or their repercussions in such environment.

A second problem arises from the fact that it was also assumed that owners of native knowledge do have expectations on western intellectual property systems and are able to make suggestions as to how they may be improved. Intellectual property systems are an invention contrived by industrial culture. They are inspired in standards that are not rooted in the culture of many local communities. WIPO research efforts aspired to seek an answer to questions such as “How does the current intellectual property system meet the needs and expectations of the informant with respect to native knowledge?” or “How does the informant classify and distinguish the different collections (corpora) of native knowledge he/she is expecting or seeking to protect under intellectual property rights?.”  This led Ethiopian scientist Tewolde Egziabher, one of the main African negotiators within the Convention on Biological Diversity and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to make the following comment: “Demanding that ‘informants’ answer such questions is the same as asking ancient Greek athletes to express their opinions on cricket rules. Such questions are simply invalid.”

On the other hand, sharing of benefits cannot be reduced to mere economic compensation for granting access to biological resources and collective knowledge, as well as creation of monopoly rights.  All these are basic elements of inter-generation heritage. In a context of monopoly rights, it is merely impossible to share benefits.

Imposing purely commercial interests upon the access to resources and sharing of benefits seriously endangers the CBD promise to ensure respect for the rights of local communities. Many people view claiming that the same framework should serve a dual purpose –to facilitate extracting and trading of genetic resources in favour of industry, and to promote local utilization for sustainable development- as an untenable position, and they declare that this stance responds to a huge pressure exerted so that the CBD would become a supporting aid to intellectual property systems, linked to unfair international trade relations, particularly TRIP’s by the WTO.

3.      Between the CBD and TRIP’s (WTO)

The advance of globalization has turned the issue of intellectual property rights into a major concern worldwide. Until recently, the subject of intellectual property rights had been confined to the WIPO field. However, the economic significance of this topic determined the inclusion thereof in the WTO agenda arising from the last GATT Round Meeting.

The WTO Agreement on TRIP’s claims to be a top priority –on the international front- in the discussion of such topic. At the same time, transnational corporations have started to exert strong pressure on their national governments so that they use the WTO as a forum to force technologically developing countries to put TRIP’s into practice. This pressure became manifest with the passing of new patent laws in many Latin-American countries. Beyond such legislation, the teleology of TRIP’s and CBD –as noted before- is fairly diverse and it may be the source of strong conflict.

Conflicting Rights and Duties

One of the most controversial aspects of TRIP’s is the fact that it requires governments to sanction that intellectual property rights be inclusive of all technologies, inter alia, those relating to biological matter, such as animals, plants, and micro-organisms. The WTO urges (G.R.A.I.N., 1999) that such intellectual property rights be ways of strong protection, such as letters patent or any sui generis (special) “efficient” system.  If no amendments are made to national laws on issues relating to native knowledge and community rights, this could lead companies to increase their monopolies (Nature Magazine, April 1998), thereby reducing the CBD to dead letter in regard to said monopolies, transfer of technology, and equitable sharing of benefits.

         Broadly speaking, the Convention may be understood as an instrument to foster development of world emerging regions and their participation in technological advancement.  In this respect, in addition to the above-mentioned Article 15 and Article 8, one should bear in mind the provisions on access to and transfer of technology (Article 16), exchange of information (Article 17), sci-tech cooperation (Article 18), management of biotechnology and sharing of relevant benefits (Article 19, paragraphs 1 and 2), and financial resources and financial mechanism (Article 20 and Article 21).

4.        Contributing to a Starting Point    

The CBD goals are closely related to one another. In terms of present-day economic theory, the current situation may be pictured as follows: there will be no available biological resources unless they are preserved in a suitable fashion.  On the other hand, there will be few incentives to preservation and sustainable utilization if biological resources do not generate benefits –which cannot be translated into economic terms- for interested parties from local communities and the country of origin, which are the owners (or “providers”) of biological diversity, and also major custodians thereof. Once this premise is clearly established, the CBD calls for standards in order to regulate its most important aspects so that it may become operative. In such case,  “access” to biodiversity shall be based on setting guidelines on the following topics:

(1)                     Devising a framework for developing national policies which may ensure promotion, recovery, sistematizing, and strengthening of indigenous knowledge related to biodiversity, with prior informed consent of the peoples involved in such activity;

(2)                     Regulating protection and availability of biodiversity “as is”, which cannot be dealt with by any National Government on an autonomous basis, but it should be reached on a joint basis in an act of extended sovereignty performed by the political units of each “region” (this term meaning the blurred divisions imposed by Nature when it becomes manifest and develops itself), and ensuring respect for such standards by the “international community”;

(3)                     Sanctioning the legitimate capacity to dispose of such resources and information, which may be either public –whether national or provincial- or private, including native communities, if appropriate, and comprising all regions where such diversity becomes manifest, i.e., taking into account that such legitimate power shall be exercised on a regional basis; and, finally,

(4)                     Establishing ways to exercise freedom to execute agreements on biodiversity, as provided for in the CBD, and, if possible, to standardize them with national laws currently effective on such issue.

As the decision to protect biological diversity is not only an ethical but also an economic choice, most appropriate ways must be conceived so that the trade sector may take an active part therein, and invest any monies required to develop local scientific and economic capabilities. Therefore, the final outcome may be a truly joint action, a social and cultural revolution overcoming the economic and political differences which still divide human communities these days.  The Convention on Biological Diversity has paved the way, human beings must walk along such path.

FURTHER READING

Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L. Genes, pueblos y lenguas. Barcelona, 1998.

Nirinberk de Chiessa, Patricia. La administración sustentable de la biodiversidad, in Cuadernos de Bioética N°1. Buenos Aires, 1997.

Ordóñez, Alfonso M. Sinopsis. Unpublished. Mexico, 1999.

Vogel, Joseph H. Successful use of economic instruments to foster sustainable use of biodiversity: six case studies of Latin America, in Biopolicy Journal, Vol.2, Paper 5, 1997.

Weingarten, Celia. El deber de información y el consentimiento informado (a critical vision), in Ghersi, Carlos (coord.) Problemática Moderna. (Chapter II). Buenos Aires. 1996.

Publications

Sustento y Cultura, GRAIN, http://www.grain.org.1998/1999

Nature Magazine, April 1998.

NOTAS

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Última modificación: Sábado, 11 de Junio de 2005