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Bioprospection : from economics of contracts to reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Centre for Philosophy of Law
www.cpdr.ucl.ac.be
Research funded through
Belgian Federal Government (IAPV)
European Union (FP5-IHP-KA1-2001-1)
National Foundation for Scientific Research,
Belgium (FNRS)
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Theme
Economic tools for biodiversity conservation
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Context
From the definition of an ethics of sustainable development to the Rio Convention 1992
Ronald Engel, Ethics Working Group, IUCN, 1986
5 criteria of an ethics of sustainable development :
Integration of conservation and development ;
satisfaction of basic human needs ;
achievement of equity and social justice ;
provision for self-determination and cultural diversity ;
maintenance of ecological integrity
Rio Convention 1992
The objectives of the convention :
The conservation of biological diversity
The sustainable use of its components
The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out the utilisation of genetic resources
including appropriate access to genetic resources.
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
The economic basis of the sustainable use idea : environmental
services provided by biodiversity (Source : Robert Barbault, 2003)
Biodiversity and medecine
80 % of the population of the planet regularly has recourse to traditional medicine based on
plants (WHO)
40 % of the used medicaments have as their active component a natural substance, which is
extracted in 75 % of the cases of a plant
1 / 125 of the studied natural plants give rise to a major medical substance, only 1 / 10000 in
the case of tested synthetic molecules through random screening
Problems
Potential profits are significantly lower with natural products than with synthetically made
products, because natural products can’t be patented ; as a result pharmaceutical companies
continue to rely massively on random screening
If we suppose that 1 species of tree currently disappears a day, the one can evaluate the loss
of medical plants at 3 or 4 a year, which is a potential loss of a market of 600 million dollar a
year
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Other
timber, tourism, water purification
The issue at stake
How to define access and use of these environmental services in order to promote an ethics of
sustainable development ?
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Bio-prospection as an example of sustainable use of biodiversity
1.
The market and contractual approach to Bio-prospection
1.1. Regulation through Access and Benefit Sharing Agreements
Definition : “Access and Benefit-Sharing Agreements” are bilateral contractual arrangements between
ecologically-rich states or communities and private corporations and are based on the principles
of “prior informed consent” and “equitable sharing of the benefits”
Example : Merck-InBio / ICBG
1.2. Problems ; incompleteness of the contracts
Uncertainty of the benefits
Definition of property rights controversial
Controversy on the level of scientific assessment of biodiversity
So : low confidence, opportunistic behaviour
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
2.
Propositions for amelioration from new-institutional and evolutionary economics
2. 1. Reducing opportunistic behaviour through an appropriate institutional environment
(Oliver Williamson, Douglas North)
Governance Structures
Incentive Intensity
Governance attributes
Administrative Control
Contract Law Regime
(Direct incentives)
(Indirect incentives)
(Indirect incentives)
Spot Market
Hybrid
++
+
0
+
++
+
Hierarchy
0
++
0
Example of Merck-InBIO (Costa Rica)
and
(-) low direct financial incentives
(-) high transaction costs establishing the InBIO research agency
(+) helps building dynamics of confidence and reputation, within a nexus of agreements : bioprospecting, dept-for nature swaps, reform of park agency in conformity with UNESCO’s man
biosphere program
(+) centralisation of information (InBIO), which facilitates definition of the contractual relation
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
2. 2. Taking into account a plurality of action logics
Bioprospecting contracts (market dynamics)
Learning
in the
institutional
environment
Plurality of social dynamics :
Cooperative behavior : Genetic Recognition Fund, Seed exchange between farmers
Public policies : agricultural research institutions, etc.
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
3.
Evaluation of its contribution to sustainable development
The missing link
Connecting the decision mechanism of the economic and political actors and the evaluation of the
contribution of the bio-prospection practices to sustainable development
Connection evaluation mechanisms to the double improvement proposed by economics
a.
On the level of learning
Functionalist learning : evolution to a common representation between the different interest groups
Reflexive learning : reconstruction of one’s own
representations in a public space where collective
identities can emerge
e.g. social policy program IUCN 1992-1998
Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
b.
On the level of the selection processes
Selection process : translation of issues of sustainable development in terms of current social logics
(economic, scientific, etc.)
Selection of the selected issues: normative ambitions of
indicator studies, stake of future generations in the
valuation of biodiversity
e.g. threshold studies for irreversible damage
to ecosystems