Bioprospection

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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)
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Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Theme   Economic tools for biodiversity
conservation  
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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

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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 cant 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

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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 ?

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Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Bio-prospection as an example of sustainable use
of biodiversity

• The market and contractual approach to
  Bio-prospection
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• 1.1. Regulation through Access and Benefit
  Sharing Agreements
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• 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

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Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere

• Propositions for amelioration from
  new-institutional and evolutionary economics
• 2. 1. Reducing opportunistic behaviour
  through an appropriate institutional environment
• (Oliver Williamson, Douglas North)

Governance attributes
Incentive Intensity
Administrative Control
Contract Law Regime
Governance Structures
(Direct incentives)
(Indirect incentives)
(Indirect incentives)
Spot Market

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Hybrid



Hierarchy
0

0

• Example of Merck-InBIO (Costa Rica)
•  
• (-) low direct financial incentives
• (-) high transaction costs establishing
  the InBIO research agency
• () helps building dynamics of confidence
  and reputation, within a nexus of agreements
  bio- prospecting, dept-for nature swaps, reform
  of park agency in conformity with UNESCOs man
  and biosphere program
• () centralisation of information
  (InBIO), which facilitates definition of the
  contractual relation

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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.

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Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere

• 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
•  
• On the level of learning
•  
• Functionalist learning evolution to a common
  representation between the different interest
  groups

Reflexive learning reconstruction of ones own
representations in a public space where
collective identities can emerge e.g. social
policy program IUCN 1992-1998
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Bioprospection and reflexive governance
Tom Dedeurwaerdere

• On the level of the selection processes
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• 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