Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Diversity and sustainability: evolution, information and institutions
- Part A Plant communities and the generation of information
- Part B The value of plant-generated information in Pharmaceuticals
- Part C The institutions for regulating information from diversity
- 7 The appropriation of evolution's values: an institutional analysis of intellectual property regimes and biodiversity conservation
- 8 Preserving biodiversity: the role of property rights
- Part D The importance of cultural diversity in biodiversity conservation
- Index
8 - Preserving biodiversity: the role of property rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Diversity and sustainability: evolution, information and institutions
- Part A Plant communities and the generation of information
- Part B The value of plant-generated information in Pharmaceuticals
- Part C The institutions for regulating information from diversity
- 7 The appropriation of evolution's values: an institutional analysis of intellectual property regimes and biodiversity conservation
- 8 Preserving biodiversity: the role of property rights
- Part D The importance of cultural diversity in biodiversity conservation
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The accelerating depletion of our natural resources can be expressed along a continuum from species to individual segments of functional genetic code. It is the potential value of the genetic material that is at the core of our attempt to preserve biodiversity: the preservation of genetic material which has, as yet, undiscovered beneficial properties.
Increasingly it has been recognised within the environmental community that one necessary approach to encouraging nations to preserve their natural genetic resources, particularly among the developing nations, is through the provision of economic incentives. This viewpoint has been most forcefully expressed by Wilson:
The only way to make a conservation ethic work is to ground it in ultimately selfish reasoning … An essential component of this formula is the principle that people will conserve land and species fiercely if they foresee a material gain for themselves, their kin and their tribe.
(Wilson, 1984)One such manifestation of this approach is the concept of ‘debt swaps’, where creditor nations agree to reduce the debt burden on developing countries in return for the implementation of environmental policies. Another obvious possibility has been the area of ‘property’ rights, especially intellectual property rights.
In terms of a general legal definition, an item of ‘property’ is simply something in which an individual or legal entity can assert rights against others.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Intellectual Property Rights and Biodiversity ConservationAn Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Values of Medicinal Plants, pp. 176 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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