"Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Development in Latin America"¹

by

Fernando Avila-Pires

 

A few decades ago, biology courses usually began with an overview of “the diversity of life forms”. From protozoan to mammals and from single-cell bacteria to flowering plants, a variety of examples of shapes and forms were described to highlight the diversity of species, or the biodiversity of life upon the Earth. Late in the 20th century, genetic diversity was incorporated into the concept of biodiversity.

At the UNESCO Conférence Intergouvernementale d’experts sur les bases scientifiques de l’utilization rationelle et de la conservation des ressources de la biosphère (Paris, 1968), the main concepts that would be later adopted at the Rio Conference of 1992, were established. Among the basic assumptions, it stated that L’une des characteristiques marquantes de la biosphère est la diversité extrême des organismes vivants qu’elle enferme, diversité qui est elle-même l’aboutissement d’une longue évolution […]. L’interation des organismes vivants entre eux et avec l’environnement est un phénomène que l’on rétrouve constamment aussi bien au niveau de la population qu’au niveau de la biosphère.

In 1973, when a global interest in the ecology of conservation and its implication in economic development arose, Dasman et al used almost the same words as the opening article in the UNESCO Conference, when he wrote that A particular feature of the humid tropics is the enormous diversity of life. […] The complexity of interactions between soil, climate and the great numbers of plant and animal species, contributes to the stability of the forest ecosystem under natural conditions.

Modern conservationist legislation in Latin America was the object of a former article (Avila-Pires, 2005), and here we will be concerned with the case of Brazil, where genetic resources, bioprospection and pharmacology of natural products are the object of specific legislation.

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 in its Article 225 § 1º establishes the competence of the government to preserve the diversity and integrity of the country’s genetic patrimony and supervise all activities related to, and institutions involved in, research and manipulation of genetic resources.

One of the results of the Rio Conference was the Convention on Biological Diversity approved on June 5, 1992, which stated in its Preamble the preoccupation with …the intrinsic value of biological diversity and of the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components. In Brazil it was the refer ended by Decree nº 2 of 1994. Four years later a law disciplined the access to genetic resources and established a special Commission for Genetic Resources with the power to propose, coordinate, and implement the national policies and to supervise, control, and evaluate the activities and access to genetic resources.

At the time, discussions involving genetic engineering, cloning, and the use of trunk cells led the government to issue Provisional Decrees where widely different subjects and issues were treated as related themes. They led to the establishment of the Council for the Management of the Genetic Resources (Conselho de Gestão do Patrimônio Genético), which had its powers regulated by Decree 3495 of September 28, 2001. Since that date. A succession of Provisional Decrees intended to regulate the access and utilization of biodiversity erected a bureaucratic barrier and confuse and conflicting regulatory measures that brought great difficulties to the routine activities of zoologists, botanists, and anthropologists, who were forbidden to send back specimens borrowed from foreign natural history museums, including type species, to collect specimens in the field, and to exchange scientific materials. Biochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology were regulated as bioprospection and wait for a definite coherent legislation. (Cancan, 2005)

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1 International Conference on Indigenous knowledge systems in Africa and their relevance for sustainable development. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 21-23 November, 2005.