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Hinweise auf Veranstaltungen, Symposien, Vorträge |
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Biotechnology and Biodiversity
George T.Tzotzos |
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| | | Genetic resources form the basis for commodities, consumer goods and innovative products in numerous major industries around the globe. The term "genetic resources" (also known as "natural products") describes a category of biodiversity encompassing the diversity of genetic information and naturally occurring chemicals found in species. |
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Biological wealth |
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The contribution of genetic resources to the global economy ranges from the use of genes in modern agriculture to enzymes used in industrial manufacturing, and from organic molecules used to design new pharmaceutical drugs to extracts of medicinal plants used to prepare herbal products.
Despite the enormous biological wealth of species and varieties found in developing countries, and the wealth of traditional knowledge regarding their use, few have been able, historically, to realize benefits from the commercialisation of these resources. This minimizes incentives for resource and knowledge conservation.
Faced with difficult choices regarding land use, few resource managers, whether national decision makers or heads of rural households, find it easy to justify biodiversity conservation over competing extractive uses such as commercial logging or agricultural conversion. The result has been an ever- increasing rate of biodiversity erosion.
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Potentials of new technologies |
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New technologies and in particular biotechnology have the potential to both add-value to hitherto untapped biological resources, thus offering incentives for conservation, and to reduce pressure on threatened species through highly efficient breading programmes. However, this potential will remain unrealised for as long as the legal and intellectual property frameworks that govern access and utilisation of genetic resources remain controversial.
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