The Convention on Biological Diversity: An Institutionalist Perspective of the Debates

Biodiversity came out as a global issue from the mid 1980s, under the pressure of converging forces: the threatening increase in species extinction and the changes in the theory as well as in the practice of nature conservation, but also the expansion of genetic engineering and the intrusion of industrial interests into areas from which they had been hitherto excluded. These elements have participated in the development of utilitarian perceptions of nature, reduced to a set of resources thanks to new technologies that have made its extensive economic exploitation possible. The Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in 1992 during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is in line with this approach (UNEP 1992). Indeed, the Convention rests on the notion of sustainable use of biological resources (first article), that is, an exploitation that meets the criteria of efficiency and equity and is meant to finance conservation but also to foster development in countries of the South and to benefit pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. The Convention presents the definition of adequate property rights to biological resources and related knowledge as an essential prerequisite for the institution of the sustainable use—hence of the conservation—of biodiversity. This analysis comes to adhere implicitly to the conventional view of biodiversity erosion as a consequence of the appropriation failure that prevailed prior to the adoption of the Convention. Transnational corporations then had free access to indigenous resources—including knowledge—and after screening they could patent parts of these resources or their applications, depriving their former holders of their traditional use rights, as attested by the examples of neem in India or yellow bean in Mexico, both patented by American