Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Dean, Erin

Keywords

Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property Rights, Ethnobotany

Area of Concentration

Environmental Studies

Abstract

Bioprospecting is the transfer of plants, animals, and microbes and traditional knowledge about these organisms from biodiversity-rich nations to developed nations in exchange for compensation in the form of contracts promising benefits sharing, intellectual property rights, or development projects. This process, meant to transform what has historically been a one-way extraction of resources into a multidirectional flow of benefits, has been posited as a way to give local or indigenous peoples living in biologically-diverse regions compensation for the conservation of their resources. However, this market-mediated strategy, promising methods of participation and inclusion, inevitably sets up relationships of exclusion and exploitation as it relies on vague definitions of what knowledge and which communities should receive benefits and to what ends. This thesis explores the process of bioprospecting with an emphasis on the ways bioprospecting projects define "knowledge" and "community," focusing on two case studies of the International Co-operative Biodiversity Groups program in Mexico and Peru.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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