A south-north perspective on science in the management, use, and economic development of biodiversity

Abstract

The only certain way to save tropical biodiversity is to use it sustainably. To use it requires saving it as conserved wildlands and detcnnining what is in them. Both these steps must be carried out by local human resources and a home-grown scientific and administrative system. but the development of both of these requires facilitation by the international scientific community. This facilitation requires that the international scientific community abandons its contemporary view of tropical biodiversity as largely an intellectual resoura: to be harvested by the extra-tropical academic community. Sustainable use of tropical biodiversity re· quires goal-dirccted search for intellectual and economic uses, realistic evaluation of impact by usen, recognition that the wild· land administration itself is a user, and the establishment of a mechanism by which tbe UIer community truly pays for use. Income ranges from on-site entrance and use fees to • direct payment for ofT·site environmental services to royalties derived from the direct commercialization of biodiversity information such as phytochemicals and genes. A mechanism must be found whereby these fees come to pay the management costs for lropical wildlands. A National Biodiversity Institute is a mechanism to promote and develop all of these processes in coordination with the institutional management of the conserved wildlands themselves. Examples from Costa Rica are used to illustrate aU of these problems and processes.