Zugang zu Pflanzengenetischen Ressourcen für die ... - Genres

J. VON BRAUN UND D. VIRCHOW
biologischer Vielfalt fortzusetzen und zu forcieren. Die Reduzierung dieser Anstrengungen
zugunsten ökologischer Ziele, z.B. Förderung der biologischen Vielfalt, wäre ethisch ungerechtfertigt,
unrealistisch und ökonomisch kurzsichtig. Armutsreduzierung (mit verbessertem Bildungsstandard)
wird die Pflege der biologischen Vielfalt erleichtern.
Summary
1) The conditions of the access to and the use of genetic resources in agriculture and nutrition
comes more and more an important topic, because
– new technological processes (biotechnology) increase the demand for genetic resources
– a reduced biological diversity and the recognition of its value leads to the realization of risks
and scarcities, and
– the world is continously challenged by the fact that in the next decades the world population
growing in absolute numbers has to be fed from non-growing agricultural resources with the
help of sustainable new technologies.
2) Because of the increasing scarcity in the supply and demand of genetic resources, they change
from a public commodity to commodities that will have direct or indirect costs. Today, a market
is only in the state of development, and will need a long period of time to come into being, in the
course of this showing institutional frictions. On the institutional level, it is necessary to create
efficiently working international markets for genetic resources in agriculture and nutrition.
3) In spite of their importance, it is difficult to determine the overall economic value of genetic
resources, especially in view of evaluation problems over the time span of several generation.
Economic approaches have to concentrate today on the political basis for market creation and
regulations for the access to and the use of genetic resources for agriculture. The apparatus discussed
at the moment for the preservation and the use of genetic resources as part of the biological
diversity, will be developed anyway from current circumstances and leaves aside political and
economic plans. The question of the efficiency of the instruments used will have to be put in the
forefront of the discussion on the realization of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The
emphasis of the economic approaches is on the overcoming of failures of the market, institutions
and politics as well as the selection of adequate incentives in relation with legal and administrative
regulations for the promotion of sustainable use of biological diversity and specifically the genetic
resources.
4) The conservation of biological diversity of agricultural crops by ex-situ and in-situ conservation
is difficult to evaluate, but examples of their direct usefullness seems to justify them
economically. At the same time, their usefullness is increasing because of the progress in bio- and
genetechnologies and the economic possibilities developed from them, which also justifies the
rising costs for the maintenance of genetic resources.