[...]... biodiversity in its sector, and then to hand over the story to the next in line We hope that the story it tells is just as concrete as the diaryman's dilemma related above, but far more general and sited more in the developing world We also hope that it will aid in defusing and clarifying the hotly debated issue of intellectual property rights and biodiversity conservation Timothy Swanson Faculty of... Economics University of Cambridge Acknowledgements This book is the result of a project on intellectual property rights and biodiversity conservation sponsored by the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, directed by Professors David Pearce and Kerry Turner The ESRC's sponsorship of the centre and the project are gratefully acknowledged The editor would like to acknowledge his... (intellectual and natural), and the friction between the usefulness of this diversity and the need for uniformity in processing and analysing the new information Finally, we turn to the institutional systems used by human societies to regulate the production of information and ask why the system is not operated more inclusively as 'informational property rights' , rather than the more restrictive 'intellectual. .. plant communities, pharmaceutical production, intellectual property rights and biodiversity conservation, each from the perspective of his or her ownfieldof specialisation (botany, ethnobotany, chemistry, economics, law and policy) Part A presents the botanical and ethnobotanical basis for the informational value within plant communities The chapter by Fellows and Scofield starts by elaborating on the... into decline and the general values that require protection He then further analyses the nature of the institution required to channel these values into diversity conservation The institution known as intellectual property rights is generalised to fit the range of assets capable of generating information (in addition to human intellect), and it is re-termed a system of informational property rights The... uniformity and against diversity As should be clear by this point, there are diverse sources of useful information in the world: natural and intellectual All of these sources of information are demonstrably useful but the international system of regulation recognises only the latter This is indicated by the fact that the property rights in information are known as 'intellectual' rather than 'informational' Intellectual. .. between the diversity and distribution of secondary compounds and the specificity of the interaction between insects and their host plants Ehrlich and Raven (1964), examining the close structural and chemical links evident in the relation between insects and plants, proposed the term 'coevolution', suggesting reciprocal genetic changes maintaining a close relation between insects and host plants as both... anaesthesia) are used without any understanding of the mechanism by which they operate Western-style scientific method in this area has been standardised only Evolution, information and institutions 11 recently and not completely This indicates that science has been willing to recognise the value of useful but non-standard information The problem is that in areas where standards have been developed, there... creates incentives for the accumulation of useful knowledge is known as the 'intellectual property rights system' This system rewards those people who create useful information by giving exclusive rights to the marketing of certain goods or services which incorporate it (see Swanson, this volume) These exclusive property rights are awarded by national governments to the first applicant to demonstrate... cultures and diverse resources This is the conclusion to this work: diversity conservation at the biological level requires increased respect for the values of diversity at the scientific and institutional levels as well It is only when human society comes to recognise the importance of a balance of both the local and the global that diversity conservation can occur Part A Plant communities and the . INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION