La bioprospección en Brasil y México, ¿un nuevo Dorado?: entre la inestabilidad de las prácticas y la permanencia de las representaciones

Because of their exceptional biodiversity, Brazil and Mexico seemed to be the ideal candidates for the valorization of their genetic resources, as promoted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). But almost twenty years after the Rio Conference, the actual results of this valorization are disappointing. It can be explained either by the slowness in adopting domestic laws translating the CBD or by the difficulties in controlling and regulating very complex and unstable practices and objects. This leads to put into question the pertinence of the CDB framework, along with its categories and mechanisms. In spite of the relative obsolescence of this framework and the emergence of new environmental issues, which appear as more important, the question of the access to genetic resources and their exploitation through contracts of bioprospection is still being debated because of the various symbolic issues at stake, such as national sovereignty and the defense of biological and cultural diversity.