SUBJECT: Potential and risks associated with biotic resources
AUTHOR: Andreas Troumbis (E-Conference chair)
DATE: 31st March 2003

KEYWORDS: Biotic resources, utility, economic value, biodiversity loss.

SUMMARY: Progress in biodiversity and global change science in the last decade has offered significant conceptual evolution in our understanding of major biospheric processes, their dependency and influence upon the various components of the living world and their importance for the welfare and security of human populations.

Species and their physiological processes, e.g. biomass production or biochemical processes, have always been considered as a material basis and a renewable capital for the primary production sector (e.g. agriculture, forestry or fisheries). To some extent this was also the case for genes, nature or ‘environment’ sensu lato, that were also perceived as capital for a variety of production sectors such as pharmaceuticals and tourism. In the 1990s, the tremendous ‘mutations’ in ecological theory with the emergence of the biodiversity concept, in bio-technological capabilities and in the perceptions and choices of consumers becoming progressively more environmentally aware and friendly, have led to a recognition of biodiversity components as usable entities from a utilitarian point of view, i.e. as resources.

Thus, biotic resources acquire a clearly distinct identity from natural resources (e.g. water or fiber) perceived as abiotic, for two main reasons:
- The functional role of biodiversity, that is the way ecosystem-level functions and processes are mediated by interacting organisms, i.e. genotypes sequentially organised into diverse ecological entities, has been directly associated to goods and services for humans. For example, trees are not only constituents of a forest committed to industrial use, but also mediators of C fixation and sequestration, refuges for wildlife and components of landscapes.
- Biodiversity has a built-in genetic capital, resulting from an irreplaceable evolutionary history, of biological solutions to the problems set by environmental pressures upon organisms.

If biodiversity components are identified as resources, then there is an obvious scientific need to develop methods:
- To identify their utility for various uses; utility screening protocols based on traditional local knowledge and modern techniques per production sector should be developed to catalog potential uses.
- To value them both in terms of direct economic value as food, source of medical substances and pharmaceuticals, potential agents for crop improvement or biological control, and of indirect and dynamic mediators of ecosystem services, such as primary and secondary production, regulation of climate, maintenance of atmosphere quality, regulation of hydrological cycle, maintenance of water quality, maintenance of soil fertility, etc.

Although remarkable inputs are recorded in the above mentioned scientific fields, i.e. there is a flourishing literature in ethnobiology or ethnopharmacology and environmental or ecological economics, this conceptual evolution does not yet significantly influence large-scale production practices. In agriculture, for instance, mass food production is based upon roughly one hundred species, less than a tenth of which cover over 80% of the global nutritional needs. Furthermore, local natural varieties or races of agricultural species, well adapted to local environmental conditions, are continuously abandoned in favor of more productive selected ‘hybrids’, the biophysical limits of which are pushed over via high-input agronomic practices.

Since biodiversity is eroded with an alarming pace globally, we are not only losing species, but also the known and unknown resources associated with them. Therefore, besides the well-known arguments for biodiversity conservation within a global change discourse, additional arguments emerge from the loss of biotic resources and their secondary effects for the human communities:
- Opportunities lost for local development, based on the ‘exploitation’ of these resources that are better adapted to local conditions and/or carry the benefit of local identity for products or services.
- Narrowing the domain of application of ecological engineering solutions for environmental problems, that constitutes low-cost alternatives to large technological substitution of natural ecosystem processes.
- Increase of risks associated with the fragility of production systems based on less bio-diverse resource basis.

The questions that we hope to consider in this electronic conference are:
1. What main biotic resources do we need to consider, and how do we synthesize our knowledge to better understand the risks associated with our dependency on biodiversity?
2. How can science benefit from or contribute to local knowledge, ethnobiology and local culture, and how can biodiversity science contribute to technological approaches, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), fair and equitable access and benefit sharing?
3. How can we integrate our knowledge into new technologies, innovative plans for local development and biodiversity conservation?

In this first session of the e-conference, we encourage you to send contributions addressing what main biotic resources we need to consider, and how best to synthesize our knowledge to understand the risks associated with our dependency on biodiversity.


A contribution by:

Andreas Troumbis (E-Conference chair)
Biodiversity Conservation Laboratory
University of the Aegean