Is Lighter Better or Intellectual Property Rights and Biodiversity Conservation

Is Lighter Better?: Skin Tone Descrimination Among Asian Americans

Author: Joanne L Rondilla

Colorism is defined as discriminatory treatment of individuals falling within the same 'racial' group on the basis of skin color. That is, some people, particularly women, are treated better or worse on account of the color of their skin relative to other

Books about: Internet Communications using SIP or The Synchronous Trainers Survival Guide

Intellectual Property Rights and Biodiversity Conservation: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Values of Medicinal Plants

Author: Timothy M Swanson

The urgent need to ensure the conservation of biological diversity is now widely recognized, but practical measures to protect endangered species and habitats are still small-scale and generally limited to developed countries. This volume offers a detailed analysis of the economic and scientific rationales for biodiversity conservation. It discusses the justification for, and implementation of intellectual property rights regimes as incentive systems to encourage conservation. The contributions form an interdisciplinary approach encompassing fields of study such as evolutionary biology, chemistry, economics and legal studies. The arguments are presented through the case study of medicinal plant use in the pharmaceutical industry. The book will be of interest and relevance to a broad spectrum of conservationists from research students to policy makers.

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Analyzes the economic and scientific rationales for the use of a property rights-based approach to biodiversity conservation of medicinal plants used in the pharmaceutical industry, drawing on fields including evolutionary biology, chemistry, economics, and legal studies. Demonstrates the importance of biodiversity conservation in sections on plant communities; the value of plant-generated information in pharmaceuticals; institutions for regulating information from diversity; and the importance of cultural diversity in biodiversity conservation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	List of contributors
	Preface
	Acknowledgements
1	Diversity and sustainability: evolution, information and institutions	1
2	Chemical diversity in plants	19
3	Ethnobotany and the search for balance between use and conservation	45
4	The pharmaceutical discovery process	67
5	The role of plant screening and plant supply in biodiversity conservation, drug development and health care	93
6	The economic value of plant-based pharmaceuticals	127
7	The appropriation of evolution's values: an institutional analysis of intellectual property regimes and biodiversity conservation	141
8	Preserving biodiversity: the role of property rights	176
9	Medicinal plants, indigenous medicine and conservation of biodiversity in Ghana	201
10	Biodiversity and the conservation of medicinal plants: issues from the perspective of the developing world	232
	Index	254