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THE ROLE OF BIODIVERSITY SCIENTISTS IN A TROUBLED WORLD

ARTURO GMEZ-POMPA (BioScience, 2004 / Vol.54 No.3)

Aluno: Daniel Filho

The author of this article, Arturo Gomez-Pompa (2004), is an ethynobotanic scientistwhich has dedicated this article to review new ways of understanding the relationship

between society, research and biodiversity issues. Gomez is engaged in two mainprojects, the study of the ecological history and biodiversity of the lowland Maya regionand the development of an educational CD-ROM project on ethnobotanical research.

The author has discussed many different points of view on biodiversity issues and theimportance of keeping natural resources knowledge and research field as a two closerelated themes. It was pointed out that, the future of our biosphere depends on

practicing good scientific research, educating new generations of scientists and a goodcommunication between researchers and local communities.

Although scientists aim to clarify and discover new plant species and medicines, bioticresources are under all kinds of old and new threats. From long time ago, scientists allover the world struggle for doing research on biodiversity and ethnobotany, however,there are many barriers like governmental and private initiative which are in favor ofdeforestation and uncontrolled progress. These problems are difficult to face and thetruth is that we scientists need to protect these resources where great majority of newmedicine are yet to be discovered. Then arises the need to convince the general public

and governments of the need to preserve the biological resources.

The author has also, tried to describe many problems involved in the access tobiological resources and the difficulty in finding a solution. In one hand, there are manyobstacles like local people accusing scientists of biopiracy, NGOs questioning

biodiversity projects, pharmaceutical companies searching for new medicines from thewild, legislators restricting research, scientists who ignore the laws of their countries,

projects that ignore indigenous rights and companies that irresponsibly destroy theenvironment in poor communities in the countries where they do business.

On the other hand, looking for new medicines, foods, biocides and genes from ourworlds biodiversity is nothing wrong. Instead, the quality of our life would improve

better if researchers have good partners, behave ethically when working in othercountries, practice good scientific research, educating new generations of scientists, findways to work with, recognize, and compensate indigenous societies.

To sum up, ethnobotany may help clarify the tropical biodiversity and contribute todiscover the importance of social and environmental research in a time where there aremany conflicts of interests in the society.