Biodiversity and Global Governance

In the complex set of forms representing life, the genetic resources of the crop plants are particularly interesting, because of their strategic role in the global food but as well because of the dominating economic stake the rise of biotechnologies conferred to it. The vegetable genetic resources thus became an object of negotiation and control for very varied actors: rural communities, States, agricultural trade unions, non-governmental organizations, seed companies and those of biotechnologies.
A vast process of privatization of lifeforms is today under way, and it tends to erode peasants control on the seeds. However, the autonomy of peasants management of the genetic resources is a major element for the food sovereignty of rural populations and for the maintenance of biodiversity and cultural diversity.
First food chain link, the seed constitutes a central point of the economic and political autonomy of the farmers. The production of farm seeds relates to million farmers. However, in the system of production of industrial agriculture and “moleculture”, the genetic resources have a very different statute, and they are the object of numerous policies of access and control that only the study of the conflicts of interest makes it possible to identify clearly.
This first attempt (an outline which requires to be refined, supplemented, specified) of analysis of these levels of governance is structured around four major stakes:
1. access rules to the genetic resources
2. conservation policies of agricultural diversity
3. the legal protection of vegetable innovation
4. the privatization of life