Nature and Human Society The Quest for a Sustainable World (1997) / Chapter Skim
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6 Infrastructure for Sustaining Biodiversity-Science
6 Infrastructure for Sustaining Biodiversity-Science
Pages 335-410
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From page 337... ...
Brown, 1995 THE TRANSITION FROM EMPTY TO FULL THAT GRIM PROSPECT from Lester Brown summarizes lucidly the course of the current civilization in the eyes of pragmatic ecologists who deal daily with the dependence of the human undertaking on the long~sustained biotic functions of the earth. It has little to do with "biotic diversity" and much to do with the ero' sion of the capacity of the biotic systems of the earth to continue to support a vigorous, successful, and continuing civilization.
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From page 338... ...
The question is biophysical first and only secondarily economic and po' litical, but success in the evolution of all three realms is essential. Science in general and ecology in particular have responsibility in joining in the definition of human rights in this new world rights to clean air, clean water, food that is free of poison, a wholesome habitat that is not drifting into biotic impoverishment, and a world that is not itself being steadily impoverished biotically.
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From page 339... ...
A rapid warming has the potential for speeding the destruction of forests and accelerating the warming (Houghton and others 1998; Woodwell 1995; Woodwell and others 1998~. The two processes are also open-ended, actively developing, directly threatening to human welfare, and, at the moment, not ad' dressed effectively by any government or society despite various agreements to act.
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From page 340... ...
THE STARTING POINT FOR A WORLD THAT WORKS The causes of biotic impoverishment include virtually any chronic disturbance, from mechanical and physical to chemical and biotic (Woodwell 1990~. The effects are similar in all instances.
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From page 341... ...
The gradient was spectacular and obvious, although there was no basis in earlier studies for the assumption that chronic exposure to ionizing radiation would produce anything approaching a systematic community-level response. The results, however, were startling in their similarity to familiar gradients of structure in vegetation produced by gradients of stress elsewhere, including chronic disturbance.
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From page 342... ...
. sorting conspicuous In thinning of tree canopy Severe chronic First sorting is severe with loss of tree canopy, forest is treeless savanna with high shrubs surviving, patches reduced to low shrubs and ground cover; signs of second sorting as succession of hardy, small-bodied, rapid reproducers among plants and animals proceeds Long-continued Landscape conspicuously severe chronic dysfunctional: Haiti, Madagascar; no forests; no ground cover over much of land; erosion conspicuous chemical changes in environment; evapotranspiration affected; light reaches ground cover; warming of soil; photosynthesis and respiration affected; primary productivity reduced Energy budget clearly shifted to ground surface heating, evapotranspiration affected to point where groundwater increased; runoff increased; nutrient budgets affected and water quality declines with increases in nitrogen, organic matter, and silt Runoff is immediate through gullies and new channels; rivers filled with sediment; water flows massive, sudden.
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From page 343... ...
The effect was the substantial de' struction of the forests in both places, well within the range of stage IIIA, the savanna stage, in our scale, probably reaching IIIA3, the herb stage of treeless savanna, in extensive areas. Coastal marine waters are subject to similar impoverishment, although the changes are less conspicuous.
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From page 344... ...
How much forest does it take to defend the public's interests in a stable and wholesome landscape, in a stable global carbon budget, in water flows that support the diversity of resources that have evolved over time in each region, and in water quality that is also consistent with stability of the landscape? Such questions challenge virtually all conventional approaches to the environment and to economics and government, but they are scientific and technical issues first and political and economic issues only secondarily.
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From page 345... ...
1997. The agricultural link: how environmental deterioration could disrupt economic progress.
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From page 346... ...
. The earth in transition: patterns and processes of biotic impoverishment.
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From page 347... ...
, which identified possible subjects for study and was adopted as the framework of an international program of biodiversity science, named DIVERSITAS in 1992. The World Conservation Union (IUCN)
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From page 348... ...
The current financial mechanism for implementing the Convention is the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
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From page 349... ...
GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENT The first major global scientific project in support of the Convention was the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) (Heywood 1995~.
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From page 350... ...
These are all interlinked and related to a ~ IUBS SCOPE UNESCO ICSU IGBP-GCTE IUMS ~ D I V E R S I TA S AN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME OF BIODIVERSITY SCIENCE Origins, Maintenance + - & ~ Change of Biodiversity \ In o . _ a' E { ~ Systematics Effect of Biodiversity Classification Ecosystem Fur~tioning 3 Monitoring of Biodiversity 4 Soil & Sediment 1 O Biodiversity is 1 Conservation Restoration & Sustainable use of Biodiversity Marine ~ ~Microbial ~ ~ Freshwater Biodiversity Biodiversity Biodiversity 6 7 8 9 FIGURE 1 The Core programs (numbered 1-5)
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From page 351... ...
The importance of this subject has been confirmed by the development by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of a global plan of action for plant genetic resources (FAO 1996~.
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From page 352... ...
352 / NATURE AND HUMAN SOCIETY On-line access / international USER community on WWW site SPECIES 2000 CAP __ \ CD-ROM output CAP Common Access Framework (provides a uniform standard format to find and access distributed master species databases) | NET | · centrala cess | TIAT l Name · quality mark Taxonomic Finder · standardization Information Tool ·: clearinghouse Access mechanisms Too!
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From page 353... ...
, which considered the Darwin Declaration drawn up by representatives of various systematic institutions and organizations in Darwin, Australia, in February 1998. DIVERSITAS, in conjunction with Environment Australia and the GEE, then met at the Linnean Society in London in September 1998 to consider how to develop this initiative (Australian Biological Resources Study 1998~.
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From page 355... ...
Pleading does not work with funding agencies, especially if we seem to ask for funds to do what we have always done and enjoy doing. Agendas must mesh, as they did with the GBA, and do with BioNET-INTERNATIONAL and the Global Taxonomy Initiative.
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From page 356... ...
1996. A global plan of action for plant genetic resources.
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From page 357... ...
Nairobi Kenya: UNEP. WRI, IUCN, UNEP [World Resources Institute, The World Conservation Union, UN Environment Programme]
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From page 358... ...
In the last 2 decades, the current Kew Seed Bank has undertaken collaborative collecting expeditions in over 20 countries, and collecting activity has increased substan' tially over the last few years. These efforts have made the Kew Seed Bank the largest and most diverse bank that is devoted to wild plants and is run according to internationally approved standards.
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From page 359... ...
The MSB will continue to focus on wild species rather than crop species, many of which have their own seed banks or germplasm collections. The MSB project has been presented to and discussed with representatives of national and international organizations involved in plant genetic-resources conservation, including FAO, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, the World Conservation Union, the United Nations Environment Program (including the Secretariat to the Convention on Biological
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From page 360... ...
All such meetings have confirmed not only that a largescale seed-conservation project is necessary and would not duplicate any existing activity but also, inasmuch as Kew is a world leader in seed-banking for wild plants, that it is ideally placed to be the focus for such a major conservation effort. THE AIMS OF THE MILLENNIUM SEED BANK The MSB project will establish an international center of excellence for seed conservation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wakehurst Place.
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From page 361... ...
By May 1999, seeds from 71% of the species that are native to the UK have been collected and booked. THE ARID-LAND SEED-CONSERVATION PROGRAM Since the early 1980s, the focus of the Kew Seed Bank has been on tropical drylands.
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From page 362... ...
and therefore be suitable for long-term conservation in seed banks. Prospective countries have been identified for partnership on the basis of several factors: existing successful collaboration; ease of access; extent of arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid land (Goodin and Northington 1985~; number of endemic plant species (WCMC 1992~; and the floristic regions in which they occur (Taktahjan 1986~.
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From page 363... ...
For the last few years, the collectors for the current Kew Seed Bank have given special interest to 30 plant families selected on the basis of an analysis of species represented in Kew's SEPASAL database (table 2~. This list of target families is now being reviewed and revised to include coverage of globally threatened species and endemics, with input from the World Conservation Monitoring Center and partner institutes in collaborating countries, such as the National Museums of Kenya, and adequate representation of "higherlevel" (order and above)
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From page 364... ...
families that have the ereatest nart of their bioloeical ~_ diversity adapted to arid and semiarid lands and that are also of greatest human utility. The rankings were calculated in the following way for each family: No.
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From page 365... ...
, but that is more appropriate after successful initial trials or research. The sampling strategy for each population will be that practiced for over 20 years by the Kew Seed Bank and is similar to that recently reiterated by Brown and Marshall (1995~; key factors will be to sample randomly and evenly within a population and from sufficient individuals (at least 50 where the size of the population permits)
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From page 366... ...
Subsamples will be rechecked for germination initially every 10 years, as in the current Kew Seed Bank, but retest intervals are expected to be modified for dif' ferent collections in the light of results from the seed research program of the MSB project. It is expected that 22 processing staff will be based in the collabo' rating countries and a further 22 in the UK.
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From page 367... ...
Similar enthusiasm for involvement with the MSB has been shown by representatives of the Boyce Thompson Southern Arboretum, the Desert Botanical Garden, and the University of Arizona Desert Legume Program. A meeting with the staff of the US Department of Agriculture's National Seed Storage Laboratory at Fort Collins to discuss collaboration with the MSB took place in August 1997 to coincide with a conference on plant genetic resources.
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From page 368... ...
and retest data from the Kew Seed Bank support that contention. However, although all collections made will be moved from the field to Wakehurst Place as quickly as possible, at least two aspects of their physiology might change before their arrival: desiccation tolerance and potential longevity (Hay and Probert 1995; Smith 1995~.
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From page 369... ...
Although studies, principally at the Kew Seed Bank, have resulted in the development of germination algorithms for many families, it is still estimated that a substantial number of previously untested species in a broad range of families will require further research to allow efficient germination. Families that do not respond to normal germination algorithms, such as Compositae (Linington and others 1996)
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From page 370... ...
In addition, long~term storage of nonorthodox seeds under nonconventional tem' peratures for seed~banking, including cryopreservation, is suggested. Seed-Information Database The computerization of records for the seed bank collections was started in 1981 and now includes information on nearly 11,000 accessions.
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From page 371... ...
. That seeds will be stored in both the MSB at Kew and seed banks of many collaborating countries must not detract from the need to maximize the efforts of in situ conservation, which allows species to continue to interact with their environment and allows the process of evolution to continue.
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From page 372... ...
Rome: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. Jackson M, Ford-Lloyd BV, Parry ML, editors.
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From page 373... ...
1996. Practical management of the Kew Seed Bank for the conservation of arid land and UK wild species.
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From page 374... ...
At the other extreme, the optimists among us might claim that, given a politic cat imperative to use our biological resources sustainably, we already have a suffi' ciently large body of knowledge, and if only it were made available to the world's nations, resource management could become much more efficient and cost~effec' tive and move us far in the direction of sustainability. Contributing to the pessimists' view is the fact that the world community, sometimes including scientists who study biodiversity, often fails to recognize how much knowledge it will require to manage the biosphere to the point where it can pro' 374
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From page 375... ...
Around the world, people use tens of thousands of species to meet their daily needs. If these uses are to be managed in a sustainable manner, much more biological information will be re' quired than the scientific community can deliver today.
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From page 376... ...
· None of the wild crop relatives that were discovered in the last 40 years would be available for improving our foods. This demonstration of the importance of systematics to society could be expanded easily (Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 1996; Biodiversity and Conservation 1995; BioScience 1995; Cotterill 1995; Janzen 1993; Miller and Rossman 1997; Patrick 1997; Systematics Agenda 2000 1994a,b; Thompson 1997~.
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From page 377... ...
Collections take many forms, and for systematics to flourish, systematists must have access to them: natural-history museums, herbariums, frozen-tissue collections, seed banks, type-culture collections, and, for some types of studies, living material in zoos and botanical gardens. Systematics infrastructure includes the computational means to store information about collections, particularly the information associated with specimens; to analyze character-based information for phylogenetic analysis; and to facilitate communication with systematists at other institutions.
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From page 378... ...
describe the global patterns of numbers and sizes of plant collections and numbers of institutions that house collections of various sorts (museums, zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens) ; these patterns can be em pected to reflect the general level of systematics capacity in each country and among regions.
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From page 379... ...
In fact, systematics capacity in the developed nations is barely adequate many authorities would say totally inadequate to meet those count tries' own demands for systematics information (Blackmore 1996; Oliver 1988; Parnell 1993; Systematics Agenda 2000 1994a,b)
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From page 380... ...
Such a delay will hinder our efforts to build bioinformatics systems that are maximally predictive a goal that is inte' gral to the clearinghouse mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity. To address this need, SA2000I will be organizing an international research ef' fort to produce a corroborated phylogeny of the higher taxa by the year 2010.
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From page 381... ...
The world's nations, through the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Global Taxonomy Initiative (Australian Biological Resources Study 1998; Environment Australia 1991) , have acknowledged the critical role of systematics and have called for countries to increase their capacity.
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From page 382... ...
To meet its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity, Indonesia has undertaken an ambitious Global Environmental Facility project designed to increase systematics capacity and provide a framework for documenting and managing its biodiversity. Through the Research and Devel' opment Center of Biology in the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
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From page 383... ...
Building Capacity within Countries The previous discussion described how different countries have found distinct ways of improving systematics capacity. Some, such as Indonesia, have undertaken major programs to improve their national systematics collections.
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From page 384... ...
A small number of funding cycles have already had a substantial impact, and continued support is certain to produce a pool of expertise that will have a long~term and worldwide influence because many of the students being trained are from devel' aping countries. Wealthy countries need to make a substantial contribution to building world' wide systematics capacity.
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From page 385... ...
New York NY: Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History. Australian Biological Resources Study.
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From page 386... ...
1993. Biodiversity prospecting: using genetic resources for sustainable development.
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From page 387... ...
The scientific community, operating through a wide network of institutions and individuals, provided the scien' tific basis for international action on the conservation of biological diversity. The problem was defined in terms of institutional change.
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From page 388... ...
, was a major step in this process and resulted in the establishment of the Man and Biosphere Programme, emphasizing humanity's place in the natural order of things and the importance of the ecosystem approach to conservation of nature (Di Castri and others 1981; UNESCO 1993~. Science and International Action The UN Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, gave high priority to the need to conserve natural resources, including natural ecosystems and endangered wild species and their habitats (Stockholm Declaration of the Conference on Human Environment and Action Plan 1972~.
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From page 389... ...
emphasized the use of genetic resources. Institutional innovations to respond to the scientific and technological aspects of conserving and using the genetic resources of plants for food and agriculture were developed within the framework of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
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From page 390... ...
The ob' jectives of the convention are the conservation of biological diversity, the sustain' able use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources, including the appropriate access to ge' netic resources, appropriate transfer of relevant technologies (taking into account all rights over those resources and technologies) , and appropriate funding (article 1~.
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From page 391... ...
Article 9, on ex situ conservation, looks to conserve the complementary components of biological diversity outside their natural habitats. Article 10 stipulates obligations about the sustainable use of biological diversity, including cooperation between government authorities and the private sector in the development of methods for the sustainable use of biological resources.
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From page 392... ...
At its second meeting, the COP established a pilot phase of the clearinghouse mechanism and agreed that this phase would start by promoting the exchange of information, with emphasis on the role of emerging information and communication technologies. The clearinghouse mechanism works closely with the financial mechanism in promoting the establishment of basic communication facilities for the parties of the convention.
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From page 393... ...
A more elaborate interpretive effort is the current process to renegotiate the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources of the FAO to bring it into harmony with the convention. Another interpretive activity is the realignment of the work program of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
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From page 394... ...
Unlike other environmental treaties, such as the Convention on Climate Change and the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Convention on Biological Diversity has conducted no formal knowledge as' sessments. Instead, a Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA)
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From page 395... ...
In this regard, the convention, possibly through the clearinghouse mechanism or other measures that the COP may wish to exact, could play a key role in encouraging the private sector to participate in the process of implementing the convention. The Role of the United States The United States is a leader in the scientific and technological fields that are related to biological diversity.
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From page 396... ...
A history of the plant genetic resources movement. Rome Italy: Intl Plant Genetic Res Inst.
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From page 397... ...
42. UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme]
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From page 398... ...
Economic activity is the fundamental driving force of the two most pressing global environmental problems: climate change and biodiversity destruction. Only 20% of the world's population lives in industrial societies, but through global trade the success of industrialization has magnified the use of fossil fuels and other natural resources worldwide.
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From page 399... ...
This is at the core of the world's environmental problems; through forests' and fisheries' destruction, it leads to rapid biodiversity loss. Today's global environmental problems are connected with the role of global markets in magnifying unsustainable patterns of consumption and resource use in industrial nations.
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From page 400... ...
The trading rights to use knowledge and environmental resources are key trends in the world economy; these trends lead the transformation that I call the knowledge revolution_ (Chichiluisky 1997a,b,c, 1998; Shulman 1999~. Focusing on those new markets, I analyze here the introduction of new institutions and the policies that can lead the transformation of industrial society into a sustainable knowledge-based society.
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From page 401... ...
("Capital," in the sense of economic value, shows the same trend: it was associated mostly with land holdings in the agricultural society, with machinery in the industrial society, and with ideas in the knowledge society.) Knowledge differs fundamentally from land and machines in that it is not rival in consumption, so the knowledge revolution is based on a radically different type of input of production.
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From page 402... ...
These require special analysis because, as already mentioned, knowledge and environmental assets are pri' vately produced public goods and lead to new types of markets with new challenges and new opportunities for action. A SERVICE ECONOMY It is important to differentiate the knowledge revolution from the so-called ser' vice economy, which used to be thought of as the latest stage of the industrial society.
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From page 403... ...
The consumption of resources might not be as voracious as that in the industrial society and could be better distributed across societies and across the globe. The knowledge society might achieve economic progress that is harmonious with nature.
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From page 404... ...
However, without some restrictions there might be no incentive to create new knowledge. I call this the paradox of knowledge; resolving this is at the heart of the success of the knowledge society, of its ability to bring human development for many and not only a wealthy few.
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From page 405... ...
It establishes how the distribution of licenses in competitive markets is cru' cial in achieving efficient solutions. It shows that markets in knowledge operate differently from the standard markets because knowledge is a privately produced public good.
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From page 406... ...
Knowledge, as we saw above, has much in common with environmental assets: it is a privately produced public good. Knowledge products have been licensed for many years, although case by case and without securing the competitiveness of the market for licenses and the distribution of property rights that would ensure efficient outcomes.
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From page 407... ...
Because capital is the most important input of production in industrial society, it is clear that property rights to capital had an enormous impact on the organization of society, on economic progress, and on people's welfare. Similarly, in the knowledge society, the way humans organize the use of knowledge, its most important input to production, will determine human welfare and economic progress across the world.
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From page 408... ...
They use fewer resources and emit relatively little CO2. Knowledge sectors are the high~growth sectors in most industrialized countries.
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From page 409... ...
Several developing nations are or soon could be in that position; examples are the Caribbean area and Southeast Asia and many areas in Latin America (Harris 1994~. The main issues here are · abandonment of the resource-intensive development patterns that those nations have followed for the last 50 years, with the support and encouragement of the Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and · establishment of the institutions (property rights and financial markets)
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From page 410... ...
Oxford UK: Oxford Univ Pr. WRI, UNEP, UNDP [World Resources Institute, United Nations Environment Program, United Nations Development Program]
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