Intellectual property rights and biodiversity conservation

The urgent need to ensure the conservation of biological diversity is now widely recognised, but the role of an intellectual property rights regime as an instrument for biodiversity conservation is poorly understood and often hotly debated. This volume is a detailed analysis of the economic and scientific rationales of the use of a property rights-based approach to biodiversity conservation. It discusses the justification for, and implementation of, intellectual property rights regimes as incentive systems to encourage conservation. An interdisciplinary approach is used in the book, encompassing fields of study such as evolutionary biology, chemistry, economics and legal studies. The arguments are presented using the case study of the use of medicinal plants in the pharmaceutical industry. The book will be of interest and relevance to a broad spectrum of conservationists from research students to policy makers.