Capturing the pharmaceutical value of biodiversity in a developing country

The conservation of biodiversity is increasingly being defined as a process made up of three components—saving, studying and sustainably using biodiversity. If the conservation of process is expanded to incorporate the need for both the protection of biodiversity—either in situ or ex situ—and the generation of valuable information about biodiversity, an important issue is the correct balance of investment in these two types of activities. This paper explores this issue by focusing on efforts in a developing country to capture the pharmaceutical potential of biodiversity and species information. A model of biodiversity investment choice is developed, and an analysis of royalty returns to effort in biodiversity protection, taxonomic information and the collection of biotic samples is conducted based on data from Costa Rica. The results suggest that although a country can be adequately compensated for its investment in the generation of taxonomic information, it is unlikely that pharmaceutical prospecting alone will cover the high opportunity costs of biodiversity protection. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996