El 5 de marzo de 2009 fi rmé un contrato con el Programa de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas para ser el evaluador general de la Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT. El Parque Nacional Yasuní en la Amazonía ecuatoriana es una de las reservas de biosfera de la UNESCO. Dentro del parque viven dos comunidades indígenas que han elegido permanecer en aislamiento voluntario: los Tagaere y los Taromenane. En el subsuelo del parque se encuentran los campos petroleros de Isphingo, Tambococha y Tiputini, abreviados como ITT. En cuanto supe de estos hechos, rápidamente me di cuenta que he estado pensando sobre el marco teórico económico, que a su vez justifi ca la Iniciativa, durante la gran parte de mi carrera profesional, incluso mucho antes de saber dónde estaba Yasuní y lo que sería su importancia para la humanidad

Utilizando mi trayectoria anterior en las áreas de la termodinámica del no equilibrio, de la biodiversidad, y de la ecocrítica, presento este pequeño libro como el “producto” de la consultoría. Sin embargo, espero que también sea una invitación para indagar con mayor profundidad en los argumentos mencionados en las notas y fi lmografía.

The core argument was first presented in a keynote address to the Puerto Rican Association of Economists in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 26 August 2005. The manuscript was subsequently revised and appeared as “Una propuesta basada en ‘La tragedia de los comunes’: Un museo de bioprospección, de los derechos de propiedad intelectual y del conocimiento público,” Revista de Ciencias Sociales, núm. 16, invierno 2007, 118–135. The English translation first appeared in The Nexus of Law and Biology: New Ethical Challenges by Barbara A. Hocking, ed. (London: Ashgate, 2009). Support has been provided by The Institutional Research Fund (FIPI) of The Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research (DEGI) of The University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras.

Introduction

“The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin (1968) is one of the most cited articles in all of science. Having taught the tragedy in its distilled version for many years, I have only recently re-read the original article. I am startled to find that the text holds important and overlooked lessons for access to genetic resources and fair and equitable benefi t-sharing (ABS). I will take a few quotes, shamelessly out of context, and apply them to ABS. What emerges is a proposal for a “Museum of Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property Rights and the Public Domain” that is wholly consistent with both the letter and spirit in which Hardin penned his oeuvre.

E. O. Wilson emphasizes the importance of classification in a number of his writings. “The first step to wisdom, as the Chinese say, is getting things by their right names.” Such wisdom is not confined to Harvard entomologists and leaf-cutting ants. It can also be applied to civil society and education. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom conceptualized education as divisible into three domains: the cognitive, the affective, and the psychomotor. Each domain could be further broken down. The cognitive was a hierarchy of six distinct classes or levels. At the bottom is “knowledge,” associated with “remembering, either by recognition or recall, of ideas, material or phenomena” (62); at the top, “evaluation,” “the making of judgments about the value, for some purpose, of ideas, works, solutions, methods, material, etc” (185). From bottom to top, the mental levels are more challenging and the hierarchy can be conceived as a pyramid (Fig. I.1.). The seven contributors to this volume share the conviction that a “Museum of Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property, and the Public Domain” will enable the public to scale the cognitive pyramid while also delving into the domains of the affective and the psychomotor. Given the ignorance and misconceptions about bioprospecting, intellectual property, and the public domain, the ascent for most museum visitors will begin at the very bottom, viz., knowledge.

Albert Einstein believed imagination was more important than knowledge. Unfortunately, most museums do not nurture imagination despite mission statements to the contrary. They obsess with the transmission of knowledge which is the very lowest level of learning in Bloom's pyramid (Fig. I.1). This broadside is not to say that museums lack imagination; it is simply to say that even the best ones stop short of becoming part of the imaginative process. Once a visitor leaves the typical exhibition, there is no trace of his or her ever having entered it, guest books notwithstanding. Fortunately, the new information technologies can change all that. Data sets can be generated on the interaction of people with the exhibits and, more importantly, with one another.

The Introduction was inspired in part by an unsatisfying experience at the museum El Morro in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Let us now look at a satisfying experience which, nonetheless, also inspires us as to what we should not do. On 3 April 2007, Carlos Muñiz-Osorio, the research assistant for this anthology, and I went to Bunjilaka, The Aboriginal Centre at the Melbourne Museum in Australia. Then showing was the exhibition “Two Laws: Indigenous Knowledge, Law and Property.” It begins in a sitting area below a triptych of three large plasma TVs.

On the 5th of March 2009 I signed a contract with the United Nations Development Programme to be the general evaluator of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative. Yasuní is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Within the park live two indigenous communities who have chosen voluntary isolation, the Tagaere and Taromenane. Below the Park lie the oil fields Isphingo, Tambococha and Tiputini, abbreviated as ITT. Upon learning of just these bare bone facts, I quickly realized that I have been thinking about the economics that justifies the Initiative for almost my entire professional career – long before I knew where Yasuní is and what it will mean for humanity. Drawing on my previous trajectory in the areas of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, biodiversity, and ecocriticism, I offer this short book as the “product” of the consultancy. However, I hope that it will also be an invitation to delve deeper into the arguments referenced in the notes and filmography.

Because climate change is the leading issue of our day, the book is contextualized in the events that transpired from the first of March 2009 to the first of July 2009. These include the G-20 Summit in London, the passage of the “Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the negotiating session in Bonn of the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the formal US recognition of greenhouse gases as pollutants, and the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act.