A política pública de repartição de benefícios no Brasil: diagnóstico jurídico-institucional de proteção dos conhecimentos tradicionais associados na Amazônia

Abstract

Brazil’s benefit-sharing policy is a legal and institutional instrument designed to regulate access to genetic heritage and associated traditional knowledge. The research addresses the following question: how does the configuration of the legal and institutional arrangement of Brazil’s public policy on benefit-sharing condition the protection of associated traditional knowledge in the Amazon? To achieve the proposed aim, the following research objectives were established: (a) to contextualize the access and benefit-sharing regime, biodiversity, genetic heritage, associated traditional knowledge, sociobiodiversity, and the benefit-sharing policy; (b) to reconstruct the policy’s legal and institutional arrangement in Brazil through the application of the Public Policy Reference Framework; and (c) to diagnose the policy’s limitations and challenges based on its normative and institutional design and on the case study of rosewood (Aniba rosaeodora Ducke), focusing on the protection of associated traditional knowledge in the Amazon. The study adopts the Law and Public Policy approach and uses the Public Policy Reference Framework as a methodological tool, drawing on bibliographic and documentary research. It also employs the rosewood (Aniba rosaeodora Ducke) case study to examine formal compliance, economic exploitation, associated traditional knowledge, and benefit-sharing. The hypothesis is that Brazil’s public policy on benefit-sharing has formally identifiable normative density and institutional structure, but that its capacity to protect associated traditional knowledge in the Amazon is conditioned by problems of articulation, coordination, operationalization, participation, transparency, territorialization, and institutional capacity. The findings confirm the hypothesis, although the strength of the evidence varies across the conditioning factors, and show that formal compliance throughout the production chain does not, in itself, ensure recognition of the sociocognitive origin of value or materially adequate benefit-sharing. The study concludes that benefit-sharing cannot be understood merely as a formal obligation arising from access to genetic heritage, but must be regarded as a public policy that integrates biodiversity, territory, traditional knowledge, economic value, and distributive justice.