THE ROLE OF BIODIVERSITY SCIENTISTS IN A TROUBLED WORLD ARTURO GMEZ-POMPA (BioScience, 2004 / Vol.54 No.

3) Aluno: Daniel Filho The author of this article, Arturo Gomez-Pompa (2004), is an ethynobotanic scientist which has dedicated this article to review new ways of understanding the relationship between society, research and biodiversity issues. Gomez is engaged in two main projects, the study of the ecological history and biodiversity of the lowland Maya region and the development of an educational CD-ROM project on ethnobotanical research. The author has discussed many different points of view on biodiversity issues and the importance of keeping natural resources knowledge and research field as a two close related themes. It was pointed out that, the future of our biosphere depends on practicing good scientific research, educating new generations of scientists and a good communication between researchers and local communities. Although scientists aim to clarify and discover new plant species and medicines, biotic resources are under all kinds of old and new threats. From long time ago, scientists all over the world struggle for doing research on biodiversity and ethnobotany, however, there are many barriers like governmental and private initiative which are in favor of deforestation and uncontrolled progress. These problems are difficult to face and the truth is that we scientists need to protect these resources where great majority of new medicine are yet to be discovered. Then arises the need to convince the general public and governments of the need to preserve the biological resources. The author has also, tried to describe many problems involved in the access to biological resources and the difficulty in finding a solution. In one hand, there are many obstacles like local people accusing scientists of biopiracy, NGOs questioning biodiversity projects, pharmaceutical companies searching for new medicines from the wild, legislators restricting research, scientists who ignore the laws of their countries, projects that ignore indigenous rights and companies that irresponsibly destroy the environment in poor communities in the countries where they do business. On the other hand, looking for new medicines, foods, biocides and genes from our worlds biodiversity is nothing wrong. Instead, the quality of our life would improve better if researchers have good partners, behave ethically when working in other countries, practice good scientific research, educating new generations of scientists, find ways to work with, recognize, and compensate indigenous societies. To sum up, ethnobotany may help clarify the tropical biodiversity and contribute to discover the importance of social and environmental research in a time where there are many conflicts of interests in the society.