5.1 State of the Art of Policies and Regulations on Bioeconomy and Climate Change in Latin-America

The concept of bioeconomy is relatively new for many Latin-American countries; therefore their policies and norms are at initial stages. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the diverse level of development of the policies and regulations related to agricultural biotechnology, biofuel, biodiversity and water for most of the countries in the region. Review of existing legal frameworks and policies related to bioeconomy pathways shows that the level of development varies greatly among countries. In most of the countries there are no policies and regulations specifically designed to deal with a bioeconomy. Exceptions are Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which have been involved in policy development for at least two decades. Brazil, one of the main biofuel producers in the world, has done so to reduce its dependency on foreign oil, driven particularly by the energy crisis of the 1970s. Recently, Brazil has developed policies to promote agricultural biotechnology development. Argentina and Chile have done so mainly due to their openness to foreign markets, economic efficiency and existing comparative advantages. On the other hand, recently a number of countries (e.g. Andean Region) have changed their vision about the management of their natural resources, giving more emphasis to the Precautionary Principle approach. The policies and strategies addressing the emerging bioeconomy, seem to be driven by external actors and international organizations. In the past, public policies have been imported from developed countries due to conditions required to access their (mainly financial) support. This trend is continuing with bioeconomic policies. In the process of policy development related to bioeconomy there are emerging conflicts, especially those related to genetically modified crops and biofuels. In principle, the policy making should follow democratic channels, where stakeholders can state their concerns, but this generally is not occurring due to external pressures and the influence of internal economic and/or political powers. Likewise, it is perceived that the bioeconomy concept and its implications are not being clearly understood by policy makers, particularly in countries with weak governance. Therefore, more debate at the political and academic level is required in order to build consensus in relation to this emerging concept