Retos jurídicos de las actividades de bioprospección marina: especial referencia a las zonas polares

Abstract

Marine bioprospecting activities open immense possibilities for the development of products in a number of areas that affect our daily lives. However, the combined application of various legal instruments —the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Biological Diversity and related instruments, as the most relevant in this study—, highlights the existence of regulatory loopholes. In the article reference is made to marine bioprospecting activities in the Polar Regions —the Artic and Antarctica— with the aim of establishing a comparison that sheds light on important differences —with severe conceptual problems in one case (Antarctica) and important national and regional solutions in the other (the Artic)— that may allow to address the issue in a constructive way in the future.