Introductory paper to the gender report / Fatima Alvarez Castillo.

While research using biological resources could produce new drugs and technologies for health conditions in developing countries, it is the market ( that is mostly concentrated in western industrial countries) and attractive return on invesment which drive the increasing number of corporate-funding research, aimed to develop commercial products from biological materials that include cosmetics, health foods, and medicines. the rapidly expanding global biotechnology industry was valued in the year 2000 at US 17 billion (Dickinson, 2004). Biological resources include both human and non human genetic materials, plants, animals, and micro-organisms. since much of the existing biological diversity is found in developing countries, many of these researchers are conducted in those countries (Castillo & Feinholz, 2006), especially in indigenous and rural communities. These communities have developed complex knowledge and practical systems regarding the use of these biological resources. Reseachers of ten utilize not only the biological resources found in these communities, but also the communities' knowledge systems.

General Education.